posted 10-17-2016 08:24 AM               

The thirty years of space shuttle flights saw contrary changes in American visions of space. Valerie Neal, who has spent much of her career examining the space shuttle program, uses this iconic vehicle to question over four decades' worth of thinking about, and struggling with, the meaning of human spaceflight.

She examines the ideas, images, and icons that emerged as NASA, Congress, journalists, and others sought to communicate rationales for, or critiques of, the space shuttle missions. At times concurrently, the space shuttle was billed as delivery truck and orbiting science lab, near-Earth station and space explorer, costly disaster and pinnacle of engineering success.

The book's multidisciplinary approach reveals these competing depictions to examine the meaning of the spaceflight enterprise. Given the end of the space shuttle flights in 2011, Neal makes an appeal to reframe spaceflight once again to propel humanity forward.

• Hardcover: 320 pages
  
• Yale University Press (June 27, 2017)
  
• ISBN-10: 0300206518
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0300206517

posted 05-03-2018 01:09 PM               

I think I made a good choice with this book, because Valerie Neal links human spaceflight with cultural studies more astutely than any author I have come across before. As the holder of an M.A. and Ph.D in American Studies before beginning a career as a National Air and Space Museum curator that has now lasted almost 30 years, she certainly has the right background to do so and it shows in her work.