Preface and Acknowledgements

This monograph is an updating of U.S. Human Spaceflight: A Record of Achievement, 1961–1998 (Monograph in Aerospace History No. 9, July 1998), compiled by Judith A. Rumerman. It extends the timeframe covered through the end of calendar year 2006. It also includes additional information, such as more detailed crew and mission descriptions, more bibliographic information, Shuttle payload information, and useful Web sites. It also includes a new section on the International Space Station, which did not physically exist when the previous monograph was prepared and published. In addition, with Chris Gamble’s guidance, Gabriel Okolski pulled together a new set of photos to illustrate this updated monograph.

For more information about NASA’s human spaceflight efforts, please see http://spaceflight.nasa.gov (retired site), and for more about NASA history, please see http://history.nasa.gov online.

The captions for the images in this publication include NASA image numbers in parentheses.The numbers with GPN prefixes refer to images in the Great Images in NASA (GRIN) photo database, available at http://grin.hq.nasa.gov(retired site) online.

Thanks to Kipp Teague for all his help with images for this publication and over the years in general.Thanks also to the production professionals who made this monograph possible. Specifically, thanks to Dyana Weis and Lisa Jirousek for copyediting it carefully, to graphic designer Steve Bradley for laying it out, to printing specialist Dave Dixon for handling this crucial final stage, and to Gail Carter-Kane and Cindy Miller for professionally overseeing all of these production phases.

We hope you enjoy this updated monograph and find it to be a useful reference work.

Stephen Garber
NASA History Division