Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut - Hardcover

Mullane, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743276825 ISBN 13: 9780743276825

Publisher: Scribner, 2006

Synopsis

A revealing memoir of the astronaut's career with the space shuttle program describes his childhood dreams after the launch of Sputnik, work as a Mission Specialist in the first group of shuttle astronauts, and hundreds of hours spent aboard the Discovery and Atlantis. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

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 currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Donna.

From Publishers Weekly:

With a testosterone-fueled swagger and a keen eye for particulars, Mullane takes readers into the high-intensity, high-stress world of the shuttle astronaut in this rough-hewn yet charming yarn of low-rent antics, bureaucratic insanity and transcendent beauty. Mullane opens this tale face down on a doctor's table awaiting a colorectal exam that will determine his fitness for astronaut training. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses," he writes, setting the tone for the crude and often hilarious story that follows. Chosen as a trainee in 1978, Mullane, a Vietnam vet, quickly finds himself at odds with the buttoned-up post-Apollo NASA world of scientists, technocrats and civilian astronauts he describes as "tree-huggers, dolphin friendly fish eaters, vegetarians, and subscribers to the New York Times." He holds female astronauts in special disregard, though he later grudgingly acknowledges the achievement and heroism of both the civilians and women. The book hits its stride with Mullane's space adventures: a difficult takeoff, the shift into zero gravity, his first view of the Earth from space: "To say the view was overwhelmingly beautiful would be an insult to God." (Feb. 14)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0743276825
• ISBN 13: 9780743276825
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384