Entering Space [antikvár]

PREFACEI did not grow up wanting to be an astronaut. In those years there were no astronauts in Indiana, nor anywhere else for that matter. But there were real adventurers to read aboutexplorers, cowboys, race-car driversand I often longed to follow in the footsteps of Daniel Boone, Roy Rogers, or Sam Hanks. When I first crossed Sugar Creek in a homemade, square-transomed boat, I dreamed of the day I would be an explorer. But as I grew older and graduated to canoes, venturing downstream past the rock-strewn clifFs of Turkey Run and on toward the Wabash River, I began to suspect I was too timid to become a real explorer. Later, when I realized I was too small and not nearly musical enough to be a cowboy, and much too cautious to be a race-car driver, I decided to become a teacherand perhaps someday I will be one.In the meantime, extraordinary events happened. As I was studying Kepler's equations of orbital motion, they were dramatically demonstrated by the first orbits of Sputnik. As I was finishing my study of physics at Yale, John Glenn orbited the earth. Suddenly human imagination had made it possible to travel outside the earth's atmosphere at speeds beyond human imagination. Even more remarkably, scientists as well as pilots were selected to make these journeys, and I became part of the astronaut corps. I have since orbited the earth eighty-one times, traveling a distance greater than the entire length of the Wabash River.This book is about the space experience, an experience made possible only by the dedication of thousands of Americanstechnicians, engineers, and scientistswho lovingly create the machines that now circle the earth and cross the solar system. These spaceships, incorporating aspects of every science and applying every technology of our age, are more than computer-guided craft of cold composites and metal. They are monuments to human innovation. Aboard such a ship, in every corner, in every nook and passageway, we sense the skills of those who built it, and their minds and spirit travel with us.It occurs to me that if Kepler were to read this book, he would not be surprised to learn that people in these spaceships orbit the earth exactly as his equations so elegantly predicted. But he would surely be awed to see the images of life aboard them and the views from them