Into the Black by Rowland White

Rowland White’s Into the Black examines how the Apollo era—with its virtually unlimited budgets and clearly defined goals—gave way to the shuttle era, which in trying to make space flight cheap and routine ended up making it just as expensive and risky as ever. White weaves in a second narrative thread, too. He traces the development of military space capabilities, including both unmanned spy satellites and the Air Force’s abortive Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program. The military’s space presence and the story of the shuttle are intertwined at several key points—never more dramatically than at the book’s climax during the first shuttle mission, STS-1.

In the 1960s, US spy satellites could take incredibly detailed photos during overflights of Soviet territory. The challenge was getting those images back to the desks of intelligence analysts back on Earth. With no way to take digital photos and simply beam them back, the satellites dropped “buckets”—reentry capsules containing canisters of exposed film—that the military would retrieve, process, and examine. If imagery was needed of a particular spot, it could take days to get it.

White details the two approaches the military took to solving this problem. One was MOL. In this program, military astronauts would orbit in a Gemini-like capsule attached to a small laboratory module. They could take photos of the ground and relay information about what they saw back to Earth for analysis. With sufficient training, they could even carry out their own analysis in space to speed up the process.

The military’s second approach relied on the march of technology. With the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD), which makes digital photography possible, satellites could take digital photos and simply beam the data to the ground. A spy satellite would no longer be subject to the limitations of physical film.

No manned MOL missions were launched. In 1969, the program was cancelled. The digital approach had won out. But the military astronauts, who had been training for several years, remained. Many joined NASA. They were too late to take part in Apollo flights, but a decade later they would make up much of NASA’s astronaut corps in the early shuttle years.

The development of the shuttle is another central focus in White’s book. With NASA unable to get funding for a Mars mission in the wake of Apollo, the agency settled for the space transport system (STS)—the shuttle. It was able to secure money for the new program only with the promise that the shuttle would prove useful for launching military satellites. But the requirements imposed by the military ended up preventing the shuttle from ever achieving the goal of making spaceflight inexpensive and routine. The enormous size of military satellites meant the shuttle needed a huge payload bay. The rest of the vehicle was scaled up accordingly. To loft this giant spaceplane, strapping risky solid rocket boosters to the launch stack became necessary. And to protect it upon reentry, the craft would need a massive, complex, and delicate heat shield. 

Ultimately, the stories of the digital satellites and of the shuttle converge dramatically. During STS-1, once astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen arrive in orbit, they discover there may have been some damage to the heat-shielding tiles of the orbiter. But they cannot see the most critical sections of shielding on the vehicle’s underside. Some in NASA, aware of the highly classified capabilities of US spy satellites, come up with the idea of using one of these satellites to photograph the shuttle. Though the images were unlikely to affect the ultimate outcome—no rescue mission would have been possible, and the astronauts would have to return to Earth eventually—NASA still wanted to determine the orbiter’s status. This incredibly difficult task involved complex calculations of the orbits and orientations involved. The efforts succeeded, and NASA cleared Young and Crippen to reenter the atmosphere with confidence. They safely touched down in the California desert 54.5 hours after launch. 

Into the Black deals with the fallout from Apollo, the ways in which NASA transformed itself during this era, and how the Apollo astronauts handled the transition to the shuttle. It’s this last aspect that White focuses on the most, studying the individual stories of the NASA and MOL astronauts, as well as others at NASA, such as spacecraft designer Max Faget and the people in Mission Control. Some astronauts, unwilling to wait years for another flight, left the space program entirely. Others, such as Fred Haise, participated in the shuttle’s development, flying the in-atmosphere approach and landing test (ALT) flights. And two—John Young and Ken Mattingly—remained with NASA for long enough after their moon flights to fly the shuttle into space.

In books about the prime years of the Apollo era, we see the program’s highest highs. Each successive flight accomplishes more. The hardware, the mission complexity, and the scientific returns all make clear improvements as NASA gains experience. Even the failures, such as Apollo 13, are hailed as triumphs. Yet in many of these books, especially those following the waning years of Apollo, it’s clear that people are anxious about how to follow up a decade of success. Uncertainty clouds the post-Apollo era. In Into the Black, we’re dropped into a time in which space travel has lost much of its luster. Yet even as it’s clear the shuttle has been built as a compromised vehicle, it remains inspiring to see the audacity of its designers and the bravery of its crews.

White is a skilled storyteller. He seamlessly weaves quotes from the astronauts and other personnel into the text, placing things such as internal thoughts—drawn from actual interviews with the people involved—in italics as part of the narrative, rather than taking a step back to explain when and to whom they were speaking. This keeps the momentum of the story moving along. The use of genuine recollections adds credibility to the narrative.

The book design also contributes to the overall quality. Included are three separate full-color photo sections, spaced evenly throughout the text. It may sound like a small thing, but I really enjoyed this approach. The image selections are tied strongly to their particular areas of the book, and detailed captions helped to draw concrete connections with the content in the main text. Sometimes a book’s photo section—particularly if there’s just one, placed at the center—can feel extraneous or compulsory. Here, I felt it really added to the book’s overall effect.

The story, which examines the internal thoughts and feelings of the participants, and especially those of the astronauts, would not have worked without their assistance, and it’s clear White put a lot of work into contacting these people. The personal touch elevates Into the Black beyond a simple technical history of STS-1. The reader gets a sense of how the shuttle came to be, what it was like to ride it into space and back, and how its intimate ties with the military both enabled its existence and doomed it.

If there is a weakness to the book, it’s that those readers who come to it hoping for a deeply technical account of the shuttle’s development and first flight won’t find it here. That’s a book I’d like to read, too, but it’s not this book. Instead, White presents a highly readable story about the personalities who designed the shuttle and flew the first of its 135 missions. Taken on its own terms, Into the Black is illuminating and enjoyable, and I highly recommend it, even if the shuttle isn’t your main area of interest in space history.