Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts Mike Mullane completed three missions & logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery & Atlantis shuttles It was a dream come true As a boy Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction but the launch of Sputnik changed all that Space flight became a possible dream & Mike Mullane set out to make it come true In this absorbing memoir Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts
- a class that included Vietnam War veterans feminists & propeller-headed scientists With unprecedented candour Mullane describes the chilling fear & unparalleled joy of space flight As his career centred around the Challenger disaster Mullane also recounts the heartache of burying his friends & colleagues & he pulls no punches as he reveals the ins & outs of NASA frank in his criticisms of the agency A blast from start to finish Riding Rockets is a straight-from-the-gut account of what it means to be an astronaut just in time for this latest generation of stargazers