To a Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers

Air Power History, Summer, 2009 by Rick W. Sturdevant

To a Distant Day: The Rocket Pioneers. By Chris Gainor. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxvi, 236. $29.95 ISBN: 0-8032-2209-0

The University of Nebraska Press has added a third title to its "Outward Odyssey--A People's History of Spaceflight" series. To a Distant Day joins the two volumes--Into That Silent Sea and In the Shadow of the Moon--by Francis French and Colin Burgess that appeared in 2007. Gainor's book takes readers back to a time before the American and Soviet human spaceflight programs of the 1960s on which French and Burgess focused. This was a time when theoreticians, scientists, and engineers strove to transform visionary concepts of space travel into realistic means of sending astronauts and cosmonauts into orbit and bringing them back safely to Earth. In fact, some historians might regard the book's subtitle--The Rocket Pioneers--as descriptively too limited, because those early rocketeers were really "the spaceflight pioneers."

Anyone interested in the history of rocketry can find a multitude of books and articles on the subject, enough to satiate even the most ravenous intellect. Gainor's synthesis, however, presents the basic story in an engaging, easy-to-read style. From the classic triumvirate of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, and Robert Goddard, to the equally familiar pair of Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun, he broadens the canvas to include such individuals as Yuri Kondratyuk, Friedrich Tsander, David Lasser, Philip Cleator, Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Frank Malina, and Tsien Hsueshen. Seasoned space historians easily can identify missing names but, as a short survey aimed toward a general, relatively uninformed audience, the book is remarkably thorough. Beyond the development of rocket technology, Gainor's narrative covers the origin and early evolution of American and Soviet satellite programs, space medicine, and piloted spacecraft designs.

Given the publisher's probable restrictions on length and Galnor's intentional reliance on secondary sources, readers should expect to find occasional omissions or oversights. He mentions Goddard's team working on jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) units for the U.S. Navy during World War II, for example, but fails to note that an all-Navy team led by Robert Truax accomplished equally important breakthroughs on JATO technology during the same period. Similarly, he touts Hubertus Strnghold's role in space medicine without naming USAF Maj. Gen. Harry G. Armstrong, for whom Strnghold worked after 1945, and who founded the world's first Department of Space Medicine. The Corona reconnaissance satellite program receives attention without any reference to the Galactic and Radiation Background (GRAB) satellite, launched two months before the first successful Corona satellite to provide the first signals intelligence from space. Alluding to people and events such as these in a sentence or two would not have added unduly to the length of Gainor's book.

He also might have dedicated a few more lines to fleshing out his list of sources, because readers seeking additional information on specific pioneers or topics likely will turn to it for guidance. Although published in 1960, Shirley Thomas's eight-volume biographical study Men of Space has stood the test of time and should have been on the list. Gainor discusses the Echo 1 satellite in his narrative, but he fails to cite Donald Elder's superb history titled Out from Behind the Eight-Ball (1995). Similarly, he missed James Killian's Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower (1977) and Roy Houchin's US. Hypersonic Research and Development (2006) on the Dyna-Soar project. Despite his apparent unfamiliarity with, or neglect of, these and other especially pertinent titles, Gainor deserves commendation for the excellent sources he has supplied.

To a Distant Day opens new dimensions for the "Outward Odyssey" series. The man-in-space focus of its final two chapters furnishes a wonderfully smooth transition into the story French and Burgess tell in the other extant volumes, but Gainor creates the potential for even more. He points the way toward future tomes covering such topical areas as post-Apollo human spaceflight programs, earth-orbiting and interplanetary robotic spacecraft, evolution of space medicine, and development of space law. Hopefully, University of Nebraska Press will see fit to continue expanding the series in these directions.

Dr. Rick W. Sturdevant, Deputy Director of History, HQ Air Force Space Command