Introduction
Part I: The Spaceflight Visionaries
1. Parabola: Picturing the Cosmos
2. Rocket: The Space Pioneers
3. Missile: Rocket States and War
4. Satellite: Strategic Power and Geopolitics
Part II: The Space Race
5. Project: Vostok and Mercury in Orbit
6. Terror: The Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Race
7. Rendezvous: Voskhod and Project Gemini
8. Apollo: The Race for the Moon
Part III: The Fragile Species
9. Portraits: Our Expanding Universe
10. Bodies: Living and Cooperating in Space
11. Orbits: Planet Earth from Outer Space
12. Thresholds: Shuttles, Star Wars, and Stations
Epilogue
A Note on Non-English Sources
Biography
Michael G. Smith is Professor of History at Purdue University. He is the author of Rockets and Revolution: A Cultural History of Early Spaceflight (2014) and The Rocket Lab: Maurice Zucrow, Purdue University and America’s Race to Space (2023).
