No Downlink is ostensibly about the Challenger accident, and was published earlier this year to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the event. In fact, the book by Claus Jensen, a Danish writer, is almost a capsule history of rocketry itself, from the days of Goddard and von Braun to the accident. Only Part Three of this book covers the accident and investigation in detail, but all parts of the book work to support his central thesis, that combining advanced technology with large bureaucratic organizations and political decision-making can have tragic results.
    The first two parts of the book lay the foundations for the Challenger accident. Part One discusses the history of rocketry and the formation of NASA up to the Apollo 11 mission. Part Two goes over NASA in the post-Apollo era, as it struggles with the development and operation of the shuttle. The emphasis in these parts is on how the American space program develops as decisions are made at higher levels with little regard to science or technology. Political decisions, whether motivated by foreign policy or budgetary constraints, shape the organization. The highly-touted modern management techniques NASA employs in the 1960s becomes just another way of carrying out those goals.
    Part Three of No Downlink covers the accident and investigation. All the obvious faults in NASA are exposed, as Jensen sees it, but remedial action isn't always taken. Jensen elevates Rogers Commission member Richard Feynman to hero status in this account, portraying him as the only member of the committee seeking to uncover the real problems with the shuttle and NASA in general.
    Jensen's book is sharply different than Diane Vaughan's The Challenger Launch Decision, which covers in deep sociological detail how the (flawed) decision to launch Challenger was reached. Jensen takes a broader view of the process. but spends far less time on Challenger than does Vaughan.
    Haveland's translation of Jensen's work into English was well executed: it was very hard to tell that the book was not originally written by a native English speaker. No Downlink provides another insight - from another point of view - about Challenger.

Moon Publications is a company that publishes a series of well-known travel guides to a wide variety of terrestrial destinations. So it's not too surprising that the publishers chose to do a fictional travel guide on their namesake, mixing fact and speculation on what tourist opportunities might exist on the moon in the not too distant future.
    Moon Handbook is the pocket travel guide for the tourist of the year 2020 planning a trip to the Moon. We find there are a number of options for the future tourist, including one major city (Moon City), ice mining at the lunar south pole, and even a resort (Mont Blanc Resort)! The tourist can visit the Moon Museum at the Apollo 11 landing site or take a trip to the observatories on the Moon's far side.
    The book is not just speculation about future settlements. Much of the book has relevant history about the Moon, from ancient times to the present (1996) day. Koppeschaar mixes mythology and science, throwing in little tidbits on the subject of how you can visit the Moon today (provided you'll accept driving to Moon, Kentucky; population 75!).
    There are some obvious parallels between this book and Ben Bova's Welcome to Moonbase. The latter, published in the late 1980s, is written as a manual to new visitors and workers on the Moon around 2020. As such, Bova's work is more technical than Moon Handbook, so people expecting to see the same level of technical detail in the handbook will not find it. The only truly disappointing thing about Moon Handbook is that it refers to thriving lunar settlements less than 25 years from now. Given that we are little closer to such a reality now then we were at the time of Bova's work, we are left to wonder just how long we will have to wait until the real version of Moon Handbook is published.

The life of Wernher von Braun, from his association with Nazi Germany during the development of the A-4/V-2 during World War II to his successful work in the Apollo program, has been the subject of a number of writers who have tried to understand what motivated von Braun. In Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space, two of von Braun's closest friends and associates paint a very rosy, optimistic portrait of one of the century's great rocket scientists.
    The combined edition reviews here consists of two separate books, a "Biographical Memoir" written by Stuhlinger and Ordway, and an "Illustrated Memoir" with over one hundred pages of photos and illustrations of von Braun's life and work. Each are interesting in their own way.
    The biographical memoir portrays von Braun as a man who, since childhood, was fascinated with astronomy and the possibility of space flight. We see von Braun as a man focused on a goal of developing space flight, and pragmatic enough to make deals with the Nazi government to further his research. Throughout the book nary a negative word is said about von Braun, including his association with the Nazis and the SS. When Stuhlinger and Ordway to publish something negative about von Braun, such as a brief essay about Carl Sagan which mentions an apparent inability on von Bruan's part to explain his interest in exploring space, the authors go to great lengths to explain the negative words away. Clearly this memoir is intended as a positive look back on von Braun's life, and not an impartial biography.
    The illustrated memoir is more interesting. von Braun's life is told in hundreds of photographs and illustrations from his childhood to the end of his life. We see von Braun and his rockets from the early amateur attempts through the Saturn V. There are a great number of interesting and rare photographs collected here. (Ever see von Braun with a beard? Those pictures are in there!)
    Someone looking for an impartial, critical review of von Braun's life will likely not be satisfied with Stuhlinger's and Ordway's efforts here. However, if you're looking for the equivalent of people talking about the life of an old, dear friend (complete with the occasional tangent as the authors step out of chronological sequence to tell a story), complete with a large number of pictures about the man, then Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space may be just what you're looking for.

The true "Space Age", according to the author, had little to do with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs (and, presumably, their Soviet counterparts). None of those ventures, while providing adventure and scientific and technical knowledge, did anything to promote long-term "routine" access to space. The shuttle program, flawed as it many be, was the first vehicle with routine space access as a goal, and Jenkins provides a detailed technical history of the program in Space Shuttle.
    Jenkins starts his history of the space shuttle back in the 1920s and 1930s, when the first concepts of reusable and winged rockets were developed in Germany, particularly by Eugen Sanger. After World War II, the pace of development of winged, reusable vehicles picks up, through the development of vehicles like the X-15 and the X-20 Dyna Soar. Later concepts, and NASA interest, evolved into the vehicle we now know and love -- or hate -- as the space shuttle.
    Jenkins provides one of the most thorough, comprehensive histories of the shuttle program possible in a single, 300+ page volume. Hundreds of illustrations and the accompanying text show the details of a number of different shuttle proposals, not to mention the technical details of the current shuttle orbiters. Capsule summaries of each shuttle mission are included, as well as information on launch and landing facilities and the 747 aircraft used to ferry the orbiters. There's even a section on shuttle proposals be other nations, including the Soviet Buran.
    If you're looking for a single reference to the technical history of the space shuttle concept, it would be difficult to recommend a better book than Space Shuttle.