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Title: Lost in Space : The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age by GREG KLERKX ISBN: 0-375-42150-5 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: NASA - Not About Space Anymore
Comment: This is a decent book that presents the opposing view to NASA's perspective on space travel. It does get long winded at times and could benefit with some editing. It is corageous in that it is one of a very few books that will state that NASA is lost and has no real direction.
I was born in 1968, so I missed the interesting space missions. I remember as a kid watching the first Space Shuttle launch and being completely unimpressed. I could never really put my finger on my fascination with the Apollo program and my boerdome with the Space Shuttle until now. This book has been a real eye opener for me as a space enthusiast and a tax payer!
Rating: 5
Summary: A refreshing antidote...
Comment: ..to the usual right stuff glorification of an organization whose efforts to build on the thrill of Apollo have disappointed me and apparently also the author. The track record Klerkx puts together in this book of NASA's dealings with big contractors like Boeing is shocking, and it really throws into question whether NASA has what it takes to send people back to the moon or anywhere else. The stories of the entrepreneurs are interesting and the whole book moves along very nicely, without too much technical gobbledegook. A really interesting read, although it's pretty long, so give yourself some time!
Rating: 2
Summary: Many Accusations, Little Proof
Comment: The dust jacket of this book disingenuously describes it as revealing how NASA "devolved from a pioneer of new horizons to a blundering bureaucracy concerned mainly with its own existence." To the contrary, Klerkx STARTS with the given that NASA is a "blundering bureaucracy concerned mainly with its own existence" and then attempts to explain how NASA and its big contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin have thwarted every attempt by private entrepreneurs to get into the space industry.
The problem is not that Klerkx is wrong -- he may be correct, for all I know -- but that he presents little evidence to prove that he is right. He makes his case by relying almost exclusively on information from the private entrepreneurs themselves, who understandably are frustrated by the current state of the space program and the failure to fulfill the dream of 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, little attempt is made to present NASA's side of the story or to give hard evidence of NASA's supposed real agenda. Instead, Klerkx relies on innuendo and circumstantial evidence.
For example: NASA and its contractors are entrenched with using expendable launch vehicles (solid/liquid rocket boosters). NASA awarded a contract to Lockheed to develop a reusable launch vehicle, the X-33. Lockheed failed and the project was cancelled. Therefore, NASA and Lockheed conspired to kill the X-33 in order to protect their vested interests in expendable rocket boosters. Without hard evidence, the conclusion does not follow from the premise and we are left with the same sort of conspiracy theory used to "prove" that big oil and big auto companies have suppressed technology that would allow cars to run on water.
The result is that NASA is blamed for everything that goes wrong and gets no credit for anything that goes right. According to Klerkx, when NASA fails to support the entrepreneurs, as when it refused to help them maintain the Mir space station, this is evidence that NASA doesn't want competition in space. But, when NASA does ostensibly support the entrepreneurs, for example by funding the X-33 and DC-X experimental reusable launch vehicles, this ALSO is evidence that NASA doesn't want competition in space, because NASA simply is co-opting these programs in order to gain control over them and kill them. In other words, whatever NASA does with respect to private space initiatives is evidence that NASA doesn't want them to succeed. As such, the book comes off as simply rationalizing private industry failures by blaming NASA for everything.
"Lost in Space" is better understood as a howl of frustration from the private sector, those who bought the dream of space travel championed in the 50's and 60's and who are bitterly disappointed by the failure of that dream, than as an objective account of the current space program.
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Title: Comm Check... : The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia by Michael Cabbage, William Harwood ISBN: 0743260910 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 27 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Dyna-Soar: Hypersonic Strategic Weapons System (Apogee Books Space Series) by Robert Godwin ISBN: 1896522955 Publisher: Apogee Books Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel by Robert Zimmerman ISBN: 0309085489 Publisher: Joseph Henry Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Light This Candle : The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman by NEAL THOMPSON ISBN: 0609610015 Publisher: Crown Publishing Group Pub. Date: 23 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Single Stage to Orbit: Politics, Space Technology, and the Quest for Reusable Rocketry (New Series in Nasa History) by Andrew J. Butrica, Roger D. Launius ISBN: 080187338X Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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