Space History

Breaking All The Rules: The Inside Story of the New Race traces the origins of a second Space Race that began at the end of the original 1960s US-Soviet space race and eventually led to SpaceX and the explosive growth in commercial space being seen today. The story covers how this revolution began with a band of misfit engineers and scientists and the inside story of how this was eventually ignited with the money and vision of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson.

Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject.

Near the end of the Apollo 15 mission, David Scott and fellow moonwalker James Irwin conducted a secret ceremony unsanctioned by NASA: they placed on the lunar soil a small tin figurine called The Fallen Astronaut, along with a plaque bearing a list of names. By telling the stories of those sixteen astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the quest to reach the moon between 1962 and 1972, this book enriches the saga of humankind's greatest scientific undertaking, Project Apollo, and conveys the human cost of the space race.

The Apollo space program is the most famous and celebrated in American history, but the first successful landing of men on the moon during Apollo 11 had complicated roots dating back over a decade, and it also involved one of NASA’s most infamous tragedies.

Why are we here? Human beings have asked themselves this question for centuries. Modern science largely argues that human beings are chance products of a purposeless universe, but other traditions believe humanity has an essential role and responsibility in creation. Lachman brings together many strands of esoteric, spiritual and philosophical thought to form a counter-argument to the nihilism that permeates the twenty-first century.

London, 1965-69…Hilarious whodunit with quirky characters for fans of the Beatles, Golden Girls and Murder She Wrote. A clean, fun read. Beatles abound! The Cozy Beatles Mystery series is definitely a page turner! Helen Spencer's got a problem with stolen cars. What do you get when you cross 1960s supermodels, jealous neighbors and envious businessmen with the Beatles, their wives and girlfriends, and the music of the Summer of Love? A whole bunch of suspects... The one thing you can’t do is panic. So why was I panicking? Because John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls Royce had just been ...

July 1967: At the Moscow Air Show, the Soviets unveiled six new state-of-the-art aircraft. From among this lineup of new fighters and interceptors stood the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 - purportedly capable of outrunning and outmaneuvering any aircraft in NATO’s inventory. Yet even before its public appearance in Moscow, the MiG-25 had been a grave concern for Western analysts.

In researching one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter, Ken Alder stumbled on a 200-year-old secret: The meter, it turns out, is in error. This is a story of two men, a secret, and a timeless human dilemma: is it permissible to perpetuate a small lie in the service of a larger truth?

Galileo's oldest child was 13 when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose 17th-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion.

Women physicists and astronomers from around the world have transformed science and society, but the critical roles they played in their fields are not always well-sung. Her Space, Her Time, authored by award-winning quantum physicist Shohini Ghose, brings together the stories of these remarkable women to celebrate their indelible scientific contributions. Her Space, Her Time is a story of innovation, leadership, and overcoming invisibility that will leave a lasting impression on any listener curious about the rule-breakers and trendsetters who illuminated our understanding of the universe.

On the morning of 28 January 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions around the world witnessed the tragic deaths of the crew, which included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like the assassination of JFK, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in twentieth century history – one that forever changed the way America thought of itself and its optimistic view of the future. Yet the full story of what happened – and why – has never been told.

Severin Unck's father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father's films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars.

In October 1968 Donn Eisele flew with fellow astronauts Walt Cunningham and Wally Schirra into Earth orbit in Apollo 7. The first manned mission in the Apollo program and the first manned flight after a fire during a launch pad test killed three astronauts in early 1967, Apollo 7 helped restart NASA's manned-spaceflight program.

The action-packed climax of the Iron Dragon saga! An ancient race of aliens threatens humanity with annihilation, and the only people who can stop them are a band of bloodthirsty Vikings. Recruited from Earth by one of the last survivors of the Iron Dragon project, Eric Bloodaxe and his horde battle machines and monsters across space and time on an epic voyage to Ragnarok!

Recent polls report that 96-percent of Americans believe in God, and 73-percent believe that angels regularly visit Earth. Why is this? Why, despite the rise of science, technology, and secular education, are people turning to religion in greater numbers than ever before? Why do people believe in God at all?

A comprehensive study of the missile system that formed a critical component of the United States' nuclear arsenal. The Titan II ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) program was developed by the United States military to bolster the size, strength, and speed of the nation's strategic weapons arsenal in the 1950s and 1960s.

For fans of The Astronaut Wives Club, The Mercury 13 reveals the little-known true story of the remarkable women who trained for NASA space flight. In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space, a group of women underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming America’s first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of tests at the legendary Lovelace Foundation as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they were summarily dismissed by the boys’ club at NASA and on Capitol Hill.

It's 1964 in the USSR, and unbeknownst even to Premier Khrushchev himself, the Soviet space program is a sham. Well, half a sham. While the program has successfully launched five capsules into space, the Chief Designer and his team have never successfully brought one back to Earth. To disguise this, they've used twins. But in a nation built on secrets and propaganda, the biggest lie of all is about to unravel. Because there are no more twins left.

Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. Now, Earth's isolation is coming to an end. Over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of "exoplanets" orbiting other stars, including some that could be similar to our own world. Studying those distant planets for signs of life will be crucial to understanding life's intricate mysteries right here on Earth. In a firsthand account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with top researchers.

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical narratives by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. This audiobook vividly describes how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. After decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before.