Space Exploration History

After spending the last century off-planet in the Kuiper Belt, exo-miner Quatrain Dyer awakens from stasis to an agonizing toothache and an unnerving sense of displacement. Why is he in his hive's old recspace? Why is all his gear still here? And why hasn't the reintegration team from CAGE Dynamics met him? The answers Quatrain discovers will turn his reality inside out

From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who, in the 1860s, flew seven miles above the earth - without oxygen.