Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight

(By Margaret Lazarus Dean)

Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon
Download PDF Read Ebook

Note: If you encounter any issues while opening the Download PDF button, please utilize the online read button to access the complete book page.

×


Size 25 MB (25,084 KB)
Format PDF
Downloaded 640 times
Status Available
Last checked 12 Hour ago!
Author Margaret Lazarus Dean

“Book Descriptions: Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, a breathtaking elegy to the waning days of human spaceflight as we have known it


In the 1960s, humans took their first steps away from Earth, and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless. But in a time of austerity and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger, that dream has ended. In early 2011, Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASA's last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era. With Dean as our guide to Florida's Space Coast and to the history of NASA, Leaving Orbit takes the measure of what American spaceflight has achieved while reckoning with its earlier witnesses, such as Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Oriana Fallaci. Along the way, Dean meets NASA workers, astronauts, and space fans, gathering possible answers to the question: What does it mean that a spacefaring nation won't be going to space anymore?”