star bound

Category: Nonfiction
Reviewed by: Casey Suire
Title: Star Bound: A Beginner’s Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard’s Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between
Author: Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III
Format: Hardcover/Kindle
Pages: 296
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Date: January 2025
Retail price: $34.95/$32.62
ISBN: 978-1496241399
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Star Bound is the latest title released by the University of Nebraska’s Outward Odyssey: A People’s History of Spaceflight series. The book attempts to cover the entire U.S. space program in slightly under 300 pages. Given that there is already an over-saturation of general space history books, what sets this one apart from the rest? It is even mentioned that readers “could find all of the information contained in this book in other sources.” Should anyone bother to read Star Bound?

The answer is yes. This isn’t your usual run-of-the-mill account of all things space. Star Bound is largely worthwhile thanks to the two authors, Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III. Emily founded the Space Hipsters Facebook group and serves as manager for public engagement and social media for the SPACE 3.0 Foundation. In addition, Emily is involved with the National Space Society by contributing This Space Available blog posts and also writing for Ad Astra magazine. Bruce McCandless III previously authored the book Wonders All Around, which was about his famous astronaut father. You can’t go wrong with these two space writers. They know what they’re doing.

Star Bound is unique among space books in both writing style and how history is explained. While both authors are very passionate about space, the writing is sometimes humorous and quirky. This makes their book a fun and light read instead of a dry and scholarly one. The book, after all, is meant as a beginner’s guide to spaceflight.

Emily and Bruce frequently use pop culture references to comic effect in the book. For example, when describing the Karman line, it’s noted that “sixty-two miles is not that far. If your car could travel straight upward, you could drive to space in an hour—or roughly seventeen Taylor Swift songs.” The Mercury 7 are assigned superhero alter egos. For example, John Glenn, very fittingly, is Captain America. Wally Schirra is Spiderman, and Gus Grissom is Batman. Neil Armstrong was so calm flying Eagle to the lunar surface that he “might as well have been shopping for a gently used Chevy Impala.” Later, Neil and Buzz went on a moonwalk that was “a little longer than the John Wayne movie True Grit.”

Humorous writing or not, Star Bound still manages to cover a lot of history. Emily and Bruce’s story is generally told in chronological order. Rocket pioneers, like the legendary Robert Goddard, are the early subjects. Goddard was badly ridiculed and underappreciated during his lifetime. Before the launch of Apollo 11, the New York Times apologized for dismissing his groundbreaking ideas decades earlier. While not brought up in the book, it’s interesting to note that the amount of time between Goddard’s first liquid-propellant rocket in 1926 and the 1969 Moon landing is only 43 years. This is exactly the same time period between the first space shuttle mission and now. Think about that one for a moment. Compare and contrast the two eras.

Anyway, the book continues onward to the present. Even more early pioneers are included. What happened to Frank Malina and Hsue-Shen Tsien of the Jet Propulsion Lab’s (JPL) Suicide Squad? Later on, human spaceflight becomes a reality. The space shuttle program is split into three distinct acts. Naturally, Emily and Bruce give each shuttle period a humorous but truthful name: the We Can Do Anything Years, the We Just Work Here era, and the Ivory Albatross period. There are also missed opportunities. Why didn’t Delta Clipper or X-33 Venture Star come to fruition?

Of course, there’s a lot of astronauts. And robots too. What about the golden records from the Voyager missions? Emily and Bruce want you to know that “unlike Rolling Stones albums, each record cover contains a small amount of uranium-238.” Furthermore, there is private spaceflight. In 1982, Conestoga 1 became the first privately funded rocket launched into space. SpaceX’s first successful launch wasn’t until a quarter-century later. If all this wasn’t enough, there are stories that are probably even lesser known. Even seasoned space buffs will likely learn something new. Did you know that a twenty-pound piece of Sputnik 4 landed in Wisconsin? Or that Telstar-1 inspired a No. 1 song? Additionally, Congress thought about having the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission control the space program. In hindsight, the correct choice was made.

The authors, at various points in Star Bound, also give their opinions about various space-related issues. They express disappointment that NASA, with a history of naming programs and rockets after gods, never had a mission named Zeus. It’s a much catchier name than the Space Launch System. Maybe the right individual at NASA will read this book and change things. Curiously, Emily and Bruce believe the importance of the Cold War Space Race is somewhat exaggerated. The toppling of the Berlin Wall was more the result of “the Beatles than with Frank Borman.” That’s an interesting take. The authors also talk about the “two brands of humbuggery” in space exploration: “unbridled optimism” or “it’ll never happen-ism.” The future, they argue, will most likely be somewhere in the middle.

In any case, the self-proclaimed space hipster and son of the famous free-flying spacewalker put their talents to great use in Star Bound. The writing is sometimes tongue-in-cheek, but the respect and love for space history is obvious from start to finish. While meant as a beginner’s guide, the book manages to be relevant for anyone curious about space. Whether you read zero space books or dozens, you will be entertained.

© 2024 Casey Suire

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