To Slip The Surly Bonds

Book excerpt: To Slip The Surly Bonds—NASA, The Shuttle Disasters and the Demise of the U.S. Manned Spaceflight Program: To Slip the Surly Bonds—enters into the world of NASA and tells the story of not just why the shuttle disasters happened, but exposes NASA’s inner workings and what actually led up to the two most horrifying space accidents known. It explores the new CEV and explains the need for the United States to pay more attention to space. NASA’s budget had been gutted many times by various Presidential administrations and Congress, following the halcyon days of Apollo and the Moon. NASA was short on money and mission profile after we landed on the moon. The Space Shuttle was truly a successful program and the ISS gave the shuttle an excuse for being. Congress was also having a field day with budget cuts, not to mention devastating the programs with pork barrel projects that were hooked into the NASA budget. NASA too, had been its own worst enemy due to its static, bureaucratic, way of doing its internal business. China, and Japan, and India are forging their way to the stars while NASA sits on a lonely launch pad, waiting for the next crumb to fall from the Congressional table. The U. S. Commercial Aerospace sector has had some brilliant successes with reaching the space station with robotic cargo flights, but there is nothing that is now man-rated for travel to the ISS or anywhere else. The new CEV or Crew Exploration Vehicle is in the process of testing, but the money is again short. NASA must continue to struggle for its needs while other nations reach higher. To Slip the Surly Bonds explores the intricacies of how and why NASA was created, the Manned Spaceflight program, how the shuttle disasters happened and why the United States’ position in the space frontier is in jeopardy.