Failure to Launch, Gebunden

Klappentext

During the Cold War, NASA was not the only organization attempting to launch Americans into space. The US Air Force was simultaneously investing in technology, staff, and infrastructure to achieve human spaceflight. The air force's efforts failed repeatedly, while NASA's groundbreaking programs--Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo--garnered international acclaim. Many factors contributed to the air force's failure, including an inability to outline a mission that required crewed spacecraft, a misalignment between political goals and military policy, internal military disagreements about space policy, and a barrier to earning public buy-in. Now, with the creation of Space Force and greater public focus on civilian spaceflight, interest has again been calibrated toward the stars.

In Failure to Launch: The United States Air Force and Manned Flight in the Early Space Age , scholars Brian D. Laslie and Michael W. Hankins bring together expert historians whose work investigates why the air force has yet to achieve human spaceflight. While many books focus on human exploration in space, this edited anthology is unique because of its specific focus on the air force's crewed flight programs. Laslie, Hankins, and their included scholars take a close look at programs such as Man in Space Soonest, X-20 Dyna-Soar, and Manned Orbiting Laboratory to discern why these initiatives never took off.

The race to space continues to intensify as private companies such as SpaceX develop their own human spaceflight initiatives. International public buy-in to these planetary quests indicate an insatiable interest in travel beyond Earth. This first-of-its-kind anthology answers questions that military experts and curious civilians have pondered for the past half-century.