Overview

It was a Space Shuttle with a mission -- to drop a weapon payload anywhere on Earth and to do so while approaching its target at hypersonic velocity -- 18,000 miles per hour. Between 1957 and 1963 the Dyna-Soar programme consumed 430 million dollars of the US taxpayer's money. However, it never flew. Cancelled less than two weeks after President Kennedy's assassination, the Dyna-Soar (or X-20) was consigned to oblivion by the stroke of a pen. Today, much of the research and technology acquired during the Dyna-Soar programme is still valid. Much of it went into the Space Shuttle and some is still being used as background for the various vehicles on the drawing boards. The story of Dyna-Soar is one of the great 'what-ifs' of American aerospace history. If it had been through to completion it might have seen service as a weapon, a shuttle, a life-boat for the space station, a tourist vehicle, or in its proposed advanced versions even a conveyance for regular trips to the moon base. For the first time this book compiles many of the critical government documents that tell the story of America's extraordinary lost opportunity. Includes DVD.

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9781896522951

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An excellent addition to the ever expanding space titles produced by Apogee... -- Spaceflight, January 2004.

Author Information

Robert Godwin is the owner and founder of Apogee Space Books. He is also the Space Curator at the Canadian Air & Space Museum. He has written or edited over 100 books including the award winning series ""The NASA Mission Reports"". Robert has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs in Canada, the USA and England as an expert on, not only music, but also space exploration. His books have been discussed on CNN, the CBC, the BBC and CBS 60 Minutes. He produced the first ever virtual reality panoramas of the Apollo lunar surface photography and the first multi-camera angle movie of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. His last book ""New Horizons"" expanded on that previous ground-breaking work.

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