Roger D. Launis Roger D. Launius Howard E. McCurdy
In Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, ten contributors present compelling arguments and analyses that shed new light on the power and leadership of the nation's presidency and on the space program. Setting the tone for the collection, Roger Launius and Howard McCurdy maintain that the nation's presidency had become imperial by the mid-1970s and that supporters of the space program had grown to find relief in such a presidency, which they believed could help them obtain greater political support and funding. Subsequent chapters explore the roles and political leadership,...
In Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, ten contributors present compelling arguments and analyses that shed new light on the power an...
Inside NASA explores how an agency praised for its planetary probes and expeditions to the moon became notorious for the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and a series of other malfunctions. Using archival evidence as well as in-depth interviews with space agency officials, Howard McCurdy investigates the relationship between the performance of the American space program and NASA's organizational culture. He begins by identifying the beliefs, norms, and practices that guided NASA's early successes. Originally, the agency was dominated by the strong technical culture...
Inside NASA explores how an agency praised for its planetary probes and expeditions to the moon became notorious for the explosion of the s...
In Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program, Howard E. McCurdy examines NASA's recent efforts to save money while improving mission frequency and performance. McCurdy details the sixteen missions undertaken during the 1990s--including an orbit of the moon, deployment of three space telescopes, four Earth-orbiting satellites, two rendezvous with comets and asteroids, and a test of an ion propulsion engine--which cost less than the sum traditionally spent on a single, conventionally planned planetary mission. He shows how these missions employed smaller...
In Faster, Better, Cheaper: Low-Cost Innovation in the U.S. Space Program, Howard E. McCurdy examines NASA's recent efforts to save money wh...
The prevailing notion that the best government is achieved through principles of management and business practices is hardly new--it echoes the early twentieth-century "gospel of efficiency" challenged by Dwight Waldo in 1948 in his pathbreaking book, The Administrative State. Asking, "Efficiency for what?," Waldo warned that public administrative efficiency must be backed by a framework of consciously held democratic values.
Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State brings together a group of distinguished authors who critically explore public administration's big ideas...
The prevailing notion that the best government is achieved through principles of management and business practices is hardly new--it echoes the ear...
People dreamed of cosmic exploration--winged spaceships and lunar voyages; space stations and robot astronauts--long before it actually happened. Space and the American Imagination traces the emergence of space travel in the popular mind, its expression in science fiction, and its influence on national space programs.
Space exploration dramatically illustrates the power of imagination. Howard E. McCurdy shows how that power inspired people to attempt what they once deemed impossible. In a mere half-century since the launch of the first Earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, humans...
People dreamed of cosmic exploration--winged spaceships and lunar voyages; space stations and robot astronauts--long before it actually happened. <...
Given the near incomprehensible enormity of the universe, it appears almost inevitable that humankind will one day find a planet that appears to be much like the Earth. This discovery will no doubt reignite the lure of interplanetary travel. Will we be up to the task? And, given our limited resources, biological constraints, and the general hostility of space, what shape should we expect such expeditions to take?
In Robots in Space, Roger Launius and Howard McCurdy tackle these seemingly fanciful questions with rigorous scholarship and disciplined imagination, jumping...
Given the near incomprehensible enormity of the universe, it appears almost inevitable that humankind will one day find a planet that appears to be...
