What an amazing career. Tom Stafford attained the highest speed ever
reached by a test pilot (28,547 mph), carried a cosmonaut's coffin with
Soviet Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, led the team that designed the
sequence of missions leading to the original lunar landing, and drafted
the original specifications for the B-2 stealth bomber on a piece of
hotel stationery. But his crowning achievement was surely his role as
America's unofficial space ambassador to the Soviet Union during the
darkest days of the Cold War.
In this lively memoir written with Michael Cassutt, Stafford begins by
recounting his early successes as a test pilot, Gemini and Apollo
astronaut, and USAF general. As President Nixon's stand-in at the 1971
Soviet funeral for three cosmonauts, he opened the door to the
possibility of cooperation in space between Russians and Americans.
Stafford's Apollo-Soyuz team was the first group of Americans to work at
the cosmonaut training center, and also the first to visit Baikonur, the
top-secret Soviet launch center, in 1974. His 17 July 1975 "handshake in
space" with Soviet commander Alexei Leonov (who became a lifelong
friend) proved to the world that the two opposing countries could indeed
work successfully together.
Stafford has continued in this leadership role right up to the present,
participating in designing and evaluating the Space Shuttle, Mir, and
the International Space Station. He is truly an American hero who
personifies the broadest spirit of exploration and cooperation.
