posted 09-19-2008 09:38 PM               

The book, to be written by David Hitt (whose series book "Homesteading Space" with Owen Garriott and Joe Kerwin is close to release) will tell the social history of the shuttle up to and including the loss of Challenger and her crew in January 1986. A second book, yet to be formally approved and announced, will be written by another author well known to collectSPACE regulars, and this will carry the story right through to the completion of the final space shuttle mission.

posted 10-28-2013 08:50 AM               

After the Apollo program put twelve men on the moon and safely brought them home, anything seemed possible. In this spirit, the team at NASA set about developing the Space Shuttle, arguably the most complex piece of machinery ever created. The world's first reusable spacecraft, it launched like a rocket, landed like a glider, and carried out complicated missions in between.

Bold They Rise tells the story of the Space Shuttle through the personal experiences of the astronauts, engineers, and scientists who made it happen—in space and on the ground, from the days of research and design through the heroic accomplishments of the program to the tragic last minutes of the Challenger disaster. In the participants' own voices, we learn what so few are privy to: what it was like to create a new form of spacecraft, to risk one's life testing that craft, to float freely in the vacuum of space as a one-man satellite, to witness a friend's death. A "guided tour" of the Shuttle — in historical, scientific, and personal terms — this book provides a fascinating, richly informed, and deeply personal view of a feat without parallel in the human story.

• Hardcover: 368 pages
  
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (June 1, 2014)
  
• ISBN-10: 0803226489
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0803226487

posted 01-22-2014 04:43 PM               

Looking at the page proofs — well, it looks like an Outward Odyssey book, of course, but I'm very pleased with what they've done with it. When I saw the title page, I ran and grabbed my copy of "Homesteading Space" to make sure it wasn't just my imagination that the "Bold They Rise" title page was that much better. (Answer: No, it wasn't my imagination.) I'm very pleased with the work they've done.

posted 01-28-2014 04:01 PM               

Not because it required more effort or research or anything like that, but because every word hurt.

Our publisher defined the scope of the book from the outset — the beginning of the program through the Challenger accident. Before we wrote the first words, we knew how the story had to end.

Writing the rest of the book, there was a lot of jumping around. Large portions of later chapters were written before earlier chapters. We just sort of put down the pieces where they fit.

Except the last chapter. Except the Challenger chapter. The end, we saved until last.

Which was pure procrastination. We knew we would have to write it, we just weren't in any hurry to do so.

Challenger had always been a personal thing for me (David). I was in middle school when it happened, and I can only imagine that it was for me what the Kennedy assassination was for a previous generation. I was a school kid, far from involved in it, but it hurt. It was a loss.

I've written about it every year since. For school writing assignments, newspapers columns, blog posts, I've paused today to put thoughts into words, to remember, to ponder the event, its meaning, the years since. I've gone from being a middle school student to being part of the team creating NASA's next launch vehicle. Challenger has gone from a national tragedy to a mandate. I'm not an engineer; I'm not designing the vehicle. But I try, every day, to hold myself to the standard I would want from those who do — "Do good work."

The crew of Challenger's 51-L mission were names in the news to me, far removed from my life. Eleven years ago, working for NASA, I'd not met any of Columbia's final crew. But over the years, I begin to meet the men and women who were risking their lives. After Columbia, there were few flights for which I'd not seen in person members of the crews. It was no longer names in the news. It was people.

During those years, I've also had gotten to know people who were in the astronaut corps at the time we lost Challenger. I'd never talked to them about the accident; I'd never had any desire to do so. There were better things to talk about.

Working on this book, however, I did.

Joe Kerwin, one of my co-authors on "Homesteading Space," was the medical examiner after the tragedy. For Joe, these were not names in the news. They were his colleagues. They were his friends. And he and his team had to identify what was left of them, and to try to determine what exactly had happened to them in their final moments of life.

We recorded the story. I cannot imagine the experience.

Capturing those stories, recording those moments 28 years ago and the months that followed, is something I'm honored to have done. But not something I care to repeat.

We first submitted the manuscript for the book three years ago today, picking this date as a small tribute.

Today, we're reading through the manuscript one last time, with a looming deadline to send it back in for publication.

posted 05-19-2014 07:53 AM               

This book is a great companion to Rick Houston's Wheels Stop. Together they cover the Shuttle program from beginning to end. It doesn't matter in which order you read them.

Bold They Rise does a unique job of painting the background and emotions of the times during various eras of the Space Shuttle. It focuses on the shuttle's operations by detailing missions concerned with different aspects of the shuttle's capabilities.

It opens with chapters on the design and construction. These are very well done and I was surprised to learn that the thermal tiles used on the orbiter were related to tiles used on NASA's Saturn 1 booster. I've read a lot about these tiles and was surprised to find something new in this book, which is not based on engineering or the TPS itself.

These chapters are followed by the early test flights and then the early operational flights. The book again does a good job of painting the background stories to developing the shuttle, it's remote arm and other parts as an integrated working machine, and you feel immersed in the nuances of the program as it matures.

The program goes from strength to strength, but towards the end of the book you feel something new and different - risk. At first I did not understand why the writers covered missions that never launched, but after reading about plans for polar orbits or a liquid fueled booster in the payload bay, you get a good sense of the cannot-fail attitude that wrongly filled NASA at that time. They were not paying attention to the risks piling on top of other risks, and we all know that tragedy was just around the corner. The flight of 51-L is covered as well as can be, given that many entire books have been written on all aspects of this accident.

One thing bothered me and I'd like to ask the authors to clarify this. As the risk builds and NASA develops an unhealthy acceptance of this, the authors talk about the satellites flown on STS-51G. They say "The ARABSAT never passed a safety review. "It failed every one of its safety reviews," (MS John) Fabian said."

To me this is not explained clearly. Did the satellite not have a safety review (as the first sentence seems to imply)? Or did it have a review but fail to pass various tests or standards? I could almost understand the first instance given the schedule and political pressure NASA was under at this time (and which is well explained in the book) but I really have problems with the second scenario, where NASA seemingly OK's something that is known to be unsafe. This is a serious accusation and I'd like to know more about it and where it came from, especially given the Challenger accident looming 7 months down the line.

posted 05-22-2014 06:49 AM               

Astronauts To Speak at Launch of Newly Released Space Shuttle Book

Astronauts Robert "Hoot" Gibson and Rhea Seddon will talk Saturday, May 31, 2014, at 2 p.m., about the early Space Shuttle program, in honor of the newly released book, "Bold They Rise: The Space Shuttle Program Early Years, 1972-1986" by David Hitt and Heather R. Smith.

"Bold They Rise" tells the story of the Space Shuttle through the personal experiences of the astronauts, engineers, and scientists who made it happen — in space and on the ground, from the days of research and design through the heroic accomplishments of the program to the tragic last minutes of the Challenger disaster.

"Although the shuttle program has now run its course, this wonderful book brings back the awe, the inspiration, the promise, and the sadness associated with the early history of those magnificent vehicles and the teams of ground and flight crews that flew them," said seven-time astronaut Jerry L. Ross.

The astronauts will talk about their experiences in the development phase of the space shuttle program and their missions, and also what it as like to be part of the first class of astronauts to include women.

In 18 years as an astronaut Gibson flew five spaceflights, four of them as Commander, aboard space shuttles Challenger, Columbia, Atlantis and Endeavour. His final spaceflight was the first mission to rendezvous and dock with the Russian Space Station Mir in 1995.

Gibson and Seddon are married. Both were selected as part of the 1978 class of astronauts; Seddon was one of the first six female astronauts selected by NASA. She flew as a mission specialist and as a payload commander on three missions between 1985 and 1993, performing the first echocardiography in space in 1985.

"Bold They Rise" is authored by Huntsville natives David Hitt and Heather R. Smith, with a foreword by the first Space Shuttle Commander, Robert Crippen.

The book is published by the University of Nebraska Press as part of Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight Series.

Together with Skylab astronauts Owen Garriott and Joe Kerwin, in 2008 Hitt authored "Homesteading Space" about the Skylab program. Hitt currently supports NASA's Space Launch System Program as a member of the strategic communications team. He first began working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 2002.

A former journalist, Smith's career has included writing for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center at Redstone Arsenal, and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology.