Rocket! How a Toy Launched the Space Age

Rocket! How a Toy Launched the Space Age PDF Author: Richard Maurer
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780517596296
Category : Rocketry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The author of The NOVA Space Explorer's Guide recounts the story of one of the 20th century's most remarkable technological accomplishments. More than 60 photos, including NASA color images, illustrate this illuminating introduction to the physics of space flight. Includes simple rocketry activities that youngsters can try safely at home.

Space Age

Space Age PDF Author: William J. Walter
Publisher: Random House (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
The magnificently illustrated companion volume to the six-part PBS television series from the creators of Cosmos and Planet Earth. Space Age is a great human story, full of intrigue and global rivalries, secrecy, surprises, heroes and heroines, brilliance and bravado, huge risk and profound failure, and an increasing awareness of who we are and where we fit in the universe. Full-color photos and illustrations.

Willy Ley

Willy Ley PDF Author: Jared S. Buss
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059860
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
"Beautifully written. Reveals the vicissitudes of an extraordinarily interesting life."--Michael J. Neufeld, author of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War "Willy Ley has been a mystery among spaceflight historians for many years. His role as science writer, advocate, and popularizer is known to many but understood by few. This book unpacks that story."--Roger D. Launius, associate director of collections and curatorial affairs, National Air and Space Museum "Ley lit the fire of interplanetary enthusiasm in the hearts of generations of young space cadets. Long overdue, this biography establishes the details and the ups and downs of his career."--Tom D. Crouch, author of Lighter Than Air: An Illustrated History of Balloons and Airships "Beyond recovering the fascinating and many contradictory aspects of Ley's extraordinary life, Buss has provided a valuable case study of the complex relationship between science popularization, mass media, and scientific advocacy in the twentieth century."--Asif A. Siddiqi, author of The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 Willy Ley inspired young rocket scientists and would-be astronauts around the world to imagine a future of interplanetary travel long before space shuttles existed. This is the first biography of the science writer and rocketeer who predicted and boosted the rise of the Space Age. Born in Germany, Ley became involved in amateur rocketry until the field was taken over by the Nazis. He fled to America, where he forged a new life as a weapons expert and journalist during World War II and as a rocket researcher after the war. As America's foremost authority on rockets, missiles, and space travel, he authored books and scientific articles, while also regularly writing for science fiction pulp magazines and publishing what he termed romantic zoology--a blend of zoology, cryptozoology, history, and mythology. He even consulted for television's Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and the Disney program Man in Space, thrilling audiences with a romanticized view of what spaceflight would be like. Yet as astronauts took center stage and scientific intellectuals such as Wernher von Braun became influential during the space race, Ley lost his celebrity status. With an old-fashioned style of popular writing and eccentric perspectives influenced by romanticism and science fiction, he was ignored by younger historians. This book returns Willy Ley to his rightful place as the energizer of an era--a time when scientists and science popularizers mixed ranks and shared the spotlight so that our far-fetched, fantastic dreams could turn into the reality of tomorrow.

Amazing Stories of the Space Age

Amazing Stories of the Space Age PDF Author: Rod Pyle
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1633882217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
Reveals the most unusual space missions ever devised inside and outside of NASA during a time when nothing was too odd to be taken seriously, and the race to the moon and the threat from the Soviet Union trumped all other considerations. --Publisher.

Rockets

Rockets PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rocketry
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description


Rocket Man

Rocket Man PDF Author: David H. Clary
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780756798512
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
More famous in his day than Einstein or Edison, Goddard was the Amer. founder of rocketry & space flight, launching the world's first liquid-fuel rockets & the first powered vehicles to break the sound barrier. Supported by Charles Lindbergh & Harry Guggenheim, he devised the methods that carried men to the moon. Yet Goddard is the forgotten manÓ of the space age. After the Germans launched the V-2 missiles of WW2, the Amer. gov't. usurped his 214 patents & suppressed his contributions in the name of nat. security, until it was forced to pay 1 million dollars for patent infringement. Goddard became famous again, but his renewed fame soon faded, & his pivotal role in launching the space age has been largely forgotten -- until now. Photos.

Blazing the Trail

Blazing the Trail PDF Author: Mike Gruntman
Publisher: AIAA
ISBN: 9781563477058
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Book Description
Winner of the Luigi Napolitano Award (2006) from the International Academy of Astronautics This book presents the fascinating story of the events that paved the way to space. It introduces the reader to the history of early rocketry and the subsequent developments that led into the space age. People of various nations and from various lands contributed to the breakthrough to space, and the book takes the reader to faraway places on five continents. It also includes many quotes to give readers a flavor of how the participants viewed the developments. Most publications on the topic either target narrow aspects of rocket history or are popular books that scratch the surface, with minimal and sometimes inaccurate technical details. This book bridges the gap. It contains numerous technical details usually unavailable in popular publications. The details are not overbearing and anyone interested in rocketry and space exploration will navigate through the book without difficulty. There are 340 figures and photographs, many appearing for the first time.

Where's My Space Age?

Where's My Space Age? PDF Author: Sean Topham
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
Sean Topham goes back to the future to follow the evolution of space-age design: from its conception in the 1950s to its decline in the 1970s and its retro-revival today. There are illustrations of household objects and "haute couture", advertising and comic books, plastics and interior design.

Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age

Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age PDF Author:
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 1568983085
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Book Description
The inherent contradictions of the Space Age -- the mixture of technologies high and low, of nostalgia and progress, of pathos and promise -- are revealed in Kosmos, Adam Bartos's astonishing photographic survey of the Soviet space program. Bartos's fascination with this subject led him to seek out places like the bedroom where Yuri Gagarian slept the night before his history-making flight into space, located in the Baiknour Cosmodrome, the one-time top-secret space complex in the Kazakh desert. Kosmos presents 94 of Bartos's photographs, rich with the incongruities of the history, science, culture, and politics of the Space Age.

This New Ocean

This New Ocean PDF Author: William E. Burrows
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307765482
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 795

Book Description
It was all part of man's greatest adventure--landing men on the Moon and sending a rover to Mars, finally seeing the edge of the universe and the birth of stars, and launching planetary explorers across the solar system to Neptune and beyond. The ancient dream of breaking gravity's hold and taking to space became a reality only because of the intense cold-war rivalry between the superpowers, with towering geniuses like Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolyov shelving dreams of space travel and instead developing rockets for ballistic missiles and space spectaculars. Now that Russian archives are open and thousands of formerly top-secret U.S. documents are declassified, an often startling new picture of the space age emerges: the frantic effort by the Soviet Union to beat the United States to the Moon was doomed from the beginning by gross inefficiency and by infighting so treacherous that Winston Churchill likened it to "dogs fighting under a carpet"; there was more than science behind the United States' suggestion that satellites be launched during the International Geophysical Year, and in one crucial respect, Sputnik was a godsend to Washington; the hundred-odd German V-2s that provided the vital start to the U.S. missile and space programs legally belonged to the Soviet Union and were spirited to the United States in a derring-do operation worthy of a spy thriller; despite NASA's claim that it was a civilian agency, it had an intimate relationship with the military at the outset and still does--a distinction the Soviet Union never pretended to make; constant efforts to portray astronauts and cosmonauts as "Boy Scouts" were often contradicted by reality; the Apollo missions to the Moon may have been an unexcelled political triumph and feat of exploration, but they also created a headache for the space agency that lingers to this day. This New Ocean is based on 175 interviews with Russian and American scientists and engineers; on archival documents, including formerly top-secret National Intelligence Estimates and spy satellite pictures; and on nearly three decades of reporting. The impressive result is this fascinating story--the first comprehensive account--of the space age. Here are the strategists and war planners; engineers and scientists; politicians and industrialists; astronauts and cosmonauts; science fiction writers and journalists; and plain, ordinary, unabashed dreamers who wanted to transcend gravity's shackles for the ultimate ride. The story is written from the perspective of a witness who was present at the beginning and who has seen the conclusion of the first space age and the start of the second.