Come Fly with Us is the story of an elite group of space
travelers who flew as members of many space shuttle crews from
pre-Challenger days to Columbia in 2003. Not part of the regular
NASA astronaut corps, these professionals known as "payload
specialists" came from a wide variety of backgrounds and were
chosen for an equally wide variety of scientific, political, and
national security reasons. Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas focus
on this special fraternity of spacefarers and their individual
reflections on living and working in space. Relatively unknown to
the public and often flying only single missions, these payload
specialists give the reader an unusual perspective on the
experience of human spaceflight. The authors also bring to light
NASA's struggle to integrate the wide-ranging personalities and
professions of these men and women into the professional astronaut
ranks. While Come Fly with Us relates the experiences of the
payload specialists up to and including the Challenger tragedy, the
authors also detail the later high-profile flights of a select few,
including Barbara Morgan, John Glenn (who returned to space at the
age of seventy-seven), and Ilan Ramon of Israel aboard Columbia on
its final, fatal flight, STS-107. Purchase the audio edition.