Ben Evans - The Space Shuttle: An Experimental Flying Machine: Foreword by Former Space Shuttle Commander Sid Gutierrez

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Experimental Flying Machine is a meticulously researched and beautifully written narrative of the Space Shuttle Experience. Ben Evans weaves together the technology trades, the political influences and the real human beings who created and flew this amazing vehicle. If you ever wondered why the Shuttle looked the way it did, Ben explains it in a way everyone can understand. Most engineering efforts are a compromise and the Space Shuttle is the prime example.

Ben Evans reminds me of Stephen Ambrose. Ambrose was able to get World War II veterans to open up about their experiences in books like The Band of Brothers. In the same way Ben Evans has been able to get the normally tight-lipped cadre of astronauts to open up about their personal experiences in the high risk, high stress environment flying the Shuttle. Their excitement, frustrations and fears. And our fears were well founded. The author describes the many close calls red flags that exposed the vulnerabilities and razor thin margins that foretold the Challenger and Columbia accidents. Much of what you will learn has only been available to those who lived the experience passed on by word of mouth or buried in obscure government reports. But Ben ties it all together in a narrative that is fascinating, thought provoking and informative. I was surprised at how much I learned and I lived it.

Experimental Flying Machine should be a required read for every engineering and management student. It is not an engineering book, but it explores the decisions engineers and managers must make and exposes the consequence of those decisions including their human impact. Ben Evans presents a perspective on the Space Shuttle that is far different than the finely honed narrative you have heard from NASA Public Affairs. It is a book I could not put down.

Sidney M. Gutierrez (Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.)

NASA Astronaut 1984-1994

Pilot, STS-40 (June 1991)

Commander, STS-59 (April 1994)

Astronaut Steve Hawley once remarked that the Space Shuttle was a feat of such technical enormity that simply launching it was nothing less than a minor miracle. It required thousands of people to work together to ensure that millions of discrete mechanical and electronic parts operated perfectly and in tandem. Several hundred of those parts, indeed, were so critical to the safety of the crew and the spacecraft that their single-point failure could spell disaster. The Shuttle required a winged vehicle, awkwardly bolted onto an immense fuel tank and a pair of boosters, to launch like a rocket, fly like a spacecraft, then descend back to Earth like an aircraft to a smooth runway landingand then, after a period of refurbishment, repeat the achievement again and again. It required perfect weather conditions at its launch site and at several emergency landing sites around the world. It required precise control over huge amounts of volatile propellants and a computing power smaller than can be found in one of todays mobile phones. And with survivability and emergency escape provisions which many astronauts found questionable at best, it required steely-eyed bravery on the part of the men and women who dared to fly this most experimental of experimental flying machines.

I grew up with the Space Shuttle. It made its first flight over the California desert when I was a few months old, it first launched into space as I attended nursery, it triumphantly repaired the Hubble Space Telescope as I finished high school and it began building the International Space Station when I graduated from university. Over its 30 years of active operational service first launched on 12 April 1981 and last landed on 21 July 2011 this fleet of five winged orbiters flew an impressive 135 times. Fleet leader Discovery completed 39 missions, Atlantis made 33, Columbia made 28, Endeavour made 25 and Challenger made ten. Crews as small as two and as large as eight launched and repaired satellites, carried out scientific research and built and maintained space stations. Across that bundle of years, the Shuttle achieved unimaginable dreams and opened space exploration to more walks of life than ever before. The descendants of its technology continue to live and breathe as America prepares for its next great step into deep space. Modified versions of its engines, its boosters and its pressure suits will power the next generation of human explorers to the Moon and back.