Spaceflight books

[Dickie]

I'm just curious if anybody here has any recommendations for some decent spaceflight-related books, a brief search through Amazon throws up a fair few but which ones are actually worth it?

So far I've read the following (and would recommend them to anyone who hasn't read them!):

Lost Moon
Moonshot
A Man on the Moon
Riding Rockets
Carrying the Fire
Failure is not an option
Moondust

 

[thomasantony]

Stephen Baxter's Voyage. I haven't read it. But I heard its damn good.

 

[kuddel]

....for a more technical (but still kind of story-telling) title:
"How NASA Learned To Fly In Space" by David M. Harland
... a really interesting summary on Project Mercury.

and for the even-more-technical enthusiasts:
"Fundamentals Of Astrodynamics" by Bate, Mueller and White
...its old but still not that wrong

 

[Andy44]

Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is a great and funny book.

 

[cljohnston]

Contains many unpublished photos, in the best quality I've ever seen!
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/America-Space-NASAs-First-Fifty/dp/0810993732"]Amazon is selling it at 70% off![/ame]

 

[Buzz Lovell]

Some more

THIS NEW OCEAN by William Burrows
DRAGONFLY by Brian Burrough
MOON LANDER by Kelly
WE HAVE CAPTURE by Stafford/Cassut

The best astronaut auto-biography in terms of getting the real dope on what the astronaut office was like in Apollo:

THE ALL AMERICAN BOYS by Walter Cunningham

 

[Andy44]

Mike Collins also wrote a pretty good book. I've got it around here somewhere. Arthur C. Clarke once said that Stanley Kubrick used a small black hole for a filing system; sometimes I think I have such an object hiding in my house somewhere.

 

[unussapiens]

Soyuz - A Universal Spacecraft

Easily the best book I've found on the soyuz program, goes through the entire development process of the craft.

 

[myles]

High Calling is pretty good. It explains some of the aspects of shuttle flight, and it is a touching story of one of the Columbia crew members.

 

[Notebook]

For a history of UK rocketry post-WWII up to the 70's, this a good read.

http://www.spaceuk.org/index.htm

"A Vertical Empire was published by Imperial College Press, and this site gives a taste of what you will find in the book."

Not just rockets:- http://www.spaceuk.org/sr53/sr53%20pics.htm

N.

 

[C3PO]

How about Wolfe's 'The Right Stuff'?

Or is that too obvious? :speakcool:

 

[ar81]

"Space Shuttle Operator's Manual" by [ame="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Kerry%20Mark%20Joels"]Kerry Mark Joels[/ame]