posted 09-16-2009 02:35 AM               

From Sputnik to Soyuz, Mercury 7 to the International Space Station, Spaceflight: A Historical Encyclopedia spans the entire half-century of space travel like no other reference ever published.

The 700 articles in Spaceflight cover every human space mission, as well all significant robotic lunar and planetary space exploration programs, from the 1950s through to the 2008 Space Shuttle and Soyuz flights. While most of the encyclopedia focuses on the United States and former Soviet Union, Spaceflight goes beyond other works of this type to explore the space-related initiatives of countries around the world, including long-time space powers such as France, the other member nations of the European Space Agency, and the emerging space programs of China and India. Many of the entries are biographical, including portraits of NASA's first five groups of astronauts, space shuttle astronauts, Russian cosmonauts, and other non-U.S., non-Russian astronauts who have spent significant time in space.

• Comprises 700 A-Z entries covering every human spaceflight and all significant robotic space exploration programs, with hundreds of biographical entries

• Includes 148 beautiful and historic photographs illustrating all major articles, including international (non-U.S., non-Russian) space programs, action photos showing astronauts and cosmonauts at work in space, and photos of space vehicles and equipment

• Provides bibliographic listings, organized by topic, of print and online sources for further reading

• Includes complete chronologies of the space shuttle and Soyuz programs through 2008

About the Author: Patrick J. Walsh is a journalist and author from Peekskill, NY.

• Hardcover: 1080 pages
  
• Publisher: Greenwood (December 31, 2009)
  
• ISBN-10: 031337869X
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0313378690

posted 09-17-2009 09:19 AM               

This publisher has been acquired by ABC-CLIO, which has another space encyclopedia due to come out next year (for more details, see this thread).

posted 11-13-2009 08:01 AM               

I have just come across your September 16, 2009 post in the Publications & Multimedia section of the collectSPACE message boards, and I just wanted to thank you for providing the information about my book.

I am Patrick J. Walsh (Pat), the author of Spaceflight: A Historical Encyclopedia, which is scheduled for publication at the end of this year by ABC-CLIO Inc. (under their Greenwood Press imprint).

Spaceflight will actually be my second book about the history of space exploration; the first, Echoes Among the Stars: A Short History of the U.S. Space Program, was published by ME Sharpe Inc. in 1999. It is still in print, in both hardcover and paperback editions.

My new project took about four years from start to finish, so I’m pretty excited about the prospect of finally seeing it in print. I am also very proud of the Foreword, which is being written by retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave (a.veteran of six space missions during his 30 year career with the space agency).

I’ve really tried to make the encyclopedia as definitive a reference as possible. In addition to the “expected” topics (the U.S. and Soviet/Russian programs, for example), there are also a fair number of items about other national space programs and their astronauts and satellite programs.

In Europe, for example, I’ve included items about the national space agencies of France, Italy, Germany and Great Britain as well as the ESA, and biographies of individuals such as Léopold Eyharts and Roberto Vittori (among others) as well as the better-known (at least in the U.S.) Claudie Haigneré and Claude Nicollier.

There is similar coverage for other programs around the world, including those of Japan, China, India, Canada, Brazil, etc., and mission-by-mission chronologies of all space shuttle missions and all Soyuz flights up to the end of 2008.

Pat Walsh