Picturing the Space Shuttle: The Early Years

The folks at University Press of Florida have once again taken a deep dive into J.L. Pickering's massive archive of American manned spaceflight images, this time focusing on the early years of the Space Shuttle program, through to Columbia's four orbital test flights. As is usual with Bisney and Pickering, this book is crafted more for serious space buffs than casual enthusiasts, focusing largely on unpublished photographs and obscure imagery than on well-known and more titillating images. While it's essentially impossible to top Jenkins's "Space Shuttle: Developing an Icon" as a purely technical study of the Shuttle's early years, this one does a fine job at blending together the human and hardware elements, creating a fascinating visual study of an optimistic time.If one includes all of the images of press kits, access badges, brochure covers, patches, and bumper stickers scattered throughout, the total number of illustrations is nearly 600. Rather than trying to describe in detail the huge amount of ground they cover, the attached photos should (hopefully!) do a good job depicting the book's contents. Although some of them were familiar (Pickering expresses some frustration at the lack of unpublished photographs of Enterprise's ALT tests, for example), the majority of them were new to me or depicted an alternate angle of a well-known image. The captions are excellent, most of them identifying all of the people in a particular image, or providing some interesting historical or technical trivia.Unfortunately, I feel this book falls a little short compared with earlier Bisney/Pickering collaborations. Some of the imagery gets a little repetitive, and there are more photographs of KSC officials standing around podiums, or of celebrities and journalists than I would have preferred. There are also WAY too many cases of photographs overlapping one another scrapbook-style or placed next to another without any space between them. I complained about that in my review of "Picturing Apollo 11," and I swear the editors doubled down on it this time around!Aside from that, there's a lot here for serious space buffs to chew on here, provided you've already studied the early history of the Shuttle in some detail. I'm curious to see if the authors produce further volumes on the Shuttle era; STS-5 through the Challenger disaster would probably be a natural successor.

Authors Bisney and Pickering have once again successfully hit the mark with the latest edition in their series of publications representing the visual history behind America’s major spaceflight programs. This latest volume “Picturing the Space Shuttle (The Early Years)” focuses primarily on ground operations and events with some additional coverage representing onboard inflight activities. It is a most welcome addition to the series. It contains a wealth of both unique and previously unpublished behind-the-scenes views starting with the initial shuttle concept phase, following on with the Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) of the Space Shuttle Enterprise in the late 1970s and concluding with coverage of the first four flights of Space Shuttle Columbia, thus fully documenting the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) missions which were conducted in 1981/1982.I highly recommend adding this edition to your spaceflight history library, particularly so for anyone who has enjoyed Bisney and Pickering’s previous collaborative efforts. You will not be disappointed with this exclusive insider’s view into the beginnings of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.

Another terrific volume in a line of INSANELY awesome photo books by Pickering and Bisney! If you’re a space enthusiast, you need these books on your shelf…but I can assure you that they won’t sit there very long. You’ll be taking these beauties out regularly. The rare photos are stunning, but more than just candy for your eyes. They’re insightful. And there placement - along with the illuminating text - is evocative in a way that few books are. More than reliving memories of the missions, one can actually FEEL the tension and excitement of the time and missions come to life. It’s no mean feat to take a primarily tactile and visual interaction and turn it into something visceral. These books succeed in that regard in a way that very few have. Highly Recommended…the whole bunch of them!

With the release of this book the space community once again has access, as it did with their previous publications, to an amazing resource of rare and mostly unseen photographs of the beginning of the shuttle program thru the first four test flights. in addition to the photos are very accurate and complete captions. It was a pleasure to acquire this book and add it to my library along with the other books by JL and John on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. As a photographer who covered NASA for over 40 years I highly recommend this be an addition to any space lovers library.

Nothing all that interesting revealed. I was hoping for more information and photos of the tile issues and more in-depth design information.

I highly recommend this book! And, John Bisney and J. L. Pickering other books. They have put out the true History and documentation of the Space Program.Thank you John and J.L‼️

high quality prints, and interesting content/ images