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SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Inspiring and informative
I love this book. It inspires and informs beyond the SpaceShipOne to cover the people and their passions. Their dreams and aspirations, and how it all ties together in a grand tapestry of our collective aspirations to soar into the sky and beyond.
There are plenty of technical details that show the challenges faced and the ingenuity in overcoming them. Much is laid out in gorgeous photos and well written explanations.
If you've not seen it already, I highly recommend also getting the Discovery Channel documentary "Black Sky". Really the two mediums of print and video complement well. For some it might work best to see that first and then the book for a slower, more detailed look. That's how it worked for me though not intentionally. The video came out first.
There is only one thing I would add to this book, a photo of the crowd in attendance for the first flight to space. I was there with my oldest friend, having driven for 5 hours in the middle of the night to see such an historic event and join the thousands of others in a collective two thumbs up to the folks who made it happen. It was not an orchestrated event, there was no fare and no concessions. Just a community of wellwishers and dreamers hopping to also soar into that black sky, and see the curved earth below. To float free if only for a few minutes. As Burt himself said, it's a very good beginning. Here's hoping the trajectory is straight and high.
Rating: - THE book on SS1
Dan Linehan's book Spaceshipone: An Illustrated History represents one of the best historical descriptions of the entire SS1 project written to date. Have been involved in the development of SS1, I can attest to its accuracy, and to Linehan's painstaking efforts and meticulous work to get the story, facts, and documentation correct. As an example, there is an photograph of the interior the SS1 cockpit, with all major controls and instrumentation annotated on the image. This is the kind of detail you will find nowhere else. I predict that this book will become the seminal reference on the SS1 program. I don't know how many copies were made in this first printing, but I'm glad that I've got a first edition.
Rating: - Five Star Rocket Ride
On the first line of the acknowledgments page, author Dan Lineham apologizes to "any of my former English teachers who will have heart failure upon hearing that I actually wrote a book." I'm no doctor, but I have read a lot of space and aviation books, and I can say with certainty that all his former teachers are in no medical danger. This is a fantastic book. Really first rate. Glossy pictures throughout supporting excellent in-depth writing that has inside information with plenty of background history. And a foreword by the late Arthur C. Clarke who accurately says this book is "the inside story of how citizens reclaimed space."
It is so exciting to be reading about modern advances in space (by private rebels!), rather than re-hashed history from 40 and 50 years ago. I was worried that the book would be a few press pictures slapped together with a few superficial words covering just a couple of flights; but this is loads of awesome photographs with detailed and balanced writing coming from unique insider access. There is history and breadth with personal commentary from key players. There is detail with logs of all the flights and a full transcript of the Ansari X Prize-winning spaceflight. Overall a real quality production about a real exciting chapter in human history.
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