Space History

Florida's Space Coast tells the compelling story of America's half century in space exploration from the successful launch of the first two-stage rocket in 1950 through the space shuttle missions of 2000. Told from the unique viewpoint of the people who built the Spaceport, this book shows how the space program transformed the east central Florida coast from a traditional citrus production and tourist area to one of the most influential high-tech centers in the nation.

As command module pilot of Apollo 17, the last crewed flight to the moon, Ron Evans combined precision flying and painstaking geological observation with moments of delight and enthusiasm. As a patriotic American in charge of command module America, Evans was nicknamed “Captain America” by his fellow crew members.

Infinity Beckoned illuminates a critical period of space history when humans dared an expansive leap into the inner solar system. Jay Gallentine conveys the trials and triumphs of the people on the ground who conceived and engineered the missions that put robotic spacecraft on the heavenly bodies nearest our own.

Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes.

Franz Cumnot investigated various ancient sources of astrology and astronomy, including the Mesopotamian and the Mediterranean. The book discusses these early origins, supplemented by the author’s theories. From Sumeria, the cradle of astrology and astronomy, the knowledge spread to Greece and Rome where it became entwined with paganism.

Since the first humans looked up and saw the sun swallowed by darkness, our species has been captivated by solar eclipses. Astronomer and anthropologist Anthony Aveni explains the history and culture surrounding solar eclipses, from prehistoric Stonehenge to Babylonian creation myths, to a confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity, to a spectacle that left New Yorkers in the moon's shadow, to future eclipses that will capture human imaginations.

What's more exciting that spaceships and astronauts? How about a spaceship carrying the first astronauts ever to see the moon first-hand - on Christmas! The year was 1968, and the American people were still reeling from the spacecraft fire that killed the Apollo 1 crew a year earlier. On top of that, there were rumors that the Russian cosmonauts were getting ready to fly around the moon. NASA realized that they needed to take a bold step - and that they needed to take it now.

When Ed White, clad in his gleaming space suit with a large American flag on his left shoulder, eased himself outside his Gemini spacecraft in 1965, Americans had a new space hero. They also learned a new acronym: EVA, short for extravehicular activity, more commonly known as "spacewalking." Though few understood the tremendous risks White was taking in his twenty-two-minute space walk, Americans watched with immense pride and patriotism as White, tethered to Gemini 4, propelled himself around the spacecraft with a pressurized oxygen-fueled zip gun.

Silly Daddy dares to write apocalyptic science fiction for the whole family! Think "Star Trek" meets the Bible. Deleting history was just the beginning. Blast off with STAR CHOSEN, a space opera of post-biblical proportions! After war, heartbreak, attacks to your faith, and the erasure of all history and culture, whose side will you fight on: the Proud... or the Chosen? Xeric Award winner and Ignatz Award nominee Joe Chiappetta crafts "Star Chosen," a science fiction epic for all ages. In a time yet to come, the high-tech Faith War threatens to destroy all religions across the universe. The...

Spanning four decades of dramatic advances in astronomy and planetary science, this book tells the story of eleven iconic exploratory missions and how they have fundamentally transformed our scientific and cultural perspectives on the universe and our place in it

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.

In 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. Suddenly Silicon Valley, not NASA, was the epicentre of the new Space Age. Start-ups and investors began to realise that the heavens - ungoverned and unregulated - were open for business. When the Heavens Went on Sale tells the remarkable, unfolding story of this frenzied race to control access to outer space. Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies - Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab - as they attempt to launch thousands of low-cost rockets and satellites into orbit.

The summer of 1969 saw astronauts land on the moon for the first time and hippie hordes descend on Woodstock for a legendary music festival. For Neil M. Maher, the conjunction of these two era-defining events is not entirely coincidental. With its lavishly funded mandate to send a man to the moon, Apollo became a litmus test in the 1960s culture wars.

The Empire State is the other New York. It’s a parallel-universe, Prohibition-era world of mooks and shamuses that is the twisted magic mirror to our bustling Big Apple. It’s a city where sinister characters lurk around every corner while the great superheroes who once kept the streets safe have fallen into deadly rivalries and feuds. Not that its colourful residents know anything about the real New York...until detective Rad Bradley makes a discovery that will change the lives of all its inhabitants.

La tarea de resumir más de tres milenios de investigaciones sobre el cielo parece imposible, más difícil aún parece presentarla de modo que pueda ser conocido por cualquier tipo de oyente, y de modo que se disfrute con el descubrimiento de los cuerpos que pueblan el espacio y con la historia de los grandes hombres que hicieron avanzar la astronomía hasta sacar al hombre y a la Tierra, del centro del universo y colocarlo en un lugar periférico en la orilla del cosmos. Breve historia de la astronomía emprende esta tarea y consigue desplegar ante nosotros el universo.

AS "NEAR FUTURE" AS MILITARY SPACE FICTION GETS! Dateline—tomorrow! Blood on the Moon is a taut, action filled science fiction novel featuring a strong female and male protagonist team on a military expedition to the moon. The heroes of the Dinosaur Wars saga confront their greatest nemesis, the dinosaurian leader Saurgon, in his base at Phaeon Crater where he commands a stupendous energy beam targeting Earth. As if Chase Armstrong and Kit Daniels haven't faced enough challenges, they now must directly confront Saurgon inside his lunar stronghold. The young heroes and their dinosaur ally,...

By the time the Hubble telescope reached orbit, it was already the world’s most famous telescope, but it was also the most scorned. The telescope cost nearly two billion dollars more to complete than anticipated, and to make matters worse, the first images it sent back were skewed. However, within about a year of fixing it, the telescope captured images of a major event in the solar system.

In this book, John Moffat shares the history of black holes and presents the latest research into these mysterious celestial objects, including the astounding results from gravitational wave detection and the shadow of the black hole.

On August 21, 2017, more than 10 million Americans will experience an awe-inspiring phenomenon: the first total eclipse of the sun in America in almost 40 years. In Sun Moon Earth, astronomer Tyler Nordgren illustrates how this most seemingly unnatural of natural phenomena was transformed from a fearsome omen to a tourist attraction. From the astrologers of ancient China and Babylon to the high priests of the Maya, Sun Moon Earth takes us around the world to show how different cultures interpreted these dramatic events.

This Way to the Universe is a celebration of the astounding, ongoing scientific investigations that have revealed the nature of reality at its smallest, at its largest, and at the scale of our daily lives. The enigmas Professor Michael Dine discusses are like landmarks on a fantastic journey to the edge of the universe.