Sputnik -- The Early Days -- The Astronauts -- First in Space -- John Glenn -- On Orbit -- The Worst of Times -- Gemini -- "I've got a fire in the cockpit!" -- A Christmas Moon -- The Secret Side of Space -- Highway to the Moon -- The Landing -- Moon Walk -- The Successful Failure -- On the Moon -- After the Moon -- A Handshake in Space -- Down Home with Jimmy Carter -- The Space Shuttle Era -- Challenger:A Disaster -- What Happened? -- An Eternity of Descent -- Sudden Death -- How High Is Up? -- As the Century Turned -- Columbia: Had They Only Looked -- That's a Wrap!
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NBC TV reporter Barbree will be a familiar figure to many readers for his frequent appearances on the Today show and his decadeslong coverage of the space program. As a cub radio announcer in Georgia in the late 1950s, Barbree (coauthor of Moon Shot) realized the next big story was taking place on the rocket launch pad in Florida. He began a string of scoops early on when, hiding in a men's room stall, he heard that a satellite launch would carry the first broadcast from space, a recorded message from President Eisenhower. Barbree's inside access allows him to give pungent details: in 1961, [t]he astronauts' crew quarters ... were smelly, military, uncomfortable and too damn close to the chimpanzees' colony (a chimp having preceded man into space). While recounting the exploits of the early cowboy astronauts, he gives equal time to the tragedies of Apollo 1 and Challenger (he broke the story on the cause of the shuttle's disaster) and the near-tragedy of Apollo 13.