The Burning Blue
The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA's Challenger Disaster
-
- USD 11.99
-
- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
Winner of the American Astronautical Society's 2021 Eugene M. Emme Award
The untold story of a national trauma—NASA’s Challenger explosion—and what really happened to America’s Teacher in Space, illuminating the tragic cost of humanity setting its sight on the stars
You’ve seen the pictures. You know what happened. Or do you?
On January 28, 1986, NASA’s space shuttle Challenger exploded after blasting off from Cape Canaveral. Christa McAuliffe, America’s “Teacher in Space,” was instantly killed, along with the other six members of the mission. At least that's what most of us remember.
Kevin Cook tells us what really happened on that ill-fated, unforgettable day. He traces the pressures—leading from NASA to the White House—that triggered the fatal order to launch on an ice-cold Florida morning. Cook takes readers inside the shuttle for the agonizing minutes after the explosion, which the astronauts did indeed survive. He uncovers the errors and corner-cutting that led an overconfident space agency to launch a crew that had no chance to escape.
But this is more than a corrective to a now-dimming memory. Centering on McAuliffe, a charmingly down-to-earth civilian on the cusp of history, The Burning Blue animates a colorful cast of characters: a pair of red-hot flyers at the shuttle's controls, the second female and first Jewish astronaut, the second Black astronaut, and the first Asian American and Buddhist in space. Drawing vivid portraits of Christa and the astronauts, Cook makes readers forget the fate they're hurtling toward. With drama, immediacy, and shocking surprises, he reveals the human price the Challenger crew and America paid for politics, capital-P Progress, and the national dream of "reaching for the stars."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Cook (Ten Innings at Wrigley) delivers a crisp account of the January 1986 Challenger disaster focused on Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher selected to join a space mission. The "Teacher in Space" program, according to Cook, aimed to revive public interest in the space program and help President Reagan win teachers' votes in the 1984 election. McAuliffe, a high school social studies instructor in New Hampshire, was picked from more than 11,000 applicants. She participated in a series of high-profile media interviews and spent four months training for the flight with six other crew members, who are also profiled in detail. Tasked with conducting science lessons from space that PBS "would beam to classrooms all over the country," McAuliffe struggled to retain the necessary information (it wasn't her field), but kept at it, determined to prove she was more than a publicity stunt. Cook ramps up tension with well-selected vignettes of final preparations for the launch, and lucidly describes the cause of the explosion (a faulty seal in a rocket booster), the subsequent investigations, and the lawsuits filed by surviving family members. But the brisk pace comes at the expense of a deeper portrayal of McAuliffe and her NASA experiences. Still, this is an informative overview of a preventable tragedy that looms large in the history of the space program. Illus.
