Experimental Blog #131

Notes from "Live From Cape Canaveral" - Covering the Space Race from Sputnik to Today by Jay Barbree

Although there is sometimes a frustrating lack of dates, this book is a very exciting history of the competition between America and the Soviet Union in manned space flight. The author, Jay Barbree, appears to be unusually well acquainted with the Soviet and Russian satellites, cosmonauts, rockets, and spacecraft; but as for the Americans:

The Project Mercury spacecraft were for single astronauts and short flights or orbits, up to 22 in number.
The Project Gemini spacecraft were "two-man spacecraft that would test and perfect all the key techniques needed to reach the moon, rendezvousing and docking with other vehicles and walking in space."

Apollos 8{December, 1968}, 10, and 13 went to and around the moon; and Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17{December, 1972} went to the moon and sent 12 astronauts, 2 on each trip, to the lunar surface and outside the lunar module.

On July 15, 1975 two Russians aboard a Soyuz 19 spacecraft and three Americans aboard an Apollo spacecraft{the author says it was "the last Apollo in the stable"} rendezvoused and docked in space.

After this event NASA built 4 reusable space shuttles: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. The tragic fates of Challenger on the 25th shuttle launch, in January 1986, and Columbia on the 113th{or 112th} shuttle descent, in February 2003, are well known. However, altogether the shuttle fleet apparently made over 130 flights before they were retired by presidential order by September 30, 2010{which is after this book was written in 2006 and '7}.

 The American shuttles had many missions, among others: sending off  a TDRS, which was a tracking and data relay satellite to a stationary orbit at 22,300 miles; the Magellan, which was a probe to Venus; Galileo, to Jupiter; Ulysses, to orbit the Sun; a Gamma Ray Observatory; the Hubble Telescope{and its repairing mission}; secret CIA satellites; and many launches to help construct the International Space Station.