Countdown: The History of Spacecraft

Author: T.A. Hepburn-Harper
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-04-01
Features: Inside the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., people can find a similar monument. It is a backup of Skylab 2, the space station that carried nine astronauts to space orbit between 1973 and 1974. It is not a model either; it could have been launched using the rocket on the Houston lawn, but NASA couldn't find a valid reason to launch it, so it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution, and the rocket became a decoration on the lawn. Today, children wander around it. Why did these things happen? Why did we go to the moon in the first place? Why did NASA build such grand equipment, only to abandon it? This book provides a detailed description of these questions and outlines the main features of some of the world's major space programs, including those of the Soviet Union, Europe, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.