Thomas Jackson King (1920- ) was born at Huntsville, Alabama to Ephraim Jackson and Beatrice Cloud King. He married Sarah Louise Hardy in 1947. They first settled in Houston, Texas and later lived abroad as well as in Alabama, California and Louisiana. They were the parents of two children.

Few events in history have been more monumental than the emergence of the Space Age, which began with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957. During the next two decades, more than 1,600 spacecraft of all varieties were launched, mostly into the earth's orbit In addition, twelve men walked on the moon and returned home. By the end of the 1980s, there were more than 300 operational spacecraft and thousands of orbiting objects, mostly the spent, upper stages of launch vehicles and inert spacecraft. The Encyclopedia of Space Vehicles uses a combination of high-quality photos, illustrations, fact tables, and authoritative text to describe all the vehicles and equipment used in space, past and present. It covers all types of rockets, satellites, and probes, as well as their equipment and cargo, such as radio transmitters, measuring instruments, and cameras.

See How They Go: Spaceship introduces kids to vehicles that travel into space, from moon rockets to space shuttles.

Access—no single word better describes the primary concern of the exploration and development of space. Every participant in space activities—civil, military, scientific, or commercial—needs affordable, reliable, frequent, and flexible access to space. To Reach the High Frontier details the histories of the various space access vehicles developed in the United States since the birth of the space age in 1957. Each case study has been written by a specialist knowledgeable about the vehicle described and places each system in the larger context of the history of spaceflight. The technical challenge of reaching space with chemical rockets, the high costs associated with space launch, the long lead times necessary for scheduling flights, and the poor reliability of the rockets themselves show launch vehicles to be the space program's most difficult challenge.