Walter Cunningham: The All-American Boys

The All-American Boys is a memoir written by Walter Cunningham about his time at NASA during the "golden age of space flight." This, book came out in 2003 after the Columbia tragedy and is a revised edition of his 1977 book. Before going any farther, I must say that if somebody wants to know about the history of NASA (at its best) as well as the inner workings of this government agency, and personalities of the original astronauts then you should read this book. Best of all, this book is easy to read and understand because it does not rely heavily on acronyms as other military, aviation, and space exploration books do.

In this book, Cunningham discusses a wide range of issues during his NASA career. The Apollo 1 accident and his Apollo 7 flight that undoubtedly convinced the NASA powers that be not to give anyone on that crew any future missions. One of the best chapters in this book, is called "Astropolitics," because it talks about flight assignments. Primarily it talks about a pecking order in NASA where the Mercury astronauts primarily Deke Slayton and Alan Shepard called the shots. When talking about the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Cunningham gave great insight about the Russian Space program and how primative their technology was, and that the Soviets deemphasized the individual cosmonaut and instead relied more on the ground operations in Moscow. It was a collective society afterall! After Cunningham is bumped from his Spacelab assignment by Pete Conrad he realizes that he won't go back into space again and soon resigns from NASA.

Originally this book was released in 1977, since that time Cunningham has observed NASA as a civilian and shares his views about NASA up to the Columbia accident. I was interestead about when he talked about the Freedom Space Station morphing into the International Space Station. Primarily it is Bill Clinton and his administration partnering with the Russians first on Mir and then The ISS. Let me conclude by saying that Cunningham talked about Join ventures here in Texas where the weaker person ends up in a better position (Russians), while the stronger party gains nothing (NASA, money and technology transferred to Russia).

Conclusion: I recommend this book

Publisher: IBooks inc.

published: July 2003 (hardcover edition)