Destination: Universe! & Great Stories of Space Travel

Destination: Universe!, published in 1952,  is a collection of stories written by A. E. Van Vogt and originally  published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine between 1944 and 1950. Great Stories of Space Travel, published in 1963 and edited by Groff Croklin,  is a collection of short stories by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Jerome Bixby, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Lester Del Ray, Damon Knight, Murry Leinster, Eric Frank Russel, A.E. Van Vogt, and Jack Vance.  The stories were all written from 1944 to 1955, and were originally published in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction.  Both of these books have cool spiral galaxy covers.  The Van Vogt book is mostly a collection of classics like "Far Centaurus," "The Enchanted Village," and "The Search."  Great Stories of Space Travel also contains some, like the title says, great stories.   "Kaleidoscope," by Ray Bradbury, is about what it's like to die in the vacuum of space.   Here's an excerpt:

     "A meteor flashed by.  Hollis looked down and his hand was gone.  Blood spurted.  Suddenly there was no air in his suit.  He has enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised.  Nothing surprised him any more.  The air in the suit came back to normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed.  And the blood that had flowed so swiftly was pressurized as he fastened the knob yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.
     All of this took place in a terrible silence on his part.  And the other men chatted.  That one man, Lespere,  went on and on with his talk about his wife on Mars, his wife on Venus, his wife on Jupiter, his money, his wondrous times, his drunkenness, his gambling, his happiness.  On and on, while they fell, fell.  Lespere reminisced on the past, happy, while he fell to his death."

Imagine surviving your rocket ship blowing up, and then losing a hand to a meteor, just before you die in space from running out of air!  What are the odds? If it's not one thing, it's another...
All in all,  nice collections of "Golden Age" science fiction.