The international space station - John Catchpole

A comprehensive, highly readable account of complex, technical, political and human endeavor and a worthy successor to Creating the International Space Station (Springer Praxis, January 2002) by David Harland and John Catchpole. This volume details for the first time the construction and occupation of the International Space Station from 2002 through to 2008, when it should reach American "Core Complete".

John Catchpole is a freelance writer specialising in human spaceflight history. In addition to co-authoring Creating the International Space Station, he is also the author of Project Mercury - NASA's First Manned Space Programme and has published over 150 magazine articles on the subject of human spaceflight and spaceflight history, including many in Spaceflight, a monthly magazine published by the British Interplanetary Society.

From the reviews:

"This new volume picks up the story with the launch of STS-108 which delivered the Expedition 4 crew to the station in December 2001. … given readers a good, detailed account of the missions and the construction activity, and the various problems inevitably encountered, which the crews and their support teams on Earth overcame. There are a good number of photos from the missions … . Several appendices give a comprehensive list of acronyms used … . All in all, a useful book … ." (David Maclennan, Liftoff, Issue 260, November-December, 2010)