Disaster strikes! The most dangerous space missions of all time

Review by Booklist Review

It's one thing when disaster strikes. It's quite another when disasters involve astronauts and cosmonauts during their missions. The events reported here begin with Gus Grissom almost drowning when his Liberty Bell 7 space capsule opened too soon after splashdown in 1961. Other dramatic incidents include the Soyuz 1 landing malfunction, which took the life of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in 1967; the 1986 explosion of the Challenger space shuttle shortly after takeoff; and the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, which failed to achieve its original purpose but succeeded in bringing the astronauts home. Telling 12 real-life stories of dangerous and sometimes disastrous space missions, this volume is based on episodes of Countdown, a podcast that Kluger wrote and narrated for Time magazine, where he works as a senior editor specializing in science. Illustrated with 12 photos (not seen), the straightforward text highlights events while giving a sense of the personalities of those involved. This well-researched book offers a series of compelling, real-life stories for kids intrigued by the history, the dangers, and the thrill of space exploration.--Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-8-From the near-drowning of Gus Grissom and the loss of Liberty Bell 7's Mercury capsule on splashdown in 1961, to the emergency termination of a spacewalk for Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano on the International Space Station in 2013, human space travel has always been a risky, sometimes deadly endeavor. Kluger outlines 12 such disasters, including the tragic cockpit fire that killed three Apollo 1 astronauts in 1967, the now infamous Apollo 13 mission, and several less well-remembered incidents. The chapters offer varying points of view: for example, the chapter about the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion takes the perspective of schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe's students in New Hampshire and her family watching in horror from the viewing stand at Cape Canaveral. This makes the text versatile, efficiently functioning as a collection of short reads or a balanced, book-length narrative. Along the way, Kluger intertwines his narrative with fascinating details from history, in addition to the physics and health science of space travel. The author does not provide specific source notes or a bibliography, but in a closing author's note, he credits the online Johnson Space Center History Office, a source of much of the recorded dialogue between astronauts and ground control, as well as the New York Times' archive and a number of memoirs by astronauts. VERDICT Always fascinating, at times unsettling, and highly recommended for elementary and middle school collections.-Bob Hassett, Luther Jackson Middle School, Falls Church, VA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

In this collection of stories about dangerous, sometimes deadly, events in the history of space exploration, Kluger uses actual dialogue and dramatic pacing to present real-time accounts of tragedies and near-misses from the American and Soviet space programs. The professionalism and bravery of astronauts and ground personnel from the Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, space shuttle, and space station missions are emphasized. Photos not seen. Glos., ind. (c) Copyright 2021. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Twelve harrowing episodes in the history of space travel.Beginning with the hatch that prematurely blew off Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 capsule, Kluger (To the Moon!, 2018) offers a truly terrifying tally of catastrophes or near catastrophesbasing each incident on authoritative sources and relating each with melodramatic flair: "It can be oddly peaceful inside a dying spacecraft." To requisite accounts of the Apollo 1 fire, the Apollo 13 thriller, and the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, he adds the less-well-known tragedies of the Soyuz 1 crash and the asphyxiation of the three cosmonauts of Soyuz 11 as well as such near misses as Gene Cernan's first extravehicular venture ("The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Space Walk"), the lightning bolt that struck Apollo 12 as it was taking off, and the space-suited Italian astronaut who (ironically) narrowly escaped drowning outside the ISS when his helmet filled with water. The author analyzes the causes of each explosion or snafu, and his view of early spacecraft as exciting but chancy death traps riddled with flawed, often hastily designed technology will be an eye-opener for readers schooled on blander space-program narratives. Sharp black-and-white photos at the chapter heads depict the actual disasters or earlier views of the affected spacecraft or astronauts (where faces are discernible, all present white).A thrill ride punctuated with spectacular failuresbut also spectacular successes. (sources, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 11-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Introduction Traveling in space might be the most thrilling thing a human being can do--unless, of course, it turns out to be the most horrifying. Just as often, it can wind up being both. There has never been any form of exploration or travel that is entirely safe. Danger and even death lurk in the crack-up of a car, in the crash of an airplane, in the slow-motion disaster of a sinking ship. Climb a mountain, paddle along a river, merely hike a trail in an unfamiliar wilderness and you expose yourself to at least some kind of risk. Space is different, though, because space is a place we were not meant to be. Even when you're miles above the ground in a million-pound airplane hurtling along at 500 miles per hour, you're still within the skin of the atmosphere, still contained by the bio-dome of the world, where there is air and water and warmth and life. In space, all that's missing. It's a place of hard vacuum, of killing cold, of blistering radiation. It's a place that can't be reached at all without giant machines that carry millions of pounds of explosive fuel and are able to reach speeds in the tens of thousands of miles per hour. That's not easy. That's not safe. And that can cost lives. Since 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, became the first human being in space, orbiting the Earth in his Vostok 1 spacecraft, more than 500 people have followed him aloft on more than 300 different missions. Nine of those missions flew to the moon, carrying twenty-four different Americans, twelve of whom walked on the lunar surface. Every single one of those astronauts or cosmonauts--or taikonauts, too, now that China has begun its own human space program--has gone aloft knowing the risks involved. But all of them have gone aloft mindful of the singular splendor of the journey, too. It's not just the weightlessness--the sudden ability to fly, after a lifetime spent as an earthbound creature--though that's a lot of fun. And it's not just the view--the sight of the Earth far below and the vast vault of space above, the stars brilliant, white and strangely untwinkling, since there is no intervening atmosphere to distort the view. It's the sense of doing something improbable, of touching something untouchable, of being a pioneer. We think nothing of spending twelve hours in an airplane traveling 7,000 miles between New York and Beijing, but we recall in admiration and wonder the twelve-second, 120-foot powered flight that Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved on December 17, 1903, because Orville and Wilbur Wright went first. One day we may all get to take vacation trips to the moon, but they will mean nothing compared to the mere eighty-eight minutes Gagarin spent aloft on his single orbit of the Earth. It's that sense of going first, of walking point for the whole human species, that drives the men and women who take the risk of flying in space. I once asked Pete Conrad, the com-mander of Apollo 12 and the third person to walk on the moon, if he was at least a little anxious the entire time he was on the lunar surface, aware that if the engine of his lunar module didn't fire as it was supposed to and get him back into space, he'd be marooned forever. "Nah," he answered. "I was a happy guy on the moon." I once similarly asked Jim Lovell, who went to space four times, including two trips to the moon, on Apollo 8 and Apollo 13, if on the last night he was home before all of those trips, he didn't look around his living room and think, Wow, if something goes wrong, I'll never see this house again. His answer: "No. If you thought that way, you wouldn't go." So the men and women who go to space don't think that way--or if they do, they learn ways to shake off those thoughts and to press on with their mission. That, of course, doesn't mean things won't go wrong. That doesn't mean the explorers won't face danger. And that doesn't mean that the risk doesn't exist that they will indeed never see their homes again. There have been many harrowing moments in the long history of human space flight, especially in the earliest years, when the United States and the Soviet Union--the former Russian empire--were competing to be the first nation to put a human being on the moon. The two countries were the world's greatest superpowers and were also bitter rivals. Both were also in possession of thousands of fearsome nuclear weapons, which made the stakes of their rivalry potentially deadly. The race to the moon was a peaceful way for that com-petition to play out, but it was still a dangerous game to play. The rushing sometimes made both countries reckless--cutting corners, breaking rules that good engineers and flight planners normally wouldn't break--and they sometimes paid a terrible price for that. Even when the space race was won, however, even in the modern era, when traveling to Earth orbit has come to seem routine, the dangers remain. Space doesn't change just because we think we're familiar with it, that we've gotten good at visiting it. And the dangers that lurk there don't change, either. There is no way of saying with certainty what the scariest, most dangerous, most heart-stopping missions have been out of the 300-plus that have been flown in the past six decades. But the dozen missions whose stories are told in these chapters are awfully good candidates. There will be many more human space flights to come--including ones that may take us back to the moon and eventually to Mars. And there may be other emergencies and tragedies to rival these twelve. Danger is an unavoidable part of exploration. But so is adventure and so is excitement and so is the joy of discovery. It's the reason that, even when disaster strikes, we'll keep on exploring all the same. Excerpted from Disaster Strikes!: The Most Dangerous Space Missions of All Time by Jeffrey Kluger All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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