Includes bibliographical references (page 146) and index.

Introduction: "Failure is not an option" -- It's just rocket science! -- Failure to launch -- Dawn of the atomic age -- Sputnik -- The birth of NASA -- The Mercury Seven -- Project Gemini -- A dangerous rendezvous -- Tragedy -- Apollo -- One small step, one giant leap -- We have a problem -- The final frontier.

"Today, everyone is familiar with Neil Armstrong's famous words as he first set foot on the moon: 'one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.' He made it look easy, but America's journey to the moon was anything but simple. In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, into orbit, America had barely crossed the starting line of the great Space Race. Later that year, our first attempt was such a failure that the media nicknamed it 'Kaputnik.' Still, we didn't give up. With each failure, we gleaned valuable information about what went wrong, and how to avoid it in the future. So we tried again. And again. And each time we failed, we failed a little bit better"--Amazon.com.