Download or read book Humans to Mars written by David S. F. Portree and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Chase s Calendar of Events 2020 written by Editors of Chase's and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find out what's going on any day of the year, anywhere across the globe! The world’s date book since 1957, Chase's is the definitive, authoritative, day-by-day resource of what the world is celebrating and commemorating. From national days to celebrity birthdays, from historical anniversaries to astronomical phenomena, from award ceremonies and sporting events to religious festivals and carnivals, Chase's is the must-have reference used by experts and professionals—a one-stop shop with 12,500 entries for everything that is happening now or is worth remembering from the past. Completely updated for 2020, Chase's also features extensive appendices as well as a companion website that puts the power of Chase's at the user's fingertips. 2020--a leap year--is packed with special events and observances, including National days and public holidays of every nation on Earth The total solar eclipse The 100th anniversary of US women's suffrage (19th Amendment passed) The 75th anniversary of the end of WWII and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven The 100th birth anniversary of Ray Bradbury The 50th anniversary of the Beatles' break up The Tokyo Olympic Games Scores of new special days, weeks and months, such as International Go-Kart Week, National Goat Yoga Month or National Catch and Release Day Birthdays of new world leaders, office holders, and breakout stars And much more! All from the reference book that Publishers Weekly calls "one of the most impressive reference volumes in the world."

Download or read book Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut written by Samantha Cristoforetti and published by The Experiment, LLC. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti’s intimate account of her first journey to the International Space Station, to which she returns in 2022, as commander of Expedition 68a—only the fourth woman to command the ISS, praised by Scott Kelly for its “incredible detail and great writing.” Two hundred days orbiting Earth on the International Space Station. Five years working and training with the aerospace community across the world. A lifetime of choices leading to the stars. These are the components of Samantha Cristoforetti’s dream, a dream she invites us to share in this intimate account of an astronaut’s journey to space. She views the triumphs and disappointments of that journey with a poet’s eye and a philosopher’s mind—and an engineer’s gift for detail that brings each experience into sharp focus. With Cristoforetti as our guide, we’re called to become “apprentice astronauts” and experience the world anew through the visor of a space suit’s helmet. Bonding with crew members to tackle challenges as a team, lifting off from the launchpad in a roar of engines, discovering the strange wonders of weightlessness, seeing Earth with a fresh perspective after a bittersweet return to solid ground . . . all these moments and more reveal what it really takes to escape our planet’s gravity in pursuit of a goal.

Download or read book Handprints on Hubble written by Kathryn D. Sullivan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all this possible. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built. Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a “Sputnik Baby,” her path to NASA through oceanography, and her initiation into the space program as one of “thirty-five new guys.” (She was also one of the first six women to join NASA’s storied astronaut corps.) She describes in vivid detail what liftoff feels like inside a spacecraft (it’s like “being in an earthquake and a fighter jet at the same time”), shows us the view from a spacewalk, and recounts the temporary grounding of the shuttle program after the Challenger disaster. Sullivan explains that “maintainability” was designed into Hubble, and she describes the work of inventing the tools and processes that made on-orbit maintenance possible. Because in-flight repair and upgrade was part of the plan, NASA was able to fix a serious defect in Hubble’s mirrors—leaving literal and metaphorical “handprints on Hubble.” Handprints on Hubble was published with the support of the MIT Press Fund for Diverse Voices.

Download or read book Wonders All Around written by Bruce McCandless III and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Man You Never Knew You Knew It’s one of the most powerful and popular images in the history of space exploration: an astronaut in a snow-white spacesuit, untethered and floating alone in an expanse of blue. Bruce McCandless II is the man in that spacesuit, and Wonders All Around: The Incredible True Story of Astronaut Bruce McCandless II and the First Untethered Flight in Space is the thoroughly engrossing, extensively researched story of his inspiring life and groundbreaking accomplishments, as told by his son, a gifted writer and storyteller. Bruce McCandless II, a Navy fighter pilot, joined NASA in 1966. He was Houston’s capsule communicator—the person talking to the astronauts—as Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for mankind in 1969. McCandless supported subsequent Apollo flights and developed technology and techniques his fellow astronauts used during the Skylab program, working behind the scenes until he was chosen to ride Challenger into space on the tenth shuttle mission. When he stepped into the cosmos to test the Manned Maneuvering Unit, he became a space flight icon. But the road to that incredible feat was not the sure bet it should have been for such a gifted man. Bruce McCandless II was an astronaut for 24 years, and his story encompasses the development of the space agency itself—the changes in focus, in personnel, in approach, and in the city of Houston that grew up with it. Wonders All Around is more than a catalogue of McCandless’s extraordinary achievements, which included work on the design, deployment, and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also a tale of perseverance and devotion. Recounted with insight and humor, this book explores the relationship between a father and a son, men of two very different generations. And finally, it is an exploration of the mindset of one unique individual, and the courage, imagination, and tenacity that propelled him and his country to their place in the forefront of space history. From Wonders All Around: "Bruce McCandless turned his Jeep around and screeched out of the cul-de-sac in front of our house for the ten-minute drive to the space center. The moon, a waxing crescent, was standing thirty degrees above the western horizon, and my father slipped into a sort of reverie as he sped toward it on NASA Road One. The moon floated serene and imperturbable in front of him like a black-and-white photograph of itself, Earth’s gravitational remora, her pale silent sister, movie star and legend, goddess and mirage. Bruce McCandless had just turned thirty-two. He was an engineer, a true son of science, a distant nephew of Sir Isaac Newton. He knew the formulas required for achieving orbital velocity, could tell you the fuel mixtures you needed, the stages and timing of rocket-booster separations. He brushed sentiments away like so many spider webs. But even he was having trouble believing that human beings—his colleagues and friends—were up there in the sky, getting ready to do something no one had ever done before. He was going to be part of it. He would be talking to two men as they walked on the moon. The young astronaut hadn’t quite reached his lifelong goal of touching the lunar surface, but he was close. He was almost there. He could feel it."

Download or read book Rocket Men written by Robert Kurson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting inside story of three heroic astronauts who took on the challenge of mankind’s historic first mission to the Moon, from the bestselling author of Shadow Divers. “Robert Kurson tells the tale of Apollo 8 with novelistic detail and immediacy.”—Andy Weir, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian and Artemis By August 1968, the American space program was in danger of failing in its two most important objectives: to land a man on the Moon by President Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline, and to triumph over the Soviets in space. With its back against the wall, NASA made an almost unimaginable leap: It would scrap its usual methodical approach and risk everything on a sudden launch, sending the first men in history to the Moon—in just four months. And it would all happen at Christmas. In a year of historic violence and discord—the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago—the Apollo 8 mission would be the boldest, riskiest test of America’s greatness under pressure. In this gripping insider account, Robert Kurson puts the focus on the three astronauts and their families: the commander, Frank Borman, a conflicted man on his final mission; idealistic Jim Lovell, who’d dreamed since boyhood of riding a rocket to the Moon; and Bill Anders, a young nuclear engineer and hotshot fighter pilot making his first space flight. Drawn from hundreds of hours of one-on-one interviews with the astronauts, their loved ones, NASA personnel, and myriad experts, and filled with vivid and unforgettable detail, Rocket Men is the definitive account of one of America’s finest hours. In this real-life thriller, Kurson reveals the epic dangers involved, and the singular bravery it took, for mankind to leave Earth for the first time—and arrive at a new world. “Rocket Men is a riveting introduction to the [Apollo 8] flight. . . . Kurson details the mission in crisp, suspenseful scenes. . . . [A] gripping book.”—The New York Times Book Review

Download or read book The Astronaut s Son written by Tom Seigel and published by . This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing comes a novel in which a Jewish astronaut must reassess his moral compass when forced to confront NASA's early collaboration with Nazis and the role it may have played in his father's death. Jonathan Stein, the CEO of Apollo Aeronautics, is an ambitious polymath who has spent a lifetime determined to accomplish two tasks: First, to complete his father's unfulfilled mission to reach the moon, and second, to forge a relationship with the reclusive Neil Armstrong. Despite a heart condition, he's on the verge of his first goal, but has gotten nowhere with the second. Armstrong has never responded to any of Jonathan's dozens of letters. Avi Stein was an Israeli pilot specially chosen to command Apollo 18 in 1974, but suffered a fatal heart attack before launch. Now, months from being able to realize his father's dream, Jonathan discovers a "lunar hoax" conspiracy website offering a disturbing reason for Armstrong's silence: He knows Jonathan's father didn't die of natural causes. While researching his father's last days in the National Archives, Jonathan expects to confirm the official cause of death, but what he uncovers instead is a motive for murder. To get to the truth, Jonathan must confront Dale Lunden, his father's best friend and the last man on the moon.

Download or read book The Ultimate Engineer written by Richard Jurek and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-12 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late 1950s to 1976, the U.S. human spaceflight program advanced as it did largely due to the extraordinary efforts of Austrian immigrant George M. Low. Described as the "ultimate engineer" during his career at NASA, Low was a visionary architect and leader from the agency's inception in 1958 to his retirement in 1976. As chief of manned spaceflight at NASA, Low was instrumental in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. At the end of his NASA career, Low was one of the leading figures in the development of the Space Shuttle in the early 1970s, and he was instrumental in NASA's transition into a post-Apollo world. Chronicling Low's escape from Nazi-occupied Austria to his helping land a man on the moon, The Ultimate Engineer sheds new light on one of the most fascinating and complex personalities of the golden age of U.S. human space travel.

Download or read book Fighting for Space written by Amy Shira Teitel and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space. When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century—man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War, was the first woman to break the sound barrier, ran her own luxury cosmetics company, and counted multiple presidents among her personal friends. She was more qualified than any woman in the world to make the leap from atmosphere to orbit. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, twenty-five years Jackie's junior and a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality—an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress. This dual biography of audacious trailblazers Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb presents these fascinating and fearless women in all their glory and grit, using their stories as guides through the shifting social, political, and technical landscape of the time.

Download or read book Bang written by Patrick Moore and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With one big bang, the universe exploded into being 13.7 million years ago. This is the story of how everything came about, from the moment when time and space came into existence, to the formation of the first stars, galaxies, and planets, to the evolution of human beings able to contemplate our own origins and ultimate destiny--and on to the infinite future, after the Red Giant Sun consumes Earth. Bang explains it all in clear, straightforward terms, chronologically, without any mathematics, and including the most up-to-date discoveries. New in paperback.

Download or read book The Fabric of the Cosmos written by Brian Greene and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s leading physicists and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes “an astonishing ride” through the universe (The New York Times) that makes us look at reality in a completely different way. Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. From Newton’s unchanging realm in which space and time are absolute, to Einstein’s fluid conception of spacetime, to quantum mechanics’ entangled arena where vastly distant objects can instantaneously coordinate their behavior, Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday world.

Download or read book Astronaut Gods of the Maya written by Erich von Däniken and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visual tour of the evidence for ancient astronauts in Mesoamerica • Includes more than 200 full-color photographs from the author’s personal archives • Details the astronaut technology--helmets, tanks, hoses, keyboards, rockets--clearly illustrated in stone carvings and statues from Mesoamerican sites such as Palenque, Chichén Itzá, and Teotihuacán in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala • Explores the similarities of Maya pyramids with those at Kanchipuram in South India Sharing more than 200 never-before-published full-color photographs from his personal archives, bestselling author Erich von Däniken provides clear evidence of ancient alien contact and technology among the archaeological sites of the Maya as well as other ancient cultures, such as the Aztecs and the Hindus. He reveals how the “gods” immortalized in Maya sculptures, carved reliefs, and myth were not supernatural beings but technologically advanced visitors, astronauts who gifted the Maya with their sophisticated understanding of calendar time and cosmology. He explains how, with no explanation for their technologies and origins, the Maya interpreted the visitors as divine and, thus, the “gods” were born. Examining stone carvings and statues from many Mesoamerican sites such as Palenque, Chichén Itzá, and Teotihuacán in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala, von Däniken reveals the astronaut technology--helmets, tanks, hoses, keyboards, rockets--clearly illustrated in these ancient depictions of the gods. He explores the similarities of Plato’s writings with the Chilam Balam books of Mexico and compares “ancient alien” features in myths around the world, paralleling how mercury is mentioned as a fuel ingredient of flying machines in ancient India with the discovery of mercury at Copán, Palenque, and Teotihuacán as well as in the grave of a Chinese emperor and two Egyptian graves on Nabta Playa. Illustrating the similarities of Mayan step pyramids with those of Kanchipuram in South India, the author explains how Mayan pyramids are crowned with a small temple, residence, or landing field of the gods, while the pyramids of South India are topped with a Vimana, a “godly” flying vehicle. Offering visual proof of the ancient world’s contact with advanced alien visitors they recorded as gods and teachers, von Däniken also raises the question of the “heavenly” origins of royal families and dynasties in Mesoamerica, Egypt, and beyond, revealing how the Mayan kings of Palenque and the pharaohs of Egypt may be descendants of the “gods.”

Download or read book First Man written by James R. Hansen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On July 20, 1969, the world stood still to watch American astronaut Neil A. Armstrong become the first person ever to step on the surface of another heavenly body. Upon his return to Earth, Armstrong was celebrated for his monumental achievement. He was also--as NASA historian Hansen reveals in this authorized biography--misunderstood. Armstrong's accomplishments as an engineer, a test pilot, and an astronaut have long been a matter of record, but Hansen's access to private documents and unpublished sources and his interviews with more than 125 subjects (including more than fifty hours with Armstrong himself) yield the first in-depth analysis of this elusive, reluctant hero.

Download or read book The Case For Mars written by Robert Zubrin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the beginning of human history Mars has been an alluring dream; the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it has still been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. Now with the advent of a revolutionary new plan, all this has changed. Leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin has crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct, presented here with illustrations, photographs, and engaging anecdotes. The Case for Mars is not a vision for the far future or one that will cost us impossible billions. It explains step-by-step how we can use present-day technology to send humans to Mars within ten years; actually produce fuel and oxygen on the planet's surface with Martian natural resources; how we can build bases and settlements; and how we can one day "terraform" Mars; a process that can alter the atmosphere of planets and pave the way for sustainable life.

Download or read book The Sun the Earth and Near earth Space written by John A. Eddy and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... Concise explanations and descriptions - easily read and readily understood - of what we know of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and Sun-Climate."--Dear Reader.

Download or read book The Gravity of Us written by Phil Stamper and published by Bloomsbury YA. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'm so starry-eyed for this wise, romantic gem of a book." - Becky Albertalli, bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda In this smart, heart-warming YA debut perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, two teens find love when their lives are uprooted for their parents’ involvement in a NASA mission to Mars. Cal wants to be a journalist, and he’s already well underway with almost half a million followers on his FlashFame app and an upcoming internship at Buzzfeed. But his plans are derailed when his pilot father is selected for a highly-publicized NASA mission to Mars. Within days, Cal and his parents leave Brooklyn for hot and humid Houston. With the entire nation desperate for any new information about the astronauts, Cal finds himself thrust in the middle of a media circus. Suddenly his life is more like a reality TV show, with his constantly bickering parents struggling with their roles as the "perfect American family." And then Cal meets Leon, whose mother is another astronaut on the mission, and he finds himself falling head over heels--and fast. They become an oasis for each other amid the craziness of this whole experience. As their relationship grows, so does the frenzy surrounding the Mars mission, and when secrets are revealed about ulterior motives of the program, Cal must find a way to get to the truth without hurting the people who have become most important to him. An IndieBound YA Bestseller! An IndieNext List Pick! An Amazon Best Book! A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist! A Cosmopolitan Best Young Adult Book of the Year! Recommended on the TODAY Show!

Download or read book These Broken Stars written by Amie Kaufman and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the most intense, thrilling, and achingly beautiful stories I've ever read."--Marie Lu, New York Times best-selling author of the Legend trilogy The first in the New York Times bestselling author duo Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds. It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen are the only survivors. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they're worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help. Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other's arms. Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won't be the same people who landed on it.