Reddit Reddit reviews Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury To the Shuttle

We found 3 Reddit comments about Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury To the Shuttle. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury To the Shuttle
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3 Reddit comments about Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury To the Shuttle:

u/Falcon109 · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

No problem! As for some good reading that is pretty non-technical but still really delves into the manned space programs, I would highly recommend "A Man On The Moon", by Andrew Chaikin. It is appreciated as being one of the best breakdowns of the Apollo Program, and is a great read filled with a ton of interesting information.

Also, ANY of the astronaut auto-biographies are fantastic. As for a few examples, Eugene Cernan's "The Last Man On The Moon" is a great and candid read in my opinion, as is Neil Armstrong's "First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong". Chris Hadfield's "An Astronauts Guide To Life On Earth" is also excellent and very candid and open as well, covering a lot of stuff about STS and ISS. "Failure Is Not An Option", written by former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, is also a great read that gets into a lot of the NASA mission management from Mercury to Apollo, and likewise with astronaut Deke Slayton's great bio titled "Deke!", since Slayton was NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations after he was grounded due to a heart issue, making him largely responsible for crew assignments at NASA during Gemini and Apollo.

Another good one is "This New Ocean" by William Burrows. It covers the history of humankind's fascination with spaceflight and rocketry, from the ancient myths of Daedalus and Icarus and the early chinese experiments with fireworks right up to the STS shuttle and ISS, and goes into not just mission specifics, but the historical geo-politics and geo-military wranglings that really defined the first "Space Race" with the Soviets.

Actually, here is a link to a list of a bunch of good books written by or about astronauts and the space programs, and just about every book on this list I would recommend.

Also, if you have not yet seen it, I STRONGLY recommend that you check out the fantastic HBO mini-series "From The Earth To The Moon". Produced and directed by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard with a star-studded cast, this 12-episode critically acclaimed mini-series is extremely accurate historically, and covers the entirety of the Apollo Program, from before the Apollo 1 fire to Apollo 17's final steps on the lunar surface. It is basically like Tom Hanks and Ron Howard's other fantastic mini-series "Band of Brothers", but rather than covering WWII, it focuses on Apollo and the race to the Moon. I cannot recommend that mini-series enough, as it is brilliant produced, directed, and acted, and, above all, historically accurate.

u/datraceman · 2 pointsr/Birmingham

Both. He was an astronaut who had a heart problem so they took him off the roster and he became director of Flight Ops. He made the schedule of who and when they went to space during the Apollo missions. He later got his heart fixed and finally flew in space one time before moving on from NASA.

Fascinating book and a great read.

https://www.amazon.com/Deke-Manned-Space-Mercury-Shuttle/dp/031285918X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478015294&sr=8-1&keywords=deke+slayton