First American Into Space History Paperback Book by Robert Silverberg 1961

Description: Very good condition. FIRST AMERICAN INTO SPACE Navy Commander Alan Shepard, 37, father of two girls, 13-year-old Laura and 9-year-old Juliana, had no desire to be a hero. What drove him to volunteer for the potentially dangerous task of probing the void beyond our planet? Mostly, it was the chance to serve his country in a role for which he felt well qualified, but also because he saw it as a personal challenge. No daredevil, he has a great, restless desire to do everything well, and then to do it a little better than the other fellow. As an astronaut, he could pit his strength against man and Nature with the added incentive of a thrilling ride beyond the Earth's atmosphere in a space capsule. This unusual and timely book tells the whole story of Commander Shepard and his fantastic journey into outer space. AUTHOR'S PROFILE Robert Silverberg is a native of New York City and attended Columbia University. He became interested in space travel while still in elementary school, and has watched each new development in space science with keen interest since the days of V-2. He began writing science fiction when he was in high school, and his first novel, REVOLT ON ALPHA C, was published by Thomas Y. Crowell while he was still in college. He has written some twenty science fiction novels under a variety of names, and has better than 600 published short stories and articles to his credit, many of them science fiction. In recent years he has written fiction and non-fiction in many fields.. He is married and lives in New York City. His wife is an elec- tronics engineer engaged in government scientific research. ----------- 3 ----------- FIRST AMERICAN INTO SPACE A Monarch Books Non-Fiction Special Published in May, 1961 Copyright 1961 by Monarch Books, Inc. Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC., Capital Building, Derby, Connecticut and represent the works of outstanding novelists and writers of non-fiction especially chosen for their literary merit and reading entertainment. Printed in the United States of America All Rights Reserved ----------- 3 ----------- Chapter One COMMANDER SHEPARD'S SPACE RIDE It is 10:33 A.M., Eastern Daylight Saving Time, on Friday, May 5, 1961. At Cape Canaveral, Florida, a man sits alone in a small, cramped capsule atop a 69-foot-high Redstone rocket that is about to carry him on a journey through the airless dark of space. He is Navy Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr., 37 years old, born in New Hampshire in a year when radio was a novelty, television a dream, space travel a wild fantasy. He has been sealed into the Mercury capsule atop the rocket for more than four hours, waiting as patiently as he knows how for the moment when he will at last blast off for space. Television cameras and the eyes of hundreds of onlookers focus intently on the shining spear that is the Redstone rocket standing alone on the launching pad now that the gantry crane has been rolled back. The countdown is in its final stages, ticking away with agonizing slowness, after three days of uncertainty. The rocket shot had been scheduled for the previous Tuesday, May 2, but menacing weather condi- tions then had prevented the attempt to send an American astronaut rocketing through space. Even this morning, after Commander Shepard had been sealed into his capsule to await blast-off, a flurry of black clouds appearing suddenly in the sky over the Atlantic rocket range had threatened yet another postponement. But the clouds had soon drifted away. And now the countdown is in its final moments, and an anxious world waits for the outcome. The United States is facing a challenge from its rival in the conquest of space,

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