Reviews for The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space

The average rating for The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-14 00:00:00 Todd Mills My wife has this wonderful ability to buy me obscure-ish history books that nobody has really heard of, but are absolutely a joy to read. A few years back it was Climb to Conquer, about the 10th Mountain Division ' the ski troops ' that served in WWII. Superb book. This year for my birthday she somehow snagged a used copy of The Pre-Astronauts that . . . wait for it . . . was signed by Joe Kittinger, the most famed balloonist of them all! This fact wasn't included in the description of the book, and even though the signing is made out to Dennis, it's amazing nonetheless. (It's also signed by Eli Beeding, who's decidedly less famous.) Before humans went to space, we went to the stratosphere. And in balloons no less. It's wild really ' these gas-filled teardrops ascending up to 70,000 . . . 80,000 . . . 100,000(!) feet up in a tiny gondola. And then, for a variety of scientific and not-so-scientific reasons, sometimes those courageous aviators jumped out. Joe Kittinger was the most famous of the jumpers, and until Felix's 2012 jump, held the record for highest skydive when he jumped from 102,000 feet up ' on the very edge of space. These balloonists were the first to witness the curvature of the earth. The first to describe the surreal beauty of the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The first to test new types of parachutes and other technologies which made these epic feats possible in the first place. The characters in The Pre-Astronauts lack the name recognition of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and John Glenn, and yet were some of the bravest men to ever take to the skies. This was such a wonderful book, particularly for a minor aviation nerd like me. This year, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it's especially appropriate. John Paul Stapp, David Simons, Joe Kittinger ' these heroes set the stage and in many regards made possible the world-changing feats of those Space Age heroes. I've already ordered another of Craig's books: Magnificent Failure.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-04-14 00:00:00 John Mcvicar An amazing retelling of a little-known chapter in America's space program.