Space Handbook: Astronautics and Its Applications

An 85th Congress, 2nd Session Committee Print, transmitted December 29 1958 by committee director George J. Feldman and assistant director Charles S. Sheldon II and published the following year.

The committee, chaired by Majority Leader John W. McCormack, commissioned the RAND Corporation (led by Robert W. Buchheim) to produce this lay-language survey of the state of the art of spaceflight, based on RAND’s own Report No. RM-2289-RC.

Part I introduces the subject; Part II surveys the technology (the space environment, trajectories and orbits, rocket vehicles, propulsion and propellants, guidance and communication, atmospheric flight, landing and recovery, the environment of manned systems, space stations, and even nuclear weapon effects in space); Part III covers applications such as observation, meteorological, navigation, and communication-relay satellites; and Part IV surveys astronautics programs in the U.S.S.R. and other countries.