Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight

Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize a breathtaking elegy to the waning days of human spaceflight as we have known itIn the s humans took their first steps away from Earth and for a time our possibilities in space seemed endless But in a time of austerity and in the wake of high-profile disasters like Challenger that dream has ended In early Margaret Lazarus Dean traveled to Cape Canaveral for NASAs last three space shuttle launches in order to bear witness to the end of an era With Dean as our guide to Floridas Space Coast and to the history of NASA Leaving Orbit takes the measure of what American spaceflight has achieved while reckoning with its earlier witnesses such as Norman Mailer Tom Wolfe and Oriana Fallaci Along the way Dean meets NASA workers astronauts and space fans gathering possible answers to the question What does it mean that a spacefaring nation wont be going to space anymore.