Space History

Highlighting men and women across the globe who have dedicated themselves to pushing the limits of space exploration, this book surveys the programs, technological advancements, medical equipment, and automated systems that have made space travel possible. Beginning with the invention of balloons that lifted early explorers into the stratosphere, Ted Spitzmiller describes how humans first came to employ lifting gasses such as hydrogen and helium.

Owen Deathstalker sacrificed everything to topple a corrupt empire and usher humanity into an age of peace and prosperity. Now, Lewis Deathstalker, Owen's descendant, carries on the family name and honor as a Paragon, warriors famed for their skill and heroism who dispense the king's justice throughout the galaxy. However, 200 years have passed since Owen and his gang of heroes disappeared into legend, and the peace that the Deathstalker bought with his life is quickly coming to an end.

In Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant tells for the first time the full story of the 100-year quest to decipher the ancient Greek computer known as the Antikythera Mechanism. Along the way she unearths a diverse cast of remarkable characters and explores the deep roots of modern technology in ancient Greece and the medieval European and Islamic worlds. At its heart, this is an epic adventure and mystery, a book that challenges our assumptions about technology through the ages.

Who are we, and how did we get here? These are two of the most fundamental and far-reaching questions facing scientists and cosmologists alike and have rested at the center of human intellectual endeavor since its beginning. They are questions that stretch across numerous disciplines. Philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and mathematics are just some of the fields looking to explain the emergence of human life.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation's most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last was Deke Slayton, whose irregular heartbeat kept him grounded until 1975. They spent the 1960s at the forefront of NASA's effort to conquer space, and Moon Shot is their inside account of what many call the 20th century's greatest feat - landing humans on another world.

A deeply panoramic tour of the night, from its brightest spots to the darkest skies we have left. A starry night is one of nature's most magical wonders. Yet in our artificially lit world, three-quarters of Americans' eyes never switch to night vision and most of us no longer experience true darkness. In The End of Night, Paul Bogard restores our awareness of the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky and how it has influenced the human experience across everything from science to art.

In this thrilling history, David Baker captures the longest possible time span—from the Big Bang to the present day—in an astonishingly concise retelling. His impressive timeline includes the "rise of complexity" in the cosmos and the creation of the first atoms; the origin of all galaxies, stars, and our solar system; and the evolution of life on Earth, from tiny single-celled organisms to human beings.

A treatise of Black women’s transformative influence in media and society, placing them front and center in a new chapter of mainstream resistance and political engagement In Reclaiming Our Space, social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are...

Beginning the Star Force Phase 2 timeline, the Mak'to'ran serial details the defeated V'kit'no'sat fleet commander's days following the attack on Earth and the fallout within the Dinosaur empire that results from it. For as bad as the treason regarding the Humans and the bastardized Hadarak is, and the implications that one of the two founding V'kit'no'sat races are behind it, a much larger rift within the empire is being exposed that has the potential to do what neither the Zak'de'ron culling nor the Rit'ko'sor rebellion accomplished. A full Dinosaur civil war.

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.

Designed for those new to mindfulness practices, Making Space offers easy-to-follow instructions for setting up a breathing room; listening to a bell; performing sitting, breathing, and walking meditations; and cooking and eating. Whether you live alone or with a family, this beautifully created audiobook can help you create a sense of retreat and sanctuary anywhere at home.

Come Fly with Us is the story of an elite group of space travelers who flew as members of many space shuttle crews from pre-Challenger days to Columbia in 2003. Not part of the regular NASA astronaut corps, these professionals known as “payload specialists” came from a wide variety of backgrounds and were chosen for an equally wide variety of scientific, political, and national security reasons.

What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally stop to ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time. The phenomenon - the ability of one particle to affect another instantly across the vastness of space - appears to be almost magical.

In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars rover Curiosity is poised toanswer this all-important question.

What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they'd glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been deceived by a galactic mirage?

Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today. The duo pioneered comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation.

On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen US aircraft appeared in the skies over Baghdad. To the Iraqi air defenses, the planes seemed to come from nowhere. Each aircraft was more than 60 feet in length and with a wingspan of 40 feet, yet its radar footprint was the size of a ball bearing. Here was the first extensive combat application of Stealth technology. And it was devastating.

Humans have long sought to comprehend the enormities of cosmic space and time. Here, best selling science writer Timothy Ferris tells the story of that quest. He interweaves the majestic themes of astronomy, physics, religion, and philosophy with fresh and lasting portraits of the men and women who created what has been called our society's most precious treasure - its conception of the universe at large.

NASA’s history is a familiar story, one that typically peaks with Neil Armstrong taking his small step on the Moon in 1969. But America’s space agency wasn’t created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer. Breaking the Chains of Gravity tells the story of America’s nascent space program, its scientific advances, its personalities and the rivalries it caused between the various arms of the US military.

It is a bizarrely beautiful image: A man in a spacesuit stands isolated in an alien world. His companion, the photographer, and their landing craft are reflected in his visor. This photograph, taken by Neil Armstrong of fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin, is the most famous documentation of America’s 1969 moon landing. But to people in every country on Earth, it represented and still does so much more.