April 12, 2011 was the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering
journey into space. To commemorate this momentous achievement,
Springer-Praxis has produced a mini-series of books that reveals how
humanity's knowledge of flying, working, and living in space has grown
in the last half century.
"Partners in Space" focuses on the early to late 1990s, a time in the
post-Soviet era when relations between East and West steadily - though
not without difficulty - thawed and the foundations of real harmony and
genuine co-operation were laid for the first time with Shuttle-Mir and
the International Space Station. This book explores the events which
preceded that new ear, including the political demise of Space Station
Freedom and the consequences of the fall of the Soviet Union on a
once-proud human space program. It traces the history of "the
Partnership" through the often traumatic times of Shuttle-Mir and closes
on the eve of the launch of Zarya, the first component of today's
International Space Station.