title: Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond
author:  William E. Burrows 
description: Journalist Burrows's ( Deep Black ) time-capsule history of interplanetary space flight focuses on the "golden age" of unmanned space exploration: the robot flights of deep-space probes like Voyager, Pioneer, Ranger and Magellan. Political wrangling by sketchily-drawn bigwigs in U.S. space programs cast a pall over achievements in space as reported here. Even launch-room quotes from NASA officials do not add enough flavor to this dense stew of technical tidbits, committee reports and personality profiles. Only in late-chapter accounts of "Astropolitics: No Parades for Robots" and "Tomorrowland" do Burrows's arguments for extending the reach of technology into the solar system finally lift off from the muddle of bureaucratic history. Photos. <br />Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## ![images](../Images/283_1.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  William E. Burrows, professor emeritus of journalism and mass communication at
  New York University, is the author of twelve books and numerous articles in
  the _New York Times_ , the _Washington Post_ , the _Wall Street Journal_ ,
  _Foreign Affairs_ , and other publications. His previous books include _The
  Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth_ ; _By Any Means Necessary:
  America's Secret Air War in the Cold War_ ; _The Infinite Journey: Eyewitness
  Accounts of NASA and the Age of Space_ ; _This New Ocean: The Story of the
  First Space Age_ ; _Mission to Deep Space: Voyagers’ Journey of Discovery_ ;
  _Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond_ ; and _Deep Black:
  Space Espionage and National Security_. He is the coauthor (with Robert
  Windrem) of _Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a
  Fragmenting World_. Burrows was the only nonscientist on the National Research
  Council's Near-Earth Object Survey and