Men into space - Murray Leinster

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Résumé :
Based on a TV series of the same name, this novel (actually a series of connected novelettes) looks at America's march into space as seen through the eyes of one Ed McCauley. He is chosen to make the first sub-orbital flight by rocket from a launch pad in the American Southwest. Ascending the rocket by ladder, his flight is successful, and he is able to get a quick look at space from above the atmosphere. On the way down, he ejects from his capsule, intentionally, and parachutes the last couple of miles to the ground. The Space Service is able to send people into space, but they haven't yet figured out the part about the soft landing with the capsule intact. McCauley is chosen to pilot the X-21, a state of the art rocket plane, on the first orbital flight around the earth, and returns for a soft landing. Building the Space Platform, in earth orbit, almost becomes a disaster when one of the three crewmen suddenly starts floating away into space. McCauley manages to get the crewman, and himself, back to safety. As chief of the moon base, McCauley sent two of the crew onto the moon's surface to set up a repeater to establish a communication link with Farside Base. This was before he realized that the two men have a very deep hatred for each other. McCauley does not want to be the person in charge during the first murder on the Moon. A major obstacle to extensive space exploration is solar flares coming from the sun. McCauley and a co-pilot go on a mission around Venus and back to test a new radiation screen. The third member of the crew is Dr. Bramwell, the screen's inventor. Bramwell hides his absolute fear of going into space by being a loudmouthed, unreasonable jerk. The solar system contains a natural cargo transportation system that eases the difficulty of setting up a base on Mars: the asteroid Eros. Its eccentric orbit takes it within a couple of million miles of Earth, making it relatively easy to land and lash all sorts of supplies to its surface. Two years later, Eros comes within a couple of million miles of Mars, making it relatively easy to land, and send the supplies to Mars with the help of drone rockets. It's certainly easier than sending everything from the bottom of Earth's gravity well. I really liked this book. Perhaps it's best for its historic value, showing America's march into space before it happened. Still, this is an interesting story, and Leinster is an excellent writer. It's well worth reading. (Paul)

Biographie:
in a September 2022 interview, Leinster's daughter noted that Mencken advocated using a pseudonym for non-Smart Set work. Leinster served in the United States Army and the Committee of Public Information during World War I (1917-1918). His writing began to appear in pulp magazines such as Argosy, Snappy Stories, and Breezy Stories during and after the war. He continued to be published in Argosy into the 1950s....

Sommaire:
Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 - June 8, 1975) was a pen name used by William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, primarily science fiction. Leinster Jenkins, the son of George B. Jenkins and Mary L. Jenkins, was born in Norfolk, Virginia. His father was a bookkeeper. Despite the fact that both parents were born in Virginia, the family resided in Manhattan in 1910, according to the Federal Census. Despite being a high school dropout, he began working as a freelance writer before World War I. His debut tale, The Foreigner, appeared in the May 1916 issue of H. L. Mencken's literary magazine The Smart Set, two months before his twentieth birthday. Leinster contributed 10 more tales in the magazine over the next three years...