Spacecraft takes a long look at humankind's attempts and advances in leaving Earth through incredible illustrations and authoritatively written profiles on Sputnik, the International Space Station, and beyond. In 1957, the world looked on with both uncertainty and amazement as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first man-made orbiter. Sputnik 1 would spend three months circling Earth every 98 minutes and covering 71 million miles in the process. The world’s space programs have traveled far (literally and figuratively) since then, and the spacecraft they have developed and deployed represent almost unthinkable advances for such a relatively short period. This ambitiously illustrated aerospace history profiles and depicts spacecraft fromSputnik 1 through the International Space Station, andeverything in between, including concepts that have yet to actually venture outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Illustrator and aerospace professional Giuseppe De Chiara teams up with aerospace historian Michael Gorn to present a huge, profusely illustrated, and authoritatively written collection of profiles depicting and describing the design, development, and deployment of these manned and unmanned spacecraft. Satellites, capsules, spaceplanes, rockets, and space stations are illustrated in multiple-view, sometimes cross-section, and in many cases shown in archival period photography to provide further historical context. Dividing the book by era, De Chiara and Gorn feature spacecraft not only from the United States and Soviet Union/Russia, but also from the European Space Agency and China. The marvels examined in this volume include the rockets Energia, Falcon 9, and VEGA; the Hubble Space Telescope; the Cassini space probe; and the Mars rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. Authoritatively written and profusely illustrated with more than 200 stunning artworks, Spacecraft: 100 Iconic Rockets, Shuttles, and Satellites That Put Us in Space is sure to become a definitive guide to the history of manned space exploration.

Spacecraft: 100 Iconic Rockets, Shuttles, and Satellites That Put Us in Space

History

Gorn, Michael H.

De Chiara, Giuseppe

Russia

Voyageur Press

The Complete Book of Spacecraft: Rockets, Shuttles, Satellites and Space Stations

Engineering & Transportation

Sivolella, Davide

Transportation

Motorbooks

Expanding the Envelope is the first book to explore the full panorama of flight research history, from the earliest attempts by such nineteenth century practitioners as England's Sir George Cayley, who tested his kites and gliders by subjecting them to experimental flight, to the cutting-edge aeronautical research conducted by the NACA and NASA. Michael H. Gorn explores the vital human aspect of the history of flight research, including such well-known figures as James H. Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and A. Scott Crossfield, as well as the less heralded engineers, pilots, and scientists who also had the "Right Stuff." While the individuals in the cockpit often receive the lion's share of the public's attention, Expanding the Envelope shows flight research to be a collaborative engineering activity, one in which the pilot participates as just one of many team members. Here is more than a century of flight research, from well before the creation of NACA to its rapid transformation under NASA. Gorn gives a behind the scenes look at the development of groundbreaking vehicles such as the X-1, the D-558, and the X-15, which demonstrated manned flight at speeds up to Mach 6.7 and as high as the edge of space.

Expanding the Envelope: Flight Research at NACA and NASA

University Press of Kentucky

Harnessing the Genie: Science and Technology Forecasting for the Air Force, 1944-1986 (Air Staff Historical Study)

Military

Air Force History & Museums program

Air power has always been linked closely to science and technology. The very reality of flight depended upon a technical innovation. Unlike other services, where machines merely support the mission, technology is for the Air Force at the very heart of its existence as an institution. As a consequence, the USAF and its predecessor organizations have always recognized the singular importance of science to their survival. This book describes and analyzes the methodologies and conclusions of the five main science and technology forecasts undertaken by the Air Force since before its birth as an independent service.

Harnessing the Genie: Science and Technology Forecasting for the Air Force, 1944 - 1986

History, Office of Air Force

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

This account of the life of Dr. Hugh Latimer Dryden describes his enormous contributions to aviation and space. Hugh Dryden was a research scientist of the highest order, an aeronautics pioneer, the Director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and then the first NASA Deputy Administrator. Dr. Hugh Dryden's special relationship to the Dryden Flight Research Center goes far beyond its name. Among Hugh Dryden's first actions after becoming the NACA's Director of Research in September 1947, was to inform Walt Williams, the director of the (light research operation here in the desert, that the NACA Muroc organization, formed the previous year, would now become a permanent facility known as the NACA Muroc Flight Test Unit. Hugh Dryden strongly supported the flight research conducted here with the early rocket-powered aircraft. He represented the NACA on the interagency Research Airplane Committee that supervised the beginnings of the critically important X-15 research at the High Speed Flight Station. As Dr. Gorn recounts, Hugh Dryden had begun work in the transonic region very early in his career, and in fact it was he who coined the word "transonic," because no such word existed to describe speeds at or near that of sound in the early 1920s. Much of the research conducted here at the Center has concerned transonic flight, so that is another link between Dryden the man and Dryden the Center. Dr. Gorn also describes Hugh Dryden's work with the "crucial transition from laminar to turbulent flow," another very important aspect of flight research here at DFRC over the five decades of its existence. This work continues today in the research being done on the F 16XT. to examine Supersonic Laminar Flow Control—a project that would have been dear to the heart of Hugh Dryden. Finally, Hugh Dryden wrote a description of flight research that has served ever since as the unofficial motto of the Center that bears his name and, in a very real sense, carries on his work. It separates, he stated, "the real from the imagined," and makes known the "overlooked and the unexpected." That brief line more effectively describes exactly what we do at the Dryden Flight Research Center than anything that has been written before or since.

Hugh L. Dryden's Career in Aviation and Space (The NASA History Series)

Administration, National Aeronautics and Space

World

The most comprehensive and authoritative history of flight-testing experimental air- and spacecraft This little-known classic history of flight-testing the X-Planes is reborn—sweepingly revised and updated with new and recently released information. Aviation enthusiasts will savor the most detailed account available of record-setting aircraft like the X-1 and X-15, flown by Chuck Yeager and other legends, as well as all the cutting edge NASA and Defense Department programs that perfected the aeronautical concepts and technology used in U.S. military, space, and commercial craft. 
 World-renowned Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert is the setting for the exciting, dangerous, and sometimes deadly job of testing the world’s most exotic aircraft. Authors Hallion and Gorn, two of America’s top aerospace historians, focus on the unique relationship between test pilots and their machines. A completely updated and reinterpreted text, three new chapters, dozens of rare photographs, and the complete statistical record of nearly six decades of testing make this required reading for anyone interested in manned flight.

On the Frontier: Experimental Flight at NASA Dryden

HALLION, Richard P.

Americas

Smithsonian

This little known classic history of flight-testing the Xplanes is reborn, sweepingly revised and updated with new and recently released information. Aviation enthusiasts will savor the most detailed account available of record-setting aircraft like the X-1 and XZ-15, flown by Chuck Yeager and other legends, as well as all the cutting-edge NASA and Defense Department programs that perfected the aeronautical concepts and technology used in US military, space, and commercial craft. A completely updated and reinterpreted text, three new chapters, dozens of rare photographs, and the complete statistical record of nearly six decades of testing make this required reading for anyone interested in manned flight.

Hallion, Richard P. P.

This book tells the remarkable story of space exploration from the early twentieth century to the present, with compelling coverage--including a wealth of illustrations--of every US space mission ever undertaken, including those of projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, and the development of the Space Shuttle. The exciting story is brought right up to the present by explaining the function of NASA's two windows in space: the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. This book is the first illustrated history of NASA--the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--ever to be published. It underlines the personalities involved--the personal ambitions and temperaments of astronauts, pilots, scientists and engineers, and the influence of America's presidents on the country's space program--as much as the technological advances that have made space exploration possible. It is authoritatively and engagingly written, and profusely illustrated throughout with 500 stunning photographs.

NASA: The Complete Illustrated History

Merrell Publishers

Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, hundreds of spacecraft--from satellites and probes to space stations--have ventured beyond Earth's atmosphere to orbit the globe, fly to other planets, peer into the depths of the universe, or encounter comets and asteroids. Many have become household names, their missions the focus of popular attention, while others undertake their equally important tasks in relative anonymity. Superstructures in Space is the first book to present pictorially the most important of these man-made objects. Featuring a wealth of breathtaking illustrations, this remarkable volume reveals the exciting story behind each selected spacecraft: its origins and development, its designers and manufacturers, and its launch and objectives. It represents the first survey of the world's most significant and fascinating spacecraft at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Superstructures in Space is an authoritative and engaging book written by an eminent aerospace historian that appeals to readers of all ages.

Super Structures in Space: From Satellites to Space Stations- a Guide to What's Out There

Science & Math

Astronomy & Space Science

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Books by Gorn, Michael H.