Table of Contents
Preface: Kennedy's New Ocean xi
Part I Rockets
1 Dr. Robert Goddard Meets Buck Rogers 3
2 Kennedy, Von Braun, and the Crucible of World War II 21
3 Surviving a Savage War 41
4 Who's Afraid of the V-2? 61
Part II Generation Sputnik
5 Spooked into the Space Race 93
6 Sputnik Revolution 125
7 Missile Gaps and the Creation of Nasa 155
8 Mercury Seven to the Rescue 181
9 Kennedy for President 191
Part III Moonbound
10 Skyward with James Webb 209
11 Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard 223
12 "Going to the Moon": Washington, DC, May 25, 1961 247
13 Searching for Moonlight in Tulsa and Vienna 265
14 Moon Momentum with Television and Gus Grissom 283
15 Godspeed, John Glenn 307
16 Scott Carpenter, Telstar, and Presidential Space Touring 335
Part IV Projects Gemini and Apollo
17 "We Choose to Go to the Moon": Rice University, September 12, 1962 359
18 Gemini Nine and Wally Schirra 373
19 State of Space Exploration 395
20 "The Space Effort Must Go On" 413
21 Cape Kennedy 431
Epilogue: The Triumph of Apollo 11 449
Acknowledgments 463
Notes 471
Bibliography 515
Image Credits 527
Index 529