Download or read book Lost Cosmonaut written by Daniel Kalder and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-08-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Kalder belongs to a unique group: the anti-tourists. Sworn to uphold the mysterious tenets of The Shymkent Declarations, the anti-tourist seeks out the dark, lost zones of our planet, eschewing comfort, embracing hunger and hallucinations, and always traveling at the wrong time of year. In Lost Cosmonaut, Kalder visits locations that most of us don't even know exist -- Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El, and Udmurtia. He loves these places because no one else does, because everyone else passes them by. A tale of adventure, conversation, boredom, and observation -- occasionally enhanced by an overactive imagination -- Kalder reveals a world of hidden cities, lost rites, mail-order brides, machine guns, mutants, and cold, cold emptiness. In the desert wastelands of Kalmykia, he stumbles upon New Vasyuki, the only city in the world dedicated to chess. In Mari El, home to Europe's last pagan nation, he meets the chief Druid and participates in an ancient rite; while in the bleak industrial badlands of Udmurtia, Kalder searches for Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, and inadvertently becomes a TV star. An unorthodox mix of extraordinary stories woven together with fascinating history, peculiar places, and even stranger people, Lost Cosmonaut is poetic and profane, hilarious and yet oddly heartwarming, bizarre and even educational. In short, it's the perfect guide to the most alien planet in our cosmos: Earth.
Download or read book Lost Cosmonaut written by Daniel Kalder and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wonderful antidote to rose-tinted travel writing
Download or read book The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team written by Colin Burgess and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-03-27 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team will relate who these men were and offer far more extensive background stories, in addition to those of the more familiar names of early Soviet space explorers from that group. Many previously-unpublished photographs of these “missing” candidates will also be included for the first time in this book. It will be a detailed, but highly readable and balanced account of the history, training and experiences of the first group of twenty cosmonauts of the USSR. A covert recruitment and selection process was set in motion throughout the Soviet military in August 1959, just prior to the naming of America’s Mercury astronauts. Those selected were ordered to report for training at a special camp outside of Moscow in the spring of 1960. Just a year later, Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Air Force (promoted in flight to the rank of major) was launched aboard a Vostok spacecraft and became the first person ever to achieve space flight and orbit the Earth.
Download or read book The Lost Astronaut written by Diana Escobar and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pioneering Space written by James E. Oberg and published by McGraw-Hill Companies. This book was released on 1986 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes amateur spacefarers on a flight into the future.
Download or read book Russia s Cosmonauts written by Rex D. Hall and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-10-05 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no competition since this is the first book in the English language on cosmonaut selection and training Offers a unique and original discussion on how Russia prepares its cosmonauts for spaceflight. Contains original interviews and photographs with first-hand information obtained by the authors on visits to Star City Provides an insight to the role of cosmonauts in the global space programme of the future. Reviews the training both of Russian cosmonauts in other countries and of foreign cosmonauts in Star City
Download or read book Cosmonaut Keep written by Ken MacLeod and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Ken MacLeod's Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level.A visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe. Matt Cairns is a 21st-century outlaw Programmer who takes on the shady jobs no one else will touch. Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey. Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel. Cosmonaut Keep is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Starman written by Piers Bizony and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person in history to leave the Earth's atmosphere and venture into space. His flight aboard a Russian Vostok rocket lasted only 108 minutes, but at the end of it he had become the most famous man in the world. Back on the ground, his smiling face captured the hearts of millions around the globe. Film stars, politicians and pop stars from Europe to Japan, India to the United States vied with each other to shake his hand. Despite this immense fame, almost nothing is known about Gagarin or the exceptional people behind his dramatic space flight. Starman tells for the first time Gagarin's personal odyssey from peasant to international icon, his subsequent decline as his personal life began to disintegrate under the pressures of fame, and his final disillusionment with the Russian state. President Kennedy's quest to put an American on the Moon was a direct reaction to Gagarin's achievement--yet before that successful moonshot occurred, Gagarin himself was dead, aged just thirty-four, killed in a mysterious air crash. Publicly the Soviet hierarchy mourned; privately their sighs of relief were almost audible, and the KGB report into his death remains secret. Entwined with Gagarin's history is that of the breathtaking and highly secretive Russian space program - its technological daring, its triumphs and disasters. In a gripping account, Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony reveal the astonishing world behind the scenes of the first great space spectacular, and how Gagarin's flight came frighteningly close to destruction.
Download or read book Spaceman of Bohemia written by Jaroslav Kalfar and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intergalactic odyssey of love, ambition, and self-discovery. Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Prochv°zka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions. Alone in Deep Space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth for a second chance with Lenka? Rich with warmth and suspense and surprise, Spaceman of Bohemia is an exuberant delight from start to finish. Very seldom has a novel this profound taken readers on a journey of such boundless entertainment and sheer fun. "A frenetically imaginative first effort, booming with vitality and originality . . . Kalfar's voice is distinct enough to leave tread marks."-Jennifer Senior, New York Times
Download or read book The Right Stuff written by Tom Wolfe and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review), The Right Stuff is the basis for the 1983 Oscar Award-winning film of the same name and the 8-part Disney+ TV mini-series. From "America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. " Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.
Download or read book The Cosmonaut s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union written by David Greig and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most important playwright to have emerged north of the border in years." (Scotsman) Two Soviet cosmonauts, losing contact with the world they left behind; a Scottish civil servant in the throes of a midlife crisis; a Norwegian peace negotiator; a Russian erotic dancer; a French UFO researcher and an Edinburgh speech therapist in search of her missing husband are brought together through an extraordinary thread of connections, which bring us into contact with both the intimate and the epic. Space odyssey meets unrequited love story as The Cosmonaut's last message... explores the incessant search for harmony and peace within all of us.
Download or read book Shattered Dreams written by Colin Burges and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shattered Dreams delves into the personal stories and recollections of several men and women who were in line to fly a specific or future space mission but lost that opportunity due to personal reasons, mission cancellations, or even tragedies. While some of the subjects are familiar names in spaceflight history, the accounts of others are told here for the first time. Colin Burgess features spaceflight candidates from the United States, Russia, Indonesia, Australia, and Great Britain. Shattered Dreams brings to new life such episodes and upheavals in spaceflight history as the saga of the three Apollo missions that were cancelled due to budgetary constraints and never flew; NASA astronaut Patricia Hilliard Robertson, who died of burn injuries after her airplane crashed before she had a chance to fly into space; and a female cosmonaut who might have become the first journalist to fly in space. Another NASA astronaut was preparing to fly an Apollo mission before he was diagnosed with a disqualifying illness. There is also the amazing story of the pilot who could have bailed out of his damaged aircraft but held off while heroically avoiding a populated area and later applied to NASA to fulfill his cherished dream of becoming an astronaut despite having lost both legs in the accident. These are the incredibly human stories of competitive realists fired with an unquenchable passion. Their accounts reveal in their own words—and those of others close to them—how their shared ambition would go awry through personal accidents, illness, the Challenger disaster, death, or other circumstances.
Download or read book Lost in Space written by Greg Klerkx and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2005-01-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The daring, revolutionary NASA that sent Neil Armstrong to the moon has lost its meteoric vision, says journalist and space enthusiast Greg Klerkx. NASA, he contends, has devolved from a pioneer of space exploration into a factionalized bureaucracy focused primarily on its own survival. And as a result, humans haven’t ventured beyond Earth orbit for three decades. Klerkx argues that after its wildly successful Apollo program, NASA clung fiercely to the spotlight by creating a government-sheltered monopoly with a few Big Aerospace companies. Although committed in theory to supporting commercial spaceflight, in practice it smothered vital private-sector innovation. In striking descriptions of space milestones spanning the golden 1960s Space Age and the 2003 Columbia tragedy, Klerkx exposes the “real” NASA and envisions exciting public-private cooperation that could send humans back to the moon and beyond.
Download or read book Soviet Space Mythologies written by Slava Gerovitch and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2015-06-18 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the start, the Soviet human space program had an identity crisis. Were cosmonauts heroic pilots steering their craft through the dangers of space, or were they mere passengers riding safely aboard fully automated machines? Tensions between Soviet cosmonauts and space engineers were reflected not only in the internal development of the space program but also in Soviet propaganda that wavered between praising daring heroes and flawless technologies. Soviet Space Mythologies explores the history of the Soviet human space program within a political and cultural context, giving particular attention to the two professional groups—space engineers and cosmonauts—who secretly built and publicly represented the program. Drawing on recent scholarship on memory and identity formation, this book shows how both the myths of Soviet official history and privately circulating counter-myths have served as instruments of collective memory and professional identity. These practices shaped the evolving cultural image of the space age in popular Soviet imagination. Soviet Space Mythologies provides a valuable resource for scholars and students of space history, history of technology, and Soviet (and post-Soviet) history.
Download or read book Out of Orbit written by Chris Jones and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 2003, American astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin were on a routine fourteen-week mission maintaining the International Space Station. But then the space shuttle Columbia exploded far beneath them. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost their ride back to earth. Out of Orbit chronicles the efforts of the beleaguered mission controls in Houston and Moscow as they worked frantically against the clock, ultimately settling on a plan that felt, at best, like a long shot. Latched to the side of the space station was a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-1 capsule, the rocket equivalent of a 1976 Gremlin. Despite the inherent danger, the Soyuz became the only hope to return Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit home. Their harrowing journey back to earth is a powerful reminder that space travel remains an incredibly dangerous pursuit.
Download or read book Uncovering Soviet Disasters written by James E. Oberg and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1988 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oberg investigates modern disasters in the Soviet Union--from space shots to industrial catastrophes, to pollution, floods and fires. What really happened, why were they covered up, and how were they finally discovered? This book explains it all. 8 pages of black-and-white photos.
Download or read book Breaking the Chains of Gravity written by Amy Shira Teitel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible story of spaceflight before the establishment of NASA. 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. In the 1930s, rockets were all the rage in Germany, the focus both of scientists hoping to fly into space and of the German armed forces, looking to circumvent the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. One of the key figures in this period was Wernher von Braun, an engineer who designed the rockets that became the devastating V-2. As the war came to its chaotic conclusion, von Braun escaped from the ruins of Nazi Germany, and was taken to America where he began developing missiles for the US Army. Meanwhile, the US Air Force was looking ahead to a time when men would fly in space, and test pilots like Neil Armstrong were flying cutting-edge, rocket-powered aircraft in the thin upper atmosphere. 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. At this point getting a man in space became a national imperative, leading to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, otherwise known as NASA.
