• Home
  • News
    • Politics & Government
    • Business & Economy
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
  • Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Radio Iowa Poll
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support Page
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters

Radio Iowa

Iowa's Radio News Network

You are here: Home / Human Interest / Iowa astronaut updates book

Iowa astronaut updates book

June 6, 2003 By admin

The first Iowan to become an astronaut has come out with a revision of a book he wrote about the space program. Walter Cunningham, who grew up in Creston, says his 25th anniversary edition of “The All-American Boys” includes four new chapters of new information and his views about the Russian space station Mir, the International Space Station, and the catastrophic failure of the space shuttle Columbia. Cunningham says NASA got away for a long time with letting the shuttle fly even with insulation falling off a tank, but he thinks it was “irresponsible.” Cunningham favors the theory that a tile that fell during the last liftoff caused damage that led to the shuttle’s fiery destruction when it came in to land. His “take” is that the crew was lost from the time the tile hit the wing, since it was damaging enough to burn through on re-entry. Still, Cunningham, who was an astronaut on Apollo Seven, says the space shuttle program should “get back in the air.” Even with its faults, he calls the shuttle the safest manned space vehicle we’ve ever had, with only two failures in its history — and he wonders how many problems they’d have had if they’d tried to send up an Apollo rocket over and over 113 times, as the shuttles have been re-launched. Cunningham says though the U-S built and staffed a permanently-orbiting space station with a partner, the Russians all along “weren’t pulling their weight.” He says the U.S. shouldn’t have a resource we’re investing $16 Billion a year in that’s “at the mercy” of the Russians, but he says we depend on their Soyuz lifeboat spacecraft, and there are Russian systems on the space station only they can control. Cunningham’s book is available online at www.thespacestore.com, or at the Iowa Aviation Museum in Greenfield.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: Human Interest

Featured Stories

Testing finds 21 new CWD cases in deer

It may become a crime in Iowa to use fake urine in workplace drug tests

February trending 18 degrees below average temperature

Iowa House Education Committee votes to end tenure at UI, ISU, UNI

Man convicted of two Muscatine County murders dies in prison

TwitterFacebook
Tweets by RadioIowa

Key stretch begins for #9 Iowa

Drake’s Roman Penn lost for the season

Drake’s DeVries named to Naismith watch list

State wrestling opens with limited attendance

Iowa’s Wieskamp is B1G Player of the Week

More Sports

eNews and Updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Archives

Copyright © 2021 ยท Learfield News & Ag, LLC