Description
The book, "New Moon Rising: The Making of America's New Space Vision and the Remaking of NASA", tells the story of the evolution of the U.S. civil space program from the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident to the release of the Presidential Commission report on Moon, Mars, and Beyond on June 2, 2004. The book covers the 16 months following the accident, during which nearly every element of NASA's leadership was placed under a political microscope. This led to the creation of President George W. Bush's entirely new space policy for the U.S.
The book is a detailed history of the evolution of the U.S. civil space program from the February 1, 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident to the release of the Presidential Commission report on Moon, Mars, and Beyond on June 2, 2004. During these extraordinary 16 months, nearly every element of NASA's leadership was placed under a political microscope, with the result that the space agency set upon a new course of reorganization, resulting with President George W. Bush's announcement of an entirely new space policy for the U.S. The book begins with a comparison of all of the previous U.S. space policies, beginning with President John F. Kennedy's selection of a manned lunar landing goal in May, 1961. Using declassified tapes and records from the Kennedy Library, his administration's internal debates over what would become the Apollo project are detailed. President Richard M. Nixon's decision to build a reusable space shuttle, and the placing of the shuttlecraft at the center of NASA's programs, are also detailed. How and why President Ronald Reagan chose a permanent space station as his major civil space goal is recounted as well, as is the failure of President Bush's father to launch a return-to-the-Moon and Mars initiative in 1989. With this as the backdrop, the book describes the last decade of space policy under President Bill Clinton, and the inside story of the leadership of NASA by administrator Daniel S. Goldin. Using previously unreported stories of the inner workings of Goldin's NASA, the book shows how the once proud space agency fell into disarray during the 1990s decade. With the election of President George W. Bush in 2000, the book takes the reader into the inner councils of the new Bush presidency in the months after the September 11, 2001 attacks as Bush himself chooses a long-time family friend to head up NASA-Sean O'Keefe. For the first time, the private conversations between Bush and his senior staff over NASA's future are told, including Bush's charge that O'Keefe transform the broken space agency. O'Keefe's internal battles within NASA to institute reforms are told, ending with an agency on the mend-on the morning of February 1, 2003 when space shuttle Columbia fell from the skies above Texas. In a virtual minute-by-minute recounting, the events of that tragic day are told from the inside of O'Keefe's inner circle for the first time. Based on extensive, on-the-record interviews with O'Keefe and his top managers and leaders, the book gives the reader the feeling of being present as the details of the space disaster unfold. In the weeks and months following the event, the reader learns of how NASA struggled to reform its failed safety program, and what the secret debates were inside the Bush administration on how to accept the recommendations of the Columbia accident board-or to fight them publicly. While NASA struggles to reform itself to continue human space exploration and repair the damaged shuttles, a quiet and largely unknown review begins at the White House as to what the nation's purpose in space should really be. Working independent from NASA for many months, the story of how a handful of young staffers, supporters of space, work in secret to devise a series of potential space policy pathways. Others, outside the space program are solicited for their views as well. As the cause of the Columbia accident becomes clear, Bush moves to forge a new framework for an expansive space vision. The book brings the reader into these deliberations as a `fly-on-the-wall', as one-by-one options for space exploration are studied-and rejected as either too expensive or too risky. As the summer of 2003 draws to a close, the policy process appears to be headed towards recommending manned lunar exploration as the new goal for the U.S. space program. But as the process draws towards a conclusion and a recommendation, Bush himself enters the picture, ordering the space vision reshaped to include other destinations in the solar system beyond the moon. Thus the moon becomes a location to craft new technol
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