The new guys The historic class of astronauts that broke barriers and changed the face of space travel

In 1978, NASA recruited Astronaut Group 8, the first group of astronaut candidates selected to serve on the space shuttle and the first opportunity open to nonmilitary personnel. This group included the first American women, first African Americans, first Asian American, first married couple, and (unbeknownst at the time) the first gay astronaut to fly into space. NASA recruited scientists, engineers, and medical professionals, not just pilots. Members of this remarkably diverse group--known as the "new guys"--served from the shuttle's first flight to its final decommissioning. They launched technology (including the Hubble Space Telescope) that fundamentally altered our world and weathered disasters (Bagby covers the loss of the Challenger in significant detail), political maneuvering, and bad press. Their crowning achievement was construction of the International Space Station. Much has already been written about these men and women, their successes and tragedies, and Bagby doesn't break new ground here. But she brings together a wealth of information and crafts it into a compelling, cohesive, and complete narrative. An excellent choice for anyone interested in the history of space exploration.

In this exciting if speculative chronicle, Bagby (Rational Exuberance), a film and TV producer, presents the stories of NASA's class of 1978, the first to include women and people of color. Drawing on nearly 100 interviews with the "New Guys," she dramatizes their time in the space program, homing in on such figures as Anna Lee Fisher, the first mother to go to space, and Frederick Gregory, the first Black astronaut to command the space shuttle. Beginning with the recruitment process in 1977, the author follows the class through training and historic "first" flights, offering a devastating play-by-play of the Challenger explosion and concluding in 2011 as the financial crisis brought space missions to a standstill. Bagby admits that she takes "liberties" with the truth and imagines how the figures "likely may have thought and felt," such as when she writes that as Judith Resnik sought a meeting with Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, "The wind carried a cool dewiness that she associated with new beginnings." This novelistic approach results in an immersive narrative, even if there's not much new to those familiar with the program's history. Space buffs willing to look past the historical conjecture will find a propulsive ride. (Feb.)

An enthusiastic account of the NASA astronaut class of 1978. Writer and film producer Bagby reminds readers that every astronaut chosen in the years after 1959 to fly the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs was a White male, and there was only scattered grumbling about the absence of women and minorities. Matters had changed by 1977, when NASA received more than 8,000 applications and chose 35 "lucky souls" to fly the new space shuttle. "Astronaut Class 8 looked like none before it," writes the author. "Gone were the rows of buzz cuts and dark suits that typified every prior astronaut group." Most were military officers, but there were also doctors, engineers, chemists, physicists, and astronomers. More significantly, the group had three Black members, one Asian, and six women. These 10 astronauts feature prominently throughout the narrative, which Bagby peppers with invented dialogue and insight into their thoughts, a common approach in the genre. Regardless of style, the author has done her homework, writing a gripping account of America's mature manned space program, dominated by the shuttle that flew 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, 133 successfully. Its predecessor (the Saturn V rocket and its capsules) completed every mission, but they were built in an era when money was no object. Developed when America no longer feared Soviet technology and was plagued by budget cuts, the shuttle was a hypercomplicated system full of design compromises. Without ignoring the cutthroat politics that regularly trumped the science, Bagby describes a score of shuttle missions in detail, with emphasis on the triumphs (launching and then repairing the Hubble telescope, sending off planetary probes, building the space station) as well as an unnerving number of technological near misses. The two disasters feature prominently, and nearly 100 pages devoted to Challenger in 1986 deliver perhaps more information than general readers want to know--though space buffs will enjoy it. A capable chronicle of America's post-Apollo space program. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.