Category: Nonfiction
Reviewed by: Douglas G. Adler
Title: Space Ace: A Combat Pilot’s Journey from Vietnam to Beyond Earth
Author: Robert “Hoot” Gibson
Format: Hardcover/Kindle
Pages: 288
Publisher: BookPress Publishing
Date: March, 2026
Retail price: $29.95/$9.95
ISBN: 978-1960259455
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Few astronauts of the Space Shuttle era saw more and did more than Robert “Hoot” Gibson. Gibson served as Pilot on his first spaceflight (STS-41B) and as Commander of four subsequent shuttle flights (STS-61-C, STS-27, STS-47, and STS-71), which included (among other highlights) the first shuttle docking with the Russian space station Mir. Gibson’s astronaut career came after a long stint as a US Naval Aviator, having flown F-4 Phantoms off of the aircraft carriers USS Coral Sea and USS Enterprise in southeast Asia. Gibson then transitioned to the then-new F-14 Tomcat before applying to NASA for astronaut candidacy. Oh, and along the way he married another NASA astronaut, Rhea Seddon, after his first marriage ended in divorce, and served as Chief of the Astronaut Office as well. While on the surface this all sounds like thrilling stuff, Space Ace is strangely uninspiring to read, and, dare I say, dull.
There have been almost as many astronaut biographies and autobiographies as there are astronauts, and if a star voyager is going to put the metaphorical pen to paper in 2026, they need to bring something new and exciting to the table (especially if they are going to select a Heinlein-Esque title such as “Space Ace!”). The very best astronaut autobiographies, notably Michael Collins’ Carrying the Fire and Al Worden’s Falling to Earth, treat the reader as a confidant, sharing the emotional highs and lows of working towards spaceflight, training, the flight itself, and the readjustment to life after the mission is done. Collins brought a previously unheard-of level of wit and, at times, even snark to his writing. Worden (who had a very rough time after his Apollo 15 lunar flight due to the famous “postal covers” scandal) pulled back the curtain on some of the darkest aspects of NASA, the astronauts, and the politics of the astronaut office.
Gibson does, essentially, little to none of that. The entire book is written in a very dry, workmanlike, matter-of-fact tone. It often feels like a very long Wikipedia entry. Many of the photos are bland images of the shuttles or NASA publicity photos of Gibson posing stiffly. His five spaceflights themselves are discussed in a cool manner and do not convey much drama. He gets an assignment, he trains, he carries it out. Some of this may simply be due to the fact that shuttle missions are just not as inherently exciting as those of the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo eras, although more than a few Shuttle astronauts have managed to write very compelling memoirs (see Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut by Mike Mullane for one such work). Some of this may also be due to the fact that Gibson simply does not want to be one to “tell tales out of school” and give the reader much of an insider’s view on life at NASA, or in space, during the Shuttle Era. In one telling passage, Gibson looks down his nose at an astronaut colleague who was bitter about not being selected for a spaceflight. While this may, in fact, be how Gibson felt about the individual, such feelings are completely normal and not unexpected among a group of hyper-competitive astronauts jockeying for position at NASA and trying to get a coveted seat aboard a shuttle mission. Gibson could have used this opportunity to explore the competition between astronauts for assignments on multiple levels, but there is no real analysis to be found here. I would imagine that most astronauts had a mix of feelings when others were chosen for a spaceflight and they were not, and that would have been interesting for Gibson to examine.
Perhaps Gibson simply did not want to say anything negative about NASA. In this sense, I was reminded of John Glenn’s autobiography, John Glenn: A Memoir. Like Gibson, Glenn was a fighter pilot-turned-astronaut who certainly had a lot of exciting experiences to share with the reader (flying an F-86 in Mig Alley during the Korean war, getting picked for Project Mercury, piloting Friendship 7 as the first American to orbit the Earth, etc.) but his book was so listless and anodyne that it rustled barely a feather and has been largely forgotten.
I do not mean to disparage Mr. Gibson, and his service to our nation is beyond measure. I simply wish he had written his autobiography with the same zeal and verve that he clearly had for flying and for spaceflight. Space Ace is, in the end, mostly a missed opportunity.
© 2026 Douglas G. Adler
