Gone. While the world celebrated Neil Armstrong's first steps on lunar soil, the former residents of Gainesville, Napoleon, and Santa Rosa, Mississippi were still searching for home. Their communities had been sacrificed to create the acoustic buffer zone around NASA's rocket testing facility—collateral damage in humanity's greatest adventure. Ghost Towns of the Space Age reveals the hidden cost of American technological triumph: the systematic displacement of thousands of families whose homes stood in the way of progress. From Mississippi's sunken villages to Nevada's atomic proving grounds, from Idaho's nuclear boomtowns to the forgotten neighbors of Cape Canaveral, this is the untold story of the communities that vanished so America could win the space race. But this isn't just history. As SpaceX transforms rural Texas and private space companies reshape the American landscape, the patterns of displacement that defined the original Space Age are repeating. The race to Mars is creating new ghost towns, and the lessons of the past have never been more urgent. Part historical investigation, part human drama, part urgent warning for the future, Ghost Towns of the Space Age asks the essential question: What is the true cost of reaching for the stars