The Reluctant Rocketman

The Reluctant Rocketman
Author: Sarah Kasprowicz
Publisher: Greenbean Creative Solutions
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9780988199477

In October, 1970, The Blue Flame rocket car screamed across the Bonneville Salt Flats at 622.407 mph setting the absolute world land speed record. The title held fast for 13 years and remains the fastest American-built car in history. Ray Dausman designed the rocket engine for The Blue Flame. Why wasn't he present when The Blue Flame set the world record? Why didn't the car achieve 1,000 mph as he designed it to do? Ray's story unfolds with humorous observations of what it was like to be a fish out of water in the racing world. The reader has a front row seat for this wrestling match between regret and perspective of achievement. Sarah, Ray's daughter, shares his story in this memoir of a man with a passion for rockets and new ideas. The Reluctant Rocketman introduces the reader to a boy with a thirst for new adventures who develops a passion for rockets as he reaches adulthood with an even greater appreciation for new ideas. The Blue Flame project is the common thread throughout these chapters which shed light on the life a self-taught rocket designer who had to decide if the price of invention was worth it after all.

Rocketman

Rocketman
Author: Ky Michaelson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release:
Genre: Rocketry
ISBN: 9781610591737

The story of the record-breaking innovator who has put rocket power into everything from toilet seats and wheelchairs to go-carts and flexible flyer sleds.

Rocket Man

Rocket Man
Author: David A. Clary
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2003-08-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1401398332

More famous in his day than Einstein or Edison, the troubled, solitary genius Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945) was the American father of rocketry and space flight, launching the world's first liquid-fuel rockets and the first powered vehicles to break the sound barrier. Supported by Charles Lindbergh and Harry Guggenheim, through fiery, often explosive, experiments at Roswell, New Mexico, he invented the methods that carried men to the moon. Today, no rocket or jet plane can fly without using his inventions. Yet he is the "forgotten man" of the space age. His own government ignored his rocketry until the Germans demonstrated its principles in the V-2 missiles of World War II. The American government usurped his 214 patents, while suppressing his contributions in the name of national security, until it was forced to pay one million dollars for patent infringement. Goddard became famous again, monuments and medals raining upon his memory. But his renewed fame soon faded, and Goddard's pivotal role in launching the Space Age has been largely forgotten.

Rocket Man

Rocket Man
Author: Melanie Greene
Publisher: Melanie Greene
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1941967043

Rocket Man

Rocket Man
Author: Pat Patterson
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1435707036

After moving to America, Nick Wideman - son of a Greek sprinter and an American pole vaulter - is dumbfounded when he is criticized by the black community and ostracized by whites for transferring to all-black Central High School in an attempt to join a nationally acclaimed 400-meter relay team, whose runners are so fast they are called Rocket Men. A school-boy's crush on pretty brown Mia Hunter only adds fuel to the fire as Nick battles reverse discrimination and stiff competition to make the team.

Bonneville Salt Flats

Bonneville Salt Flats
Author: "Landspeed" Louise Ann Noeth
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2020-11-09
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 1439671575

Astronaut John Glenn used Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats as a landmark from space, but on Earth, amateur motorsports devotees have used the blistering hot, flat land as a speed laboratory for more than a century. On August 22, 1949, the hot rodders joined the pageant of power with their handcrafted cars, trucks, and motorcycles for a one-time event but never stopped coming back, trying to go faster every run down the multi-mile course. All came looking for the answer to the same question: "How fast will it go?" Those efforts have made them the fastest people on the planet, reaching speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour. On the salt, people find the limits of their courage, learn what daring greatly is all about, and realize why a Bonneville Salt Flats speed record is an internationally respected pedigree. People who race on the salt flats become a family bound together by speed--a powerful force that erases ethnic, economic, political, and religious barriers. They are land speed racers. And this is their story.

Ultimate Speed

Ultimate Speed
Author: Samuel Hawley
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1641600233

An L.A. hot-rodder with a high school education, a family to support, and almost no money, Craig Breedlove set out in the late 1950s to do something big: harness the thrust of a jet in a car. With a growing obsession that would cost him his marriage, he started building in his dad's garage. The car's name was Spirit of America. Through perseverance and endless hard work, Craig completed Spirit and broke the land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats, setting a new mark of 407 mph in 1963. He went on to be the first person to drive 500 and 600 mph, breaking the land speed record five times. In the early 1970s he turned to rockets and set an acceleration record at Bonneville that stands to this day. He built a jet car in the 1990s, Spirit of America–Sonic Arrow, to go head to head against Britain's ThrustSSC to be the first to Mach 1. Craig's subsequent crash at 675 mph remains the fastest in history. Even today, at the age of eighty, he is going strong with plans for yet another Spirit of America racer. The ultimate goal: 1,000 mph. Ultimate Speed is the authorized biography of Craig Breedlove, with a foreword by Craig himself. A candid revelation of one of motorsports' most interesting figures, the book is based primarily on countless hours of interviews with Craig and dozens of people connected to his life.

Rocket Man

Rocket Man
Author: Mark Bego
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1643133780

The colorful and kaleidoscopic life of one of the world’s most original and talented musical artists. Here’s the book every pop music lover has been waiting for—full of the scandals, addictions, affairs and tantrums that underscored the life of arguably the world’s greatest pop musician. Flamboyant, iconic Elton John is as much part of the American musical landscape as he is in his native England. In the 1970s, when popular music on both sides of the Atlantic fragmented into disco, soul, hard rock, pop and folk, Elton John embraced them all with his signature creative panache. Emerging in the late 1960s as a singer/songwriter, Elton was widely acknowledged as the most prolific pop and rock star of the decade by the mid-1970s. His peerless musical style and ability to jump from sensitive ballads to bawdy rock anthems to campy pop have made him a musical superstar for the ages. From his heartfelt ballads like “Tiny Dancer” and “Your Song,” to his rock & roll hits including “Benny and The Jets” and “Crocodile Rock,” Elton has lived one of the most outrageous and colorful lives in show business. Having met the “Rocket Man” the first time in the 1980s, Bego has drawn upon his personal observations, vast research, and has been able interview dozens of Elton’s collaborators and lifelong friends to produce the the ultimate story on the amazing and larger-than-life Elton John.

1950s “Rocketman” TV Series and Their Fans

1950s “Rocketman” TV Series and Their Fans
Author: C. Miller
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2012-08-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0230377327

The fourteen essays featured here focus on series such as Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, and Captain Z-Ro, exploring their roles in the day-to-day lives of their fans through topics such as mentoring, promotion of the real-world space program, merchandising, gender issues, and ranger clubs - all the while promoting the fledgling medium of television.