Space Shuttle Stories
SHUTTLE HISTORY
Tom Jones
Smithsonian Books
£33 • HB
Adventure stories are best told by those who lived them. Here, astronaut Tom Jones offers an off-piste look at the 135 Shuttle flights between April 1981 and July 2011. Jones flew four times on the Shuttle, performing spacewalks and helping to build the International Space Station.
Each mission's tale is related by at least one of its crew. Missions appear in date order, with minutiae of numbers, names, durations and crew members in side boxes. Stories are enriched by a glorious image selection.
The book's true nuggets, though, are the astronauts’ recollections. It's otherwise hard to find new insights into this fleet of reusable spaceships, which facilitated America's human space programme for a generation.
“Get five astronauts in a room,” joked Shuttle commander John Creighton, “and you'll get six opinions.” There are opinions and thoughts aplenty here.
