 | Come Fly with Us: NASA''s Payload Specialist Program Subjects: United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Payload Specialist Program -- History; Payloads (Aerospace engineering) -- United States -- History; In this wellresearched, exhaustive history of a unique NASA program, geologist Melvin and jet pilot Youskauskas (Footprints in the Dust) show how the agency allowed "a new breed of space traveler" aboard select space shuttle flights, beginning in 1983. Known as payload specialists, these people did not receive full astronaut training, but did have to accomplish a specific mission, or "payload," to fly. The authors acknowledge the program was sometimes controversial, particularly after the fifth slot went to Jake Garn, a Utah senator "with no obvious reason to be on board." Nonetheless, the authors praise the program on the whole, highlighting the fresh perspectives it provided to shuttle crews-most charmingly, when scientist Rodolfo Neri Vela, declaring that the first Mexican to go into space could not "leave Earth without his tortillas," inadvertently revealed the easytohandle, largely crumbfree bread as an ideal spaceflight provision, far preferable to "NASA's previous attempts to package sandwichmaking ingredients." However, the program was halted for several years after payload specialists Greg Jarvis and Sharon Christa McAuliffe died in the 1986 Challenger disaster, and ended permanently after payload specialist Ilan Ramon died in the 2013 Columbia disaster. Rigidly chronological, the narrative lacks a unifying chaptertochapter arc, but spacetravel fans will delight in myriad details and copious interviews. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Melvin Croft has more than forty years of experience as a geologist and is a longtime supporter of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. John Youskauskas is a professional pilot with more than thirty years of aviation experience in flight operations, aviation safety, and maintenance. Both authors contributed to Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 (Nebraska, 2010). Don Thomas is a former NASA mission specialist and the author of Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission . |
