Live from Cape Canaveral: Covering the Space Race, from Sputnik to Today » (Reprint)

Jay Barbree, seen left reporting live from the launch of Gemini 6 in December 1965, has covered the space race since Sputnik as a correspondent for NBC. The NBC space unit won an Emmy for its coverage of the first Apollo moon landing. Barbree also broke the world news exclusive on the cause of the Challenger explosion. The coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Moon Shot, he lives near Cape Canaveral.

Some fifty years ago, while a cub reporter, Jay Barbree caught space fever the night that Sputnik passed over Georgia. He moved to the then-sleepy village of Cocoa Beach, Florida, right outside Cape Canaveral, and began reporting on rockets that fizzled as often as they soared. In "Live from Cape Canaveral," Barbree—the only reporter who has covered every mission flown by astronauts—offers his unique perspective on the space program. He shares affectionate portraits of astronauts as well as some of his fellow journalists and tells some very funny behind-the-scenes stories—many involving astronaut pranks. Barbree also shows how much the space program and its press coverage have changed over time. Warm and perceptive, he reminds us just how thrilling the great moments of the space race were and why America fell in love with its heroic, sometimes larger-than-life astronauts.

The Barnes & Noble Review

We children sit in the sun-splashed classroom, squirmy and pleasantly anxious behind our steel-sided, tubular-legged desks. The date is May 15, 1963, and I am in the third grade. Today we've been promised a special treat: watching an American rocket take off from Cape Canaveral. An industrial-strength B&W television is wheeled into the classroom and the live coverage tuned in. We are told to get out paper (beige, coarse, flecked with wood pulp) and crayons (waxy colored sticks flat on one side) and begin drawing what we see. I meticulously render the stubby, waffle-cone-shaped capsule that will carry a man into space, and scrawl its name: Faith Seven. Excited voices issue from the set, and the rocket blasts off.

Preface   Tom Brokaw     xi
Sputnik     1
The Early Days     14
The Astronauts     31
First in Space     47
John Glenn     65
On Orbit     81
The Worst of Times     95
Gemini     105
"I've got a fire in the cockpit!"     121
A Christmas Moon     136
The Secret Side of Space     144
Highway to the Moon     149
The Landing     159
Moon Walk     167
The Successful Failure     175
On the Moon     188
After the Moon     199
A Handshake in Space     204
Down Home with Jimmy Carter     211
The Space Shuttle Era     216
Challenger: A Disaster     226
What Happened?     236
An Eternity of Descent     249
Sudden Death     254
How High Is Up?     269
As the Century Turned     279
Columbia: Had They Only Looked     291
That's a Wrap!     300
Index     309