I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis. I always enjoy reading memoirs of people who were at the center of a great adventure, and the new autobiography by chris craft – "flight" — fills the bill.
Craft was the head man for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions. His cool, calm southern accent seemed as much a part of the early flights as the exploits of the astronauts themselves.
Craft was there, literally, before the beginning, an engineer working on jet planes when he moved to the nascent NASA program. He recounts the recruitment and training of the Mercury Seven, the thrill of the first flight by Alan Shepherd, the tragedy of the Apollo One fire, and the final triumph of the first Apollo mission. And all the while, the reader never loses sight of the fact that this was something we had never done before; every day they went to work, astronauts and engineers alike were faced with completely new problems.
It's a thrilling ride: "Flight" by Chris Craft.
Those are my ideas, and at the NCPA we know ideas can change the world. I'm Pete du Pont. Next time, innovation with young offenders.