Why read The People's Spaceship?

Book cover of The People's Spaceship: NASA, the Shuttle Era, and Public Engagement after Apollo

Book description

When the Apollo 11 astronauts returned from humanity's first voyage to the moon in 1969, NASA officials advocated for more ambitious missions. But with the civil rights movement, environmental concerns, the Vietnam War, and other social crises taking up much of the public's attention, they lacked the support to make…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The People's Spaceship as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Matt Shindell

Author

When it comes to human spaceflight programs, a lot has been written about the astronauts, administrators, and decision-makers who set policy and defined these programs from the top. The People’s Spaceship presents the four decades of NASA’s Shuttle Program as a mission to engage the public in the excitement of space exploration and make spaceflight relevant to people’s everyday lives.

In a post-Apollo era of declining budgets, NASA’s outreach efforts during the Shuttle era demonstrate the agency’s increasing reliance on public support and the public relations apparatus it built to garner it. Despite the Shuttle’s flaws, NASA managed to create…

From Matt's list on The best books about our human connection to space.