Kinsman

A collection of short stories in one of Ben Bova's near-future series (the others being the Sam Gunn stories and the loosely-connected Grand Tour stories). Chet Kinsman is a USAF astronaut for much of the stories. There are several stories original to the collection (which act more as bridges than to advance the tale) and a couple of longer works that appeared elsewhere (these form the core of the book). In one Kinsman becomes the "founding father" of the zero-gee club when he gets to "make it" with a beautiful reporter in orbit. It turns out that she was using him to. In a second, Kinsman kills a Russian cosmonaut when he is investigating a Russian satellite. In the third, Kinsman partially redeems himself by saving a lost astronaut during a stint with NASA. In the fourth, Kinsman is instrumental in getting a USAF moonbase started. These tales lead to the novel Millennium, which in turn leads to the novel Colony. The longer tales are good and worth reading. Skip the shorter stuff.

This book counts as 8 entries for the 2005 Short Story Project. I would list titles, but any titles that existed when the stories were first published have been erased for generic titles like "Age 32", etc.