Single Stage to Orbit

Behind the glories and tragedies that make headlines and move the nation, the story of the space shuttle is inextricably bound to the lesser-known but no less engrossing drama of the search for a reusable single-stage-to-orbit rocket. In this book, Andrew J. Butrica tells this story, going back to the first glimmerings of the idea in the 1920s, when it was dismissed as technically unfeasible, and following it to its fruition in the midst of the Cold War as a very real government program and operational flight vehicle This is not, however, the story of a single idea, but rather the history of a vision that brought together a few pioneers of space technology and several concepts, new and old. To the first and oldest idea -- that of the reusable rocket-powered single-stage-to-orbit vehicle -- were added the concepts of ''aircraft-like'' operations, of using an ''X,'' or experimental, vehicle, and of running a program with a ''faster, cheaper, smaller'' managerial approach. Butrica describes how these ideas came together in the heart of what President Eisenhower dubbed the military-industrial complex. He traces the interplay of technology and politics that served the conservative space agenda and that ultimately triumphed in a realization of the vision of space commercialization and militarization resting on a foundation of inexpensive, reliable space transport.