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Since Gordon Cooper published his autobiography in the year 2000, there was only one Mercury astronaut remaining who had not written his own book about his space experiences. Many wondered if Scott Carpenter, in many ways the most enigmatic of the living astronauts of that era, would ever do so. Carpenter, after all, had come in for a withering printed attack in 2001, when former NASA flight director Chris Kraft published his autobiography, "Flight." In the four decades that have passed since his space flight, Carpenter had endured many remarks about his piloting skills on his space flight with his characteristic good grace. With the publishing of Kraft's book, however, it was… Read more
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I found this book an engrossing read - an intriguing look at how humans view our planet from afar. What I found most interesting was not just the story of how images have been taken of our planet from space, but also how the taking of such images has apparently been long anticipated in human history. Through studies of paintings and writings made before the Space Age, Poole shows that the impact of such images was anticipated long before the images were made. He goes on to discuss how the images, when made, seem to have made a deep impression on a burgeoning environmental and conservation movement. An interesting study of how the precise literalism of hard engineering can awaken more… Read more
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Mike Cassutt is a great double-threat: he knows how to write an engrossing, absorbing and engaging thriller, and he also knows the world of NASA's astronauts inside out. There are stories and rumors of astronaut office politics that can probably never be published, but they can be used as a fictional backdrop for a thrilling tale. For both of these reasons, I found this book a great read.
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