Pat Duggins
Auteur de Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program
A propos de l'auteur
Pat Duggins is senior news analyst at National Public Radio station WMFE-FM in Orlando. He has covered more than ninety shuttle missions, beginning with the Challenger disaster in 1986. His documentary on the first anniversary of the Columbia accident earned WMFE a prestigious First Place National afficher plus Headliner Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Assciation. afficher moins
Œuvres de Pat Duggins
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Duggins, Pat
- Sexe
- female
Membres
Critiques
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 2
- Membres
- 53
- Popularité
- #303,173
- Évaluation
- 3.4
- Critiques
- 1
- ISBN
- 4
Duggins' narrative has two great strengths: His ability to artfully summarize a complex story, and the fact that -- for much of the last two decades of shuttle operations -- he was there. The former becomes apparent when he's tracing the shuttle's origins: a story in which he shows how engineering, politics, and public relations created lofty expectations and vehicle that couldn't possibly fulfill them. For those readers who don't know the story it will be a revelation. The latter comes front and center when Duggins narrates the shuttle's role in constructing the International Space Station a project that, he persuasively argues, belatedly gave the shuttle a real purpose for the first time. It is even more apparent when Duggins describes the Columbia disaster. His low-key memories -- the wait beside a Florida runway, the growing worry as time passed, the text message that confirmed the worst -- are surprisingly gripping. The sentence "everyone's cell phones started going off" has never been so chilling.
The only significant flaw in this book is one largely beyond the author's control. Published in 2009, it is framed by chapters about Project Constellation, proposed during the George W. Bush administration as a follow-on to the shuttle and a stepping stone to the exploration of the Moon and, ultimately, Mars. The cancellation of Constellation in early 2010 leaves the book feeling instantly, profoundly dated. Like a book on American foreign policy published just before 9/11, the framing chapters of Final Countdown peer thoughtfully into a future that will never come to pass. The book as a whole, however, is valuable and likely to remain so. There is, simply, nothing else like it. For readers who unfamiliar with the shuttle, who want to know what it was all about, there is no better place to start.… (plus d'informations)