Lost In Space ― The Fall Of Nasa And The Dream Of A New Space Age

The daring, revolutionary NASA that sent Neil Armstrong to the moon has lost its meteoric vision, says journalist and space enthusiast Greg Klerkx. NASA, he contends, has devolved from a pioneer of space exploration into a factionalized bureaucracy focused primarily on its own survival. And as a result, humans haven’t ventured beyond Earth orbit for three decades. Klerkx argues that after its wildly successful Apollo program, NASA clung fiercely to the spotlight by creating a government-sheltered monopoly with a few Big Aerospace companies. Although committed in theory to supporting commercial spaceflight, in practice it smothered vital private-sector innovation. In striking descriptions of space milestones spanning the golden 1960s Space Age and the 2003Columbia tragedy, Klerkx exposes the “real” NASA and envisions exciting public-private cooperation that could send humans back to the moon and beyond.

Greg Klerkx is a former senior manager of the SETI Institute, an independent space exploration and research institution based in California's Silicon Valley. Trained as a journalist, he won numerous news-writing awards and now divides his time between London and San Francisco. Lost in Space is his first book.