Space Shuttle 1-5 NASA Mission Reports

The Space Shuttle is one of the great triumphs of modern technology... 122 feet long, capable of carrying 65,000 lbs of cargo and weighing in at 90 tons, the Space Shuttle Orbiter stands alone as the world's only aircraft capable of flying into space and returning at speeds exceeding 18,000 miles per hour.

On April 12, 1981, two astronauts climbed aboard the fully fueled and integrated Space Transportation System. Twenty years before on the same day, a Russian missile had propelled 10,395 lbs and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space using 1.1 million pounds of thrust. Gagarin flew 25,000 miles in 108 minutes. On this day, 180,000 pounds would ride atop 7.7 million pounds of thrust. However, this crew would be landing on a runway after travelling over a million miles in a little over 54 hours.

This book covers the Space Shuttle through the test flight stage and on to its first operational flight. Comprising rare NASA documents never before released to the public, the reader is taken inside this remarkable machine in the words of some of the men who flew it.

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