In 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik and the ensuing space race. Three years later, Gene Kranz left his aircraft testing job to join NASA and champion the American cause. What he found was an embryonic department run by whiz kids (such as himself), sharp engineers and technicians who had to create the Mercury mission rules and procedure from the ground up. As he says, "Since there were no books written on the actual methodology of space flight, we had to write them as we went along."
Ambassadors from Earth - Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft
Gallentine, a film and video engineer and a lifelong space buff, tells tales about the exciting early days of unmanned space exploration in this sprawling account. From Sputnik through James Van Allen and his assistant George Ludwig's discovery, with a tape recorder, of massive amounts of radioactivity above the atmosphere, to the two Voyager missions with their gold-plated Rosetta stones, many lifelong space buffs will know Gallentine's story by heart. What makes his account special is the amount of access he had to Van Allen and Ludwig, who shared previously unknown details of their early collaboration.
Pioneering long-duration spaceflight, the three Skylab missions are chronicled here by an authorial team that includes Skylab astronauts Owen Garriott and Joe Kerwin. Written largely in oral-history style, with extensive quotation from participants in the Skylab program, the work explains the genesis of the space-station concept, the decisions that led to its actual configuration, and the station’s near-death experience when launched in 1973. As space-history readers know, critical pieces of Skylab ripped off during its launch, causing a crisis overcome by repairs the first crew made in one of NASA’s finer moments.
Although the dream of flying is as old as the human imagination, the notion of actually rocketing into space may have originated with Chinese experiments with gunpowder in the Middle Ages. Rockets as weapons and entertainment, whether sprung from science fiction or arising out of practical necessity, are within the compass of this engaging history of how human beings actually gained the ability to catapult themselves into space.
Into That Silent Sea - Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961 - 1965
Into That Silent Sea tells the intimate stories of the men and women, American and Russian, who made the space race their own and gave the era its compelling character. These pages chronicle a varied and riveting parade of human stories, including a look at Yuri Gagarin's harrowing childhood in war-ravaged Russia and Alan Shepard's firm purchase on the American Dream. It also examines the controversial career of cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and the remarkable struggle and ultimate disappointment of her American Counterparts.
