Book description
On February 1, 1978, the first group of space shuttle astronauts,
twenty-nine men and six women, were introduced to the world. Among them
would be history makers, including the first American woman and the
first African American in space. This assembly of astronauts would carry
NASA through the most tumultuous years of the space shuttle program.
Four would die on
Challenger.
USAF Colonel Mike Mullane was a member of this astronaut class, and
Riding Rockets is his story -- told with a candor never
before seen in an astronaut's memoir. Mullane strips the heroic veneer
from the astronaut corps and paints them as they are -- human. His
tales of arrested development among military flyboys working with
feminist pioneers and post-doc scientists are sometimes bawdy, often
hilarious, and always entertaining.
Mullane vividly portrays every aspect of the astronaut experience --
from telling a female technician which urine-collection condom size is
a fit; to walking along a Florida beach in a last, tearful goodbye
with a spouse; to a wild, intoxicating, terrifying ride into space; to
hearing "Taps" played over a friend's grave. Mullane is
brutally honest in his criticism of a NASA leadership whose bungling
would precipitate the Challenger disaster.
Riding Rockets is a story of life in all its fateful
uncertainty, of the impact of a family tragedy on a nine-year-old boy,
of the revelatory effect of a machine called Sputnik, and of the
life-steering powers of lust, love, and marriage. It is a story of the
human experience that will resonate long after the call of "Wheel
stop."
"If you want a peek behind the NASA kimono, this
is it! It may be more than you wanted to know about today's
all-American boys laying it all on the line to fly the space shuttle.
Mike's story is honest...brutally honest. You haven't read it before,
and you are not likely to see it in the future."
-- Walter Cunningham, Apollo 7 astronaut and author of The
All-American Boys
Upon his graduation from West Point in 1967, Mike
Mullane was commissioned in the USAF. He flew 134 combat missions
in Vietnam. Selected in the first group of space shuttle astronauts,
he completed three space missions. He lives in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, with his wife, Donna, and enjoys the challenge of Colorado's
fourteen-thousand-foot peaks -- six climbed, forty-seven to go. He is
also an acclaimed motivational speaker.
For more information visit www. MikeMullane. com.
