With no control and no means of escape, this made the first 122 seconds of flight the most dangerous part of any mission aboard the shuttle.

There is something so monumentally heartbreaking about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Even though it happened many years ago, the grief surrounding it still lingers. Seven bright souls, who gave so much to be on the front lines of science and space, had their lives extinguished in a moment's eye.

Going into this book, my technical knowledge around the explosion was fairly scant—I knew there was a malfunction in an O-ring, a cheap piece of rubber meant to seal something vital in the solid rocket booster. But as it turns out, that was just part of the story, and maybe not even the most important part.

When you look at an undertaking like the Space Shuttle program, it's not an exaggeration to say that it's unbelievably complex, not just technically, but also the sheer scope of the project, the timeline, the numerous moving parts, and all the people involved—the engineers, the managers, and of course, the astronauts. Adam Higginbotham took this intricate, convoluted, often perplexing pile of information, and carefully and methodically broke it down, bringing this tragedy and its entire series of precipitating events to clarity.

This is narrative nonfiction at its best. Such a topic is not easy to tackle without it turning dry, but it never does so in the author's capable hands. Though this is as comprehensive as you can get, every page, every chapter, every moment of this story felt riveting. In fact, if you asked me, this was as exciting and thrilling and ultimately horrifying as the best of its counterparts in fiction, and the fact that it really happened only adds to the appeal.

One thing the book highlights is that when it comes to catastrophic failures like this, it is never just a one-time thing. It is often a series of mistakes, any one of which if examined and taken seriously and mitigated, would have likely led to a very different outcome. But instead, each mistake and the warning it carried of impending doom was allowed to stand, incorrectly assessed as safe and acceptable, until we reached the point of no return.

The hubris of NASA and Morton Thiokol laid down in these pages was hard to take. The managers at these two organizations viewed each lucky escape (and there were many of them when it came to the O-rings) as yet another sign of their wisdom in pushing ahead with the missions, instead of what it actually was, which is a harbinger of larger problems to come. We obviously know what is going to happen and they do not, yet we must follow along as they blunder and congratulate themselves, all the while inching closer and closer to disaster.

The mechanical tolerances between each segment of the rocket were so tight that the smallest contaminant caught between the O-ring and the metal faces of the joint—a fleck of lint, a single human hair—could cause a leak.

But it is not all hopeless. Even in this toxic environment, there were engineers who did the right thing. They spoke up and went against their colleagues and management, they worked hard to find solutions to the O-ring problems, and when the crucial moment came, they sounded the alarm and did all they could to try to call off the launch. I am glad, at least in these pages, that they are given the recognition they deserve.

Maybe the biggest thing that stands out to me here is that this tragedy felt inevitable. If not this instance, then it would've happened to a different shuttle and a different mission and a different crew somewhere down the line. Because the underlying issue wasn't technical, it was human. The insidious attitudes of the people calling the shots, the callous disregard for safety, the complete and utter breakdown in communications, those are all things that are hard to fix, even after the O-rings no longer pose a problem.

The book closes out on a note of hope but also a warning. The Space Shuttle program after the Challenger explosion proceeded safely for 17 years, before Columbia blew up on reentry in 2003, yet again plagued by the same sort of miscommunication, complacency, and management brushoffs that brought down its sister ship so many years prior. The point of history is so we don't have to repeat the same mistakes again, yet we do.

And so as we look towards a new era of space exploration with Artemis and beyond, the crux of this book and its cautionary tale within remains—have we really learned our lesson?

"The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!

Mercury brought us into the skies, Apollo took us to the Moon. But what about Gemini, the important but often overlooked middle child? Hardly anyone remembers the achievements and dangers of its two-year, twelve-mission program that paved the way for all that followed. Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon hopes to right that wrong.

Immediately from the prologue, this book had me hooked. We open onto the spacewalk of Gemini 9 which had come perilously close to fatal. From there, we step back in time to the beginning of NASA and to President Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. It was a gutsy and ambitious pledge, but once made, NASA took it as a promise and proceeded to run with it.

This book covers every Mercury and every Gemini mission, and it's fascinating stuff. Every crewed outing (six for Mercury, ten for Gemini) carried enormous risks for the astronauts and contained objectives that must be met in order to move the program closer to its boots-on-the-Moon promise. And in almost every single mission, something went wrong. The combination of quick thinking, ingenuity, and plain luck that kept everyone safe made for a thrilling tale.

Kluger's a terrific writer. His style is very zippy and engaging, so it pairs well with nonfiction, really bringing history to life and keeping the reader riveted. He's faithful to the technical stuff, but he also understands that this story isn't just about that. The human parts are just as important, and he is able to bring to life all the key players and every astronaut that made the Gemini achievements possible.

Kluger also has an eye towards humor, and when you have bureaucracy, posturing on the national and international stage, and good old human folly all mixed in together, there is sure to be some unintended funny moments. The space race with Russia was particularly predisposed to being droll, even if inadvertently so, and Kluger's take on it added a lot of zing to the whole thing.

When it comes to nonfiction, one of the most important factors is whether there is enough content to fill out a book, and that's a resounding yes over here. In fact, it's quite a task to distill a dozen missions and the history leading up to them down to just 300 pages, so Kluger is able to pick and choose the most interesting bits, and as a result, every page of this book comes across with urgency and insight.

What an exhilarating read, especially at this moment in history when the Artemis program looks to be on the verge of bringing us to the lunar surface once more. What is old shall be new again, and so we're right back on the stepping stones to the Moon.

If you're a space buff like me, or just a nonfiction fan in general, I don't think you'll regret picking this up and learning all about Gemini, And in case you're wondering, the correct pronunciation is "gem-min-ee" according to NASA.

Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!