Come Fly with Us: Nasa's Payload Specialist Program, Hardcover

Come Fly with Us is the story of an elite group of space travelers who flew as members of many space shuttle crews from pre-Challenger days to Columbia in 2003. Not part of the regular NASA astronaut corps, these professionals known as "payload specialists" came from a wide variety of backgrounds and were chosen for an equally wide variety of scientific, political, and national security reasons. Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas focus on this special fraternity of spacefarers and their individual reflections on living and working in space. Relatively unknown to the public and often flying only single missions, these payload specialists give the reader an unusual perspective on the experience of human spaceflight. The authors also bring to light NASA's struggle to integrate the wide-ranging personalities and professions of these men and women into the professional astronaut ranks.

While Come Fly with Us relates the experiences of the payload specialists up to and including the Challenger tragedy, the authors also detail the later high-profile flights of a select few, including Barbara Morgan, John Glenn (who returned to space at the age of seventy-seven), and Ilan Ramon of Israel aboard Columbia on its final, fatal flight, STS-107.

Melvin Croft has over thirty years of experience as a geologist and is a member of the organization collectSpace, which is dedicated to educating the public about historical and current space exploration. He is a contributor to Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 (Nebraska, 2010). John Youskauskas is a captain for a major fractional business jet operator. He has also served as an aviation safety board member and has contributed to a number of aviation safety publications. He is a contributor to Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 (Nebraska, 2010) and to Fallen Astronauts: Heroes Who Died Reaching for the Moon (Nebraska, 2016). Don Thomas is a former NASA mission specialist and the author of Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission.