Books
Discoveries from the Ancient World to the Extraterrestrial Future
Roger D Launius Thames & Hudson £24.95 HB
“Rockets are cool,” says SpaceX founder Elon Musk. “There’s no getting around that.” Yet, as this comprehensive history of space exploration shows, it’s been a hard-won combination of imagination, bravery and ingenuity that’s brought us to permanent human habitation of space even if, for the moment, that’s no farther than the relatively low Earth orbit of the International Space Station.
Author Roger D Launius, chief historian of NASA from 1990 to 2002, has produced an informed and informative read that never talks down to its reader. While not necessarily as definitive as that titular ‘The’ might suggest – not least because Launius’s final chapter on future missions is necessarily speculative – it’s no mere hagiography of NASA’s achievements. The book’s sixth chapter in particular provides a succinct introduction to the expanding ‘space club’ of nations, from the Cold War formation of the European Space Agency in 1964 to the more contemporary space achievements of India, Japan and China. And did you know that Argentina is developing its own satellite-launching rockets, expected to make their first flights in 2019? Launius presents some uncomfortable truths with surprisingly little comment. Of the significant progress in rocketry made in the run-up to – and during – the Second World War, he blandly states that, “every belligerent nation developed some type of rocket technology as a weapon.” Some readers may also be disappointed that the legacy of German rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun – who “created both a weapon responsible for the deaths of literally thousands of people, and a launch vehicle that would give rise to the rockets that would eventually take humanity into space” – is described merely as “mixed”. Broken up into easily digestible two- or three-page chunks and with a clean, uncluttered design, the result is a book you can either dip into or settle down for a longer perusal. Heavy to hold, perhaps, but not a heavy read.