Five decades have passed since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced the selection of its second astronaut group in the fall of 1962. Those nine men, all highly experienced test pilots, were about to participate in our greatest-ever scientific and engineering challenge: the Herculean task of flying space missions of increasing complexity leading eventually to a manned lunar landing. Counted among those nine space pilots...

Provides brief biographical sketches commemorating fifteen astronauts who died as a result of their efforts to reach the moon.

This book tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a global...