Breaking the Chains of Gravity

November 23, 2015
Teitel, an expert in the history of spaceflight and the host of the YouTube channel Vintage Space, illuminates the foundations of American spaceflight with this exceptional and detailed “prehistory” of the field. Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon inspired a generation of rocket engineers and scientists in the early 20th century. Searching for more power than gunpowder could provide, Romanian-born physicist Hermann Oberth designed the earliest liquid-fueled rockets, and his 1923 book, The Rocket into Planetary Space, spurred the formation of Germany’s Society for Space Travel, a home for kindred space-gazing engineers and scientists. One of those was rocketry pioneer Wernher von Braun, whose work on the Nazis’ V-2 rocket program that (with some fast talking) eventually earned him and his team postwar jobs working at America’s new White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Teitel takes readers through the nitty-gritty of government-program goals, advances in design and technology, and a host of animal flights, charting the ever-winding path to the 1958 creation of NASA amid America’s political and scientific focus on manned spaceflight. Even for readers already familiar with NASA’s story, Teitel’s history is fascinating new territory, filled with a galaxy of lively characters who share a stubborn determination to reach orbit.

January 1, 2016

In her first book, science writer Teitel (MA science and technology studies, York Univ.) explores the unheralded "prehistory" of NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Administration), which began long before John F. Kennedy's pledge in 1961 to land a man on the moon. NASA's achievements, from the moon landing to the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, can be traced back to 1920s Germany, where Max Valier and Hermann Oberth's first experiments with rocket propulsion coincided with the rise of Hitler and engineer Wernher von Braun's infamous V-2 rocket. Following an account of von Braun's exciting escape to the United States, Teitel covers the key developments that led to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, the race to launch the first satellite, and finally the introduction of the Mercury astronauts in 1959. Teitel makes clear her intention to simplify this narrative for a broader audience, and at this she succeeds, threading an absorbing mix of behind-the-scenes jockeying, detailed mechanical exposition, and snap biographies of the many scientists, test pilots, and politicians instrumental in forging the new space age. VERDICT Aircraft and rocketry geeks will find the most to love in this jet-powered history, but it's a great primer for anyone interested in the origins of space travel.--Chad Comello, Morton Grove P.L., IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015
Spaceflight didn't start with Neil Armstrong, or even with Sputnik, as this well-researched account of the early days of rocketry makes clear. In her debut, science journalist and blogger Teitel begins with the German rocket enthusiasts of the 1920s. Inspired by the science fiction of Jules Verne, Hermann Oberth kicked off the craze with a book touting the potential of rockets for getting human explorers off Earth. His writings became vital for a group of experimenters who spent the '20s launching increasingly sophisticated rockets. By the 1930s, the German army was taking notice, and thanks to a loophole in the Treaty of Versailles, rocket research wasn't prohibited. The main beneficiary was Wernher von Braun, a young engineer who was soon in charge of a Nazi program to create weapons that could bomb distant targets with no chance of interception. At war's end, von Braun managed to find his way to American lines, hoping to get a chance to work on rockets for the victors. He became America's top rocket man and eventually put the first American satellite in orbit. Teitel effectively captures the bureaucratic infighting among different branches of the armed services, and she offers interesting insights into lesser-known facets of the early space race, such as the high-altitude balloon program. She also provides solid coverage of the treatment of space exploration in the popular press--e.g., von Braun's provocative series in Collier's, a huge influence on how the next generation envisioned the conquest of space. The author excels at describing action, such as Chuck Yeager's breaking of the sound barrier or Joe Kittinger's pioneering balloon ascent. She occasionally drops the ball--for example, skipping over the reasons for the failure of the much-ballyhooed Vanguard rocket in 1957--and she could have further explored how von Braun was responsible for the use of slave labor in the German V-2 program. However, the book is full of fascinating information on a central facet of 20th-century history. A must-read for anyone interested in the early history of space exploration.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 15, 2015
A blogger with a YouTube channel, Teitel has built a popular following that will be keen for her first book. Writing for spaceflight history buffs, she covers the German V-2 rocket, that technology's capture and transferal to the U.S. after WWII, and a passel of American high-altitude projects in the 1940s and 1950s. More than describing each flying machine, be it a rocket plane, balloon, or ballistic missile, Teitel centers on the person closely associated with its development. Of course, Wernher von Braun equals the V-2 (and later, the Jupiter missile), but the designers of the X-15 balloon gondolas, rocket sleds, and the first space capsules are not Braun-scale celebrities. Giving them their historical due endows Teitel's history with general-interest value, while her attention to bureaucratic rivalries generated by competing ideas for getting above the earth's atmosphere provides illuminating backstory to how the Mercury space capsule, rather than the X-15 hypersonic plane, became the first American manned space vehicle. Concluding with the Sputnik panic and creation of NASA in 1958, Teitel makes a fine authorial debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)