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  • Into the Black

  • By: Rowland White
  • Narrated by: Eric Meyers
  • Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (352 ratings)
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Into the Black cover art

Into the Black

By: Rowland White
Narrated by: Eric Meyers
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Summary

On 12th April 1981 a revolutionary new spacecraft blasted off from Florida on her maiden flight. NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia was the most advanced flying machine ever built - the high watermark of post-war aviation development. A direct descendant of the record-breaking X-planes the likes of which Chuck Yeager had tested in the skies over the Mojave Desert, Columbia was a winged rocket plane, the size of an airliner, capable of flying to space and back before being made ready to fly again. She was the world's first real spaceship.

The Shuttle's Commander, moonwalker John Young, was already a veteran of five spaceflights. Alongside him, Pilot Bob Crippen was making his first, but Crip, taken in by the space agency after the cancellation of a top secret military space station programme in 1969, had worked on the Shuttle's development for a decade. Never before had a crew been so well prepared for their mission.

Yet less than an hour after Young and Crippen's spectacular departure from the Cape it was clear that all was not well. Tiles designed to protect Columbia from the blowtorch burn of re-entry were missing from the heatshield. If the damage to their ship was too great the astronauts would be unable to return safely to earth. But neither they nor mission control possessed any way of knowing.

Instead, NASA turned to the National Reconnaissance Office, a spy agency hidden deep inside the Pentagon whose very existence was classified.

Into the Black is a thrilling race against time; a gripping high stakes cold-war story, and a celebration of a beyond the state-of-the-art machine that, hailed as one of the seven new wonders of the world, rekindled our passion for spaceflight.

With a foreword by Astronaut Richard Truly.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Rowland White (P)2016 Random House AudioBooks
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"Beautifully researched and written, Into the Black tells the true, complete story of the Space Shuttle better than it's ever been told before." (Colonel Chris Hadfield, former Astronaut and Space Station Commander)
"Brilliantly revealed, Into the Black is the finely tuned true story of the first flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Rowland White has magnificently laid bare the unknown dangers and unseen hazards of that first mission.... Once read, not forgotten." (Clive Cussler)

What listeners say about Into the Black

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Into the crap...

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The quality of the writing is leaves much to be desired. After listening to "A man on the moon", Into The Black is lacking in the detail and maturity I expect.

Some parts made me cringe, here are a few examples:

The author's gushing praise for the test pilots and repeated glamorization of their southern drawl, and the borderline denigration of administrative or engineering personnel.

His reference to a 5ft6" person appearing impish.Protracted and retarded analogies, such as a SRB becoming a "burning toilet roll" and others.

While the subject is inherently interesting, there seems to be a lack of detail and touch of personal account weaved into the narrative which makes a book.

The narration is similarly poor, with his accent cartoonishly impersonating the drawls mentioned above.

Would you ever listen to anything by Rowland White again?

No, even if he had anything available.

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Eric Meyers?

Someone better.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant insight into a fantastic flying machine.

I really enjoyed listening to this book which gave a total insight into how the space shuttle was built and flewn. The narration is clear and is delivered in a positive interested manner. Well worth Listening to.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Boys' Own adventure

Rowland White has written three stories of cold war adventures before this, all of which have been very British affairs. This one is very much a US story. Nonetheless it carries on the tradition of telling historical stories which are more or less already known. The value that he brings is in the journey; he shares the unknown background about these otherwise well-known stories. This is no exception. For a boy (this is a boy's story) born in the '60s with a romantic memory of the later Apollo missions, this is full of fun and joy. Who else remembers badgering their mother to buy cocktail sticks so they could build the Lunar Rover cut out of the back of a Corn Flakes packet? There is a big chunk of this book that tells the "Right Stuff" story of the early NASA and DoD space effort, but avoids the dwelling upon the events that are perhaps known well enough from other sources.

The reality is that the ultimate crunch of this story is rather an anticlimax: the shuttle lands safely, if you did not know. But the story of pioneering adventure is worth the telling. OK, the gap between the end of Apollo and the beginning of the shuttle missions is a little tedious, but this is a great story.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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amazing

an awsome tribute to the men and women who built, maintanined and flew in these amazing machines.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

great listen packed full of information

as a trucker I listen to a lot of audio books and this one really kept my attention.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

the best space shuttle book ever

superb book with great technical detail but very easy to understand a fantastic insight onto the shuttle development programme and the people who developed, built and first flew her, Brilliant 👍

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic story and narration

This book is extremely well researched, detailed and thorough. It is easy to listen to and understand, but you do have to pay attention! The emotion of the first landing is fantastic; I remember smiling as I listened to the description of John Young being so pumped and excited as he touched down and jumped out the shuttle with so much adrenaline in his system! He just couldn't contain his excitement.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • PJ
  • 29-04-23

Magnificent story

Huge congratulations to the author and narrator for the way they’ve brought the shuttle story to life. It’s a detailed account but it’s well-paced. Very much a human story, featuring the key figures, with just the right amount of technical information, which is clearly explained. I enjoyed it a lot.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A detailed & engaging telling of an amazing story

You're going to need to be a bit of a space connoisseur to get the best of this, but yoy probably already are. It's a really engaging yet detailed telling of the post-Apollo era, intermixed with some humorous tales and quotes from those with "the right stuff", culminating in the sad loss of Columbia.
a great story, well told.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Fascinating insight on one of the great eras of space but quite technical too

A detailed account of how the space shuttle emerged from among NASA’s space exploration pipeline. Others books have described how this programme ended so this is a valuable and interesting story. Very detailed though and may not be to every listeners tastes.

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