Two years ago I decided to celebrate the anniversary of the lunar landing on July 20, 1969, with a week devoted to astronaut memoirs and space race histories. I enjoyed that so much I repeated it, and now here I am doing it again. Space Camp is now a RF institution! We’re going to start off with a history of space endeavor prior to Gagarin, then visit the biographies of three American astronauts — including the singular John Young, who is unique in flying in the Apollo, Skylab, and Shuttle periods of NASA — and possibly visit some lunar fiction. Space Camp is named after the kids’ camp/adventure/education program hosted by the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and focuses on human spaceflight.

PREVIOUS SPACE CAMP READS

Rise of the Rocket Girls, Nathalia Holt (Civilian Support – Mercury onwards)
Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and their Battle for Female Space Flight, Amy Shira Teitel
We Could Not Fail: The First African-Americans in the Space Program, Richard Paul and Steven Moss (Civilian/Support – Mercury onwards)
Deke! US Manned Space Flight from Mercury to the Shuttle, Deke Slayton (Mercury-Apollo and onwards)
Soviets in Space: The People of the USSR and the Race to the Moon, Colin Turbett (Sputnik forward)
Two Sides of the Moon, Alexei Leonov and David Scott (Mercury/Sputnik – forward)
Men from Earth, Buzz Aldrin and Malcolm McConnell. (Mercury through to the early Shuttle years.)
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, Andrew Chaikin. THE Apollo history. (Gemini-Apollo)
Moon Shot: The Inside Story, Alan Shephard and Deke Slayton (Mercury – Apollo)
Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell (Apollo)
Into the Black: The Extraordinary First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Rowland White (Shuttle)
Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars, Eileen Collins (Shuttle-ISS)
The Ordinary Spaceman, Clayton Anderson (Shuttle-ISS years)
Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, Tom Jones. (Shuttle-ISS years)
Handprints on Hubble, Dr. Kathryn Sullivan (Shuttle)
The Burning Blue: the Untold Story of Christine McAuliffe and the Challenger Disaster, Kevin Cook (Shuttle)
Riding Rockets, Mike Mullane (Shuttle-ISS)
Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey, Mike Massimino (ISS Years)
Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Shuttle and her Crew, Michael Leinbach & Johnathan Ward (Shuttle-ISS)
Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, Scott Kelly (ISS)
Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet, Nicola Stott (ISS)