Two new space history books by Kranzberg Professor John Krige and collaborators at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Georgia Tech present new and definitive dimensions of the scope and legacy of the program.

NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) moves beyond media-driven perceptions of an American initiative to compete with the Soviet Union to reveal a complex mandates to both sustain U.S. leadership in space and to pursue international collaboration.  This second aspect, which has been almost entirely overlooked by historians, is manifest in over 4,000 international projects since NASA’s inception in 1958. 

Krige treats NASA as a vector of US foreign policy and describes the strategies it evolved to collaborate internationally, yet not violate goals to secure US global leadership in space science and technology.  The extent of permissible technology transfer is one of the key determinants of the structure of NASA's international partnerships.  The book situates the agency's efforts to regulate knowledge flows squarely within a foreign policy context, tracing changing relations with space programs in India and Japan, the USSR and Russia, and Western Europe.

The book, itself, is a collaborative project funded by NASA. Two chapters were authored by graduate students in the School of History, Technology, and Society, Angelina Long Callahan and Ashok Maharaj.

A second book, Space Shuttle Legacy:  How We Did It and What We Learned is part of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Library of Flight Series (AIAA Press, 2013). Krige edited the collection with Jim Craig, professor emeritus in Georgia Tech Aerospace Engineering, and Roger Launius, an associate  director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. 

Space Shuttle Legacy surveys 30 years of activity from both technological and social perspectives, aiming to draw the lessons of history.  The book deals with critical components including the main engine, the thermal protection system, and the software. It embeds the shuttle design in the history of NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), illuminating a fascination with the space plane. It describes the evolution of management structures put in place to run the program, analyzes the Challenger and Columbia accidents, describes operations and life in orbit, explores the balance between science and space station missions, reflects on the meaning of the shuttle as a social icon, and asks, “What next?”

Krige authored a chapter analyzing the failed attempt to include Western Europe as a major technological partner in the shuttle, which he attributes to White House fear that the US would pass sensitive technology to its allies.

Krige said, that the book benefited from the enthusiastic and generous support of Professor Vigor Yang, chair of Georgia Tech Aerospace Engineering, who financed a workshop of the book’s 14 authors on campus in September, 2012.