One of the few memorable scenes from the second half of the book is his portrayal of a teleconference which took place the night before the launch between engineers at Morton Thiokol, makers of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, and NASA officials. Thiokol's engineers spent almost an hour explaining why they believed that cold temperatures at Cape Canaveral would impair the performance of their now infamous O-rings. The Thiokol engineers voted unanimously to recommend against launching.

But in an act of colossal and historic misjudgement, Thiokol managers vetoed the recommendation of their own engineers. The Challenger flew.

McConnell's book ends as it began, with an account of the launch which took place despite significant misgivings. Reading about the disaster for the second time, the reader feels a certain rage at the arrogance and idiocy that caused it, and cares enough about the astronauts--who had no inkling of the O-ring difficulty--to grieve for them. None but the most iron-hearted cynic could enjoy a space shuttle joke after reading this book.

Still, McConnell avoids wholesale NASA-bashing. His affection for the agency is obvious, and that makes his criticism all the more damning. It's not easy to tear down a hero you admire.

But if you think that putting astronauts into space is a wasteful extravaganza, you won't swallow the conclusions McConnell reaches in his epilogue. He believes that the destiny of mankind lies in the stars, and that the Challenger accident should be understood as only a setback, however tragic, to our colonization of space.

At the very least, McConnell's book will inform debate about the future of manned spaceflight in the United States. It's a laboriously researched work--and a testimony to the simple truth that high technology and bureaucratic shortsightedness don't mix.