Come Fly with Us: NASA's Payload Specialist Program

by Melvin Croft, John Youskauskas

2020 Space Hipsters Prize for Best Book in Astronomy, Space Exploration, or Space History

Come Fly with Us  is the story of an elite group of space travelers who flew as members of many space shuttle crews from pre- Challenger days to Columbia in 2003. Not part of the regular NASA astronaut corps, these professionals known as “payload specialists” came from a wide variety of backgrounds and were chosen for an equally wide variety of scientific, political, and national security reasons. Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas focus on this special fraternity of spacefarers and their individual reflections on living and working in space. Relatively unknown to the public and often flying only single missions, these payload specialists give the reader an unusual perspective on the experience of human spaceflight. The authors also bring to light NASA’s struggle to integrate the wide-ranging personalities and professions of these men and women into the professional astronaut ranks.

While Come Fly with Us relates the experiences of the payload specialists up to and including the Challenger tragedy, the authors also detail the later high-profile flights of a select few, including Barbara Morgan, John Glenn (who returned to space at the age of seventy-seven), and Ilan Ramon of Israel aboard Columbia on its final, fatal flight, STS-107.  

Genres: Space, Science

456 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2019

Reviews

[Charles Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting but odd book, was it written and then revised a couple of times? It has a lot of good historical information in one place but leaves out a tremendous amount. I read it several years ago but was working on something so I pulled it out, it had the information that I needed. Then I realized that I had not written a review here - and it turns out that mine would be only the second one written.

First, I worked as an Air Force orbital analyst and supported a lot of the secret space activities at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex so I was familiar with that world. I had work trips to Sunnyvale (the Blue Cube) and the NRO offices in the Pentagon. While I was at the Mountain one of my reporting officials was Kathy Sparks Roberts, I knew her husband much better than I knew her. Then I went to the Johnson Space Center as an Air Force flight controller and worked with DoD payloads. There I worked with a number of the Air Force Manned Spaceflight Engineers - mostly Jeff DeTroye. But also Brett Watterson, Bill Pailes, and others. Jeff left the MSE cadre and became a "detailee" at the Johnson Space Center, working closely with me but he wore civilian clothes while I wore a uniform. We worked in the same section.

Later, as a civilian, I worked Spacelab Life Sciences and worked closely with Rhea Seddon, Drew Gaffney, and other Payload Specialists. I also knew Hans Schlegel very well since one of his sons was in the Cub Scouts with mine and we had a lot of common activities like the boys were in swim team.

There are a lot of questions about this book - it seems to have been stopped after the STS 51L Challenger accident and then picked back up. Or maybe someone else completed it? PSs that flew after Challenger. I wonder if they considered Hans Schlegel an "astronaut" and not a PS since he in not listed?

It is certainly a useful book if you need a source of information about some of the Shuttle missions and crew members.

[Ethan Symon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well researched book. A must read for any space geek with a preference for satellites and engineering.