Rockets and People Volume I (NASA History Series. NASA Sp-2005-4110)

Rockets and People Volume I (NASA History Series. NASA Sp-2005-4110)
Author: Boris Chertok
Publisher: Military Bookshop
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781780398310

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program, but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoir of academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap. Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory near Moscow. Thirty years later, he was deputy to the founding figure of the Soviet space program, the mysterious "Chief Designer" Sergey Korolev. Chertok's 60-year-long career and the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program constitute the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread over four volumes (volumes two through four are forthcoming), academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society's quest to explore the cosmos. This book was edited by Asif Siddiqi, a historian of Russian space exploration, and General Tom Stafford contributed a foreword touching upon his significant work with the Russians on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Overall, this book is an engaging read while also contributing much new material to the literature about the Soviet space program.

Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets

Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets
Author: Jessica A. Fox
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2013-08-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1476730253

In this inspiring, delightful memoir, a young woman decides to escape the daily grind and turn her “what if” fantasy into a reality, only to find work—and a man—she loves in one fell swoop, all in a secondhand bookstore in a quaint Scottish town. Jessica Fox was living in Hollywood, an ambitious 26-year-old film-maker with a high-stress job at NASA. Working late one night, craving another life, she was seized by a moment of inspiration and tapped “second hand bookshop Scotland” into Google. She clicked the first link she saw. A month later, she arrived 2,000 miles across the Atlantic in Wigtown, on the west coast of Scotland, and knocked on the door of the bookshop she would be living in for the next month . . . The rollercoaster journey that ensued—taking in Scottish Hanukkah, yoga on Galloway’s west coast, and a waxing that she will never forget—would both break and mend her heart. It would also teach her that sometimes we must have the courage to travel the path less taken. Only then can we truly become the writers of our own stories.

Riding Rockets

Riding Rockets
Author: Mike Mullane
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2007-02-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0743276833

Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts, Mike Mullane completed three missions and logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery and Atlantis shuttles. It was a dream come true. As a boy, Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction, but the launch of Sputnik changed all that. Space flight became a possible dream and Mike Mullane set out to make it come true. In this absorbing memoir, Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious, sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts - a class that included Vietnam War veterans, feminists, and propeller-headed scientists. With unprecedented candour, Mullane describes the chilling fear and unparalleled joy of space flight. As his career centred around the Challenger disaster, Mullane also recounts the heartache of burying his friends and colleagues. And he pulls no punches as he reveals the ins and outs of NASA, frank in his criticisms of the agency. A blast from start to finish, Riding Rockets is a straight-from-the-gut account of what it means to be an astronaut, just in time for this latest generation of stargazers.

Rockets and People

Rockets and People
Author: Boris Evseevich Chertok
Publisher: U. S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

V. 1. [no special title] -- v. 2. Creating a rocket industry -- v. 3 Hot days of the Cold War -- v. 4. The moon race.

Rockets and Revolution

Rockets and Revolution
Author: Michael G. Smith
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2014-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0803286546

Rockets and Revolution offers a multifaceted study of the race toward space in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how the Russian, European, and American pioneers competed against one another in the early years to acquire the fundamentals of rocket science, engineer simple rockets, and ultimately prepare the path for human spaceflight. Between 1903 and 1953, Russia matured in radical and dramatic ways as the tensions and expectations of the Russian revolution drew it both westward and spaceward. European and American industrial capacities became the models to imitate and to surpass. The burden was always on Soviet Russia to catch up—enough to achieve a number of remarkable “firsts” in these years, from the first national rocket society to the first comprehensive surveys of spaceflight. Russia rose to the challenges of its Western rivals time and again, transcending the arenas of science and technology and adapting rocket science to popular culture, science fiction, political ideology, and military programs. While that race seemed well on its way to achieving the goal of space travel and exploring life on other planets, during the second half of the twentieth century these scientific advances turned back on humankind with the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile and the coming of the Cold War.

Rocket Men

Rocket Men
Author: Robert Kurson
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812988728

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting inside story of three heroic astronauts who took on the challenge of mankind’s historic first mission to the Moon, from the bestselling author of Shadow Divers. “Robert Kurson tells the tale of Apollo 8 with novelistic detail and immediacy.”—Andy Weir, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian and Artemis By August 1968, the American space program was in danger of failing in its two most important objectives: to land a man on the Moon by President Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline, and to triumph over the Soviets in space. With its back against the wall, NASA made an almost unimaginable leap: It would scrap its usual methodical approach and risk everything on a sudden launch, sending the first men in history to the Moon—in just four months. And it would all happen at Christmas. In a year of historic violence and discord—the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago—the Apollo 8 mission would be the boldest, riskiest test of America’s greatness under pressure. In this gripping insider account, Robert Kurson puts the focus on the three astronauts and their families: the commander, Frank Borman, a conflicted man on his final mission; idealistic Jim Lovell, who’d dreamed since boyhood of riding a rocket to the Moon; and Bill Anders, a young nuclear engineer and hotshot fighter pilot making his first space flight. Drawn from hundreds of hours of one-on-one interviews with the astronauts, their loved ones, NASA personnel, and myriad experts, and filled with vivid and unforgettable detail, Rocket Men is the definitive account of one of America’s finest hours. In this real-life thriller, Kurson reveals the epic dangers involved, and the singular bravery it took, for mankind to leave Earth for the first time—and arrive at a new world. “Rocket Men is a riveting introduction to the [Apollo 8] flight. . . . Kurson details the mission in crisp, suspenseful scenes. . . . [A] gripping book.”—The New York Times Book Review

The Love and Rockets Companion

The Love and Rockets Companion
Author: Marc Sobel
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2013-08-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1606995790

The Love and Rockets Companion: 30 Years (and Counting) contains three incredibly in-depth and candid interviews with creators Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez: one conducted by writer Neil Gaiman (Coraline); one conducted some six years into the comic’s run by longtime L&R publisher Gary Groth; and one conducted by the book’s author, spanning Gilbert’s, Jaime’s and Mario’s careers, and looking to the future of the ongoing series, with a follow-up conversation with Groth. This book has foldout family trees for both Gilbert’s Palomar and Jaime’s Locas storylines; unpublished art; a character glossary (which is handy, considering that Gilbert alone has created 50+ characters!); highlights from the original series’ anarchic letters columns; timelines; and the most wide-ranging Hernandez Brothers bibliography ever compiled, including album and DVD covers, posters and more.

Animals in Space

Animals in Space
Author: Colin Burgess
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2007-07-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0387496785

This book is as a detailed, but highly readable and balanced account of the history of animal space flights carried out by all nations, but principally the United States and the Soviet Union. It explores the ways in which animal high-altitude and space flight research impacted on space flight biomedicine and technology, and how the results - both successful and disappointing - allowed human beings to then undertake that same hazardous journey with far greater understanding and confidence. This complete and authoritative book will undoubtedly become the ultimate authority on animal space flights.

Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Author: Ozan Varol
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1541762614

* One of Inc.com's "6 Books You Need to Read in 2020 (According to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, and Adam Grant)"* Adam Grant's # 1 pick of his top 20 books of 2020* One of 6 Groundbreaking Books of Spring 2020 (according to Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant). A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible. Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process -- a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets. Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one. In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life -- whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these problems -- without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking -- enjoy an extraordinary advantage. Think Like a Rocket Scientist will inspire you to take your own moonshot and enable you to achieve liftoff.