Space

The book opens with a small discussion of the early space pioneers such as Wernher von Braun, Sergei Korolev and Robert Goddard, and their efforts to develop workable rockets. The book then moves into the dawn of the space age and the race between Russia and the United States to achieve various "firsts." For example, the first satellite, the first probe to the moon or another planet and of course the first country to put a man into space. After this portion of the book, the Mercury, Gemini, Vostok, Voskhod and early Apollo programs are examined. The next section is devoted to NASA's exploration of the moon and contains many full page photographs. To further emphasis the grandeur of these missions of exploration, there are several two page foldouts. The next chapter of the book covers the early robotic exploration of the solar system, up to and including the Viking and Voyager missions. The next portion of the book examines the space shuttle era. It is here that I feel that the book should have included more. While the space shuttle has been flying for over twenty years, there is less than twenty pages of shuttle related photographs. The book concludes with the current robotic exploration of the solar system, some really excellent photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.

I only have two minor criticisms about the book. First, most of the photographs are devoted to the space race up to the Apollo moon landings, with very little dedicated to the Space Shuttle and International Space Station projects. Secondly, many of the photographs are ones that have been published before so there is very little new here. Nevertheless, these two very minor complaints, are overshadowed by the splendor of the numerous high quality photographs is this book.


unbelievable beautiful   October 7, 2002
 6 out of 11 found this review helpful

it's hard to believe we haven't gone back to the Moon, after seeing these phot0graphs