When future generations review the history of the 20th century, they will undoubtedly judge humanity's movement into space, with both machines and people, as one of its seminal developments. Even at this juncture, the complex nature of space-flight and the activity that it has engendered on the part of many peoples and governments, makes the US civil space programme a significant area of investigation. People from all avenues of experience and levels of education share an interest in the drama of spaceflight. This book offers an up-to-date synthesis of the American civil space programme and is designed specially for use as a college textbook. Written by NASA's Chief Historian, it describes the history of this effort from its earliest origins to the early 1990s and offers an analysis of the space programme that merges political, economic, technological, scientific and foreign affairs factors into a powerful story. In common with all the Anvil Series texts, historical narrative is enhanced with material from key documents which shed light on other aspects of the story.