The Apollo space program was the largest technological undertaking of all time, and let to the greatest adventure of the 20th century. Born of the cold war, it was moved forward by the passion of 100,000 workers and $20 billion over ten years.
Over that time, 12 courageous individuals stepped out onto the lunar surface and thus changed the history of humankind, changing us into a space-faring civilization.
And then, it was gone. Three years, 9 missions, six men on the surface of the moon. They explored, they experimented, and they came home.
Here in one volume are the transcripted voices of the partipants, with expert commentary and retrospective reminiscences, explained and put into context. From the triumphs of Neil Armstrong to Buzz Aldrin, to the near disaster of Apollo 13 ("Houston, we've got a problem"), it's all here -- the science, the adventure, the glory, the letdown. One of the great stories of humankind's reaching for the stars.

Destination Moon

Science & Math

Pyle, Rod

Astronomy & Space Science

Smithsonia

The Apollo space program was the largest technical undertaking of the twentieth century. In three short years, from 1969-1972, nine missions headed to the moon, and six of them landed men on its surface and safely returned home.
Destination Moon tells the significant, spectacular, and intriguing story of the Apollo program through first-person accounts by the astronauts themselves—both their mission dialogue and retrospective reminiscences—explained and put into context with expert commentary by Rod Pyle. With more than 100 images, some rarely seen, Destination Moon is a whole new look at one of mankind's most extraordinary achievements.

Destination Moon: The Apollo Missions in the Astronauts' Own Words

Harper-perennial

Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City

Product Description A new kind of city park has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Postindustrial parks transform the derelict remnants of an urban past into distinctive public spaces that meld repurposed infrastructure, wild-looking green space, and landscape architecture. For their proponents, they present an opportunity to turn disused areas into neighborhood anchors, with a host of environmental and community benefits. Yet there are clear economic motives as well―successful parks have helped generate billions of dollars of city tax revenues and real estate development.Kevin Loughran explores the High Line in New York, the Bloomingdale Trail/606 in Chicago, and Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston to offer a critical perspective on the rise of the postindustrial park. He reveals how elites deploy the popularity and seemingly benign nature of parks to achieve their cultural, political, and economic goals. As urban economies have become restructured around finance, real estate, tourism, and cultural consumption, parks serve as civic shields for elite-oriented investment. Tracing changing ideas about cities and nature and underscoring the centrality of race and class, Loughran argues that postindustrial parks aestheticize past disinvestment while serving as green engines of gentrification.A wide-ranging investigation of the political, cultural, and economic forces shaping park development, Parks for Profit reveals the social inequalities at the heart of today’s new urban landscape. Review Parks for Profit offers a fresh take on the problem of environmental equity. Loughran deftly shows how the economic value of urban green space for capital can shrink the pool of public funds for parks and play areas in the places that need them most. He asks tough but necessary questions, and his answers are sure to spark debate. -- Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic LifeKevin Loughran's Parks for Profit is a beautifully written, carefully researched study of the role of green spaces in contemporary urban economic redevelopment. Loughran's richly textured and engaging book takes the reader to New York, Chicago, and Houston, demonstrating how cities reinvent their industrial pasts to serve tourists' and affluent urbanites' desire for green amenities. Parks for Profit powerfully reveals how planners and landscape architects rely on the urban industrial past to create postindustrial spaces that appeal to a new class of urban dwellers and visitors. Deeply attentive to the past, present, and future, Loughran reveals how histories of urban disinvestment, deindustrialization, White flight, and, more recently, gentrification, drive the emergence of new parks. Parks for Profit will productively challenge preconceived notions about the High Line and other new urban green spaces, and will sharpen understandings of how and why cities alter the material and cultural landscape. Loughran's book is a must-read for students of culture, urbanism, nature, and urban economies, providing a powerful example of the utility of multi-sited research and of the value of historically informed analyses of contemporary dynamics. -- Japonica Brown-Saracino, author of A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for AuthenticityParks for Profit asks how a generation of refurbished parks change and re-valorize the picturesque framing of nature by imagining a union of wild nature and the postindustrial landscape, and, in doing so, gives a sense of the whole park, not merely its use or its financing or construction. The manuscript’s insightful and thoughtful analysis of the parks is valuable and even lyrical. Rarely is a book of urban sociology so well written, and rarely does it stand on the merits of the author’s insights. -- Gregory Smithsimon, author of Cause: ... And How It Doesn't Always Equal EffectHow do y

Mars: The Missions That Have Transformed Our Understanding of the Red Planet

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Andre Deutsch

With unparalleled access to NASA’s archives, this stunning volume pays tribute to 50 years of Mars exploration. Thanks to the latest Mars expeditions—with many more planned in the next few years—all eyes have turned to the once-mysterious red planet. This illuminating book traces our history of Mars exploration, from the earliest telescopic viewings, through NASA’s first flybys in the 1960s, to the landers in the 1970s, and the increasingly sophisticated rovers and orbiters of today. It also showcases in exquisite detail the elaborate plans for human expeditions to Mars, including NASA’s ambitious designs for crewed missions and other compelling alternative plans formulated by experts such as Buzz Aldrin. With breathtaking photographs and rare images of plans, maps, schematics, and more, including insider documents from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the story of mankind’s fascination with Mars jumps off the page.

Mars: Making Contact

With unparalleled access to NASA’s archives, this stunning volume pays tribute to 50 years of Mars exploration. Thanks to the latest exhilarating Mars expeditions, all eyes have turned to the once-mysterious red planet. This illuminating book traces our history of Mars exploration, from the earliest telescopic viewings, through NASA’s first flybys in the 1960s, to the landers in the 1970s, and the increasingly sophisticated rovers and orbiters now exploring every region of the planet. The elaborate plans for the human exploration of Mars are also shown in exquisite detail, including NASA’s ambitious designs for crewed missions and some compelling alternative mission plans by experts such as Buzz Aldrin. With breathtaking photographs and rare images of plans, maps, schematics, and more, including insider documents from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the story of mankind’s fascination with Mars jumps off the page.

Missions to the Moon traces our quest to explore this final frontier, starting with the deadly development of German V1s and V2s in the Second World War, through the pioneering adventures of the Apollo moon-landing program, and culminating in the future of lunar exploration with the recent missions by China, Japan, and Europe.
Through 150 stunning photographs and 20 beautifully recreated rare facsimile documents that almost make you feel like part of the crew, we witness the lethal Apollo 1 fire; celebrate the success of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to orbit a celestial body; marvel at Apollo 11 and the first man to land on the moon; and share the dangers endured by the astronauts aboard the ill-fated Apollo 13.
These are events the whole word watched in rapt attention. Now everyone can relive the experience or enjoy it for the first time.
The historic facsimile documents include:
 Werner von Braun’s 1964 design for a space station
 A 1969 issue of the USSR newspaper Pravda, celebrating the success of Soyuz 4 and 5
 The official NASA photograph of the Apollo 7 flight crew
 The mission report from Apollo 11, as well as the descent map
 The Apollo 13 flight log
 A memo outlining future plans for Apollos 18, 19, and 20 before they were cancelled
 And more!

Missions to the Moon: The Complete Story of Man's Greatest Adventure

Union Square & Co.

Through stunning images, including 75 illustrations created exclusively for this book, 25 remarkable and memorable technologies from the world of sci-fi are explored. With expertly written text by NASA insider Rod Pyle, each concept is explained and dissected to reveal the real science behind it. Some are temptingly within our reach—such as cyborgs and artificial intelligence—others are further off, but fast approaching reality (think bio-ports or cloaking devices). All are fascinating and make wonderful explorations into the science of the future as we understand it today.

Blueprint for a Battlestar: Serious Scientific Explanations Behind Sci-Fi's Greatest Inventions

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Apollo 11 mission, this lavishly illustrated book—featuring stunning photographs and many rarely seen images and documents—tells the incredible story of the first men on the Moon. Acclaimed science author Rod Pyle (Missions to the Moon) returns with a beautiful and insightful book commemorating Apollo 11. First on the Moon offers an exciting behind-the-scenes look at America’s journey to the Moon—from the space race to the landing on the Sea of Tranquility to splashdown on Earth and the aftermath. Pyle spent years combing NASA archives and private collections for memorabilia from the mission, and the book includes everything from accessible explanations of the enormous challenges facing NASA to reproductions of original 1969 documents. It also features a number of specially commissioned photocompositions created from NASA Apollo images released in 2015. Many were parts of photomontages taken by the astronauts, and these compositions have now been carefully restored to their originally intended montage formats. With compelling firsthand accounts and a gripping narrative, this gorgeously designed volume fully immerses readers in the Space Age. Includes a foreword by Buzz Aldrin, and exclusive interviews with the adult children of the Apollo 11 astronauts.

First on the Moon: The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience

Award-winning science writer and documentarian Rod Pyle presents an insider's perspective on the most unusual and bizarre space missions ever devised inside and outside of NASA. The incredible projects described here were not merely flights of fancy dreamed up by space enthusiasts, but actual missions planned by leading aeronautical engineers. Some were designed but not built; others were built but not flown; and a few were flown to failure but little reported:A giant rocket that would use atomic bombs as propulsion (never mind the fallout), military bases on the moon that could target enemies on earth with nuclear weapons, a scheme to spray-paint the lenses of Soviet spy satellites in space, the rushed Soyuz 1 spacecraft that ended with the death of its pilot, the near-disaster of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the mysterious Russian space shuttle that flew only once and was then scrapped-these are just some of the unbelievable tales that Pyle has found in once top-secret documents as well as accounts that were simply lost for many decades.These stories tell of a time when nothing was too off-the-wall to be taken seriously, and the race to the moon and the threat from the Soviet Union trumped all other considerations.

Amazing Stories of the Space Age: True Tales of Nazis in Orbit, Soldiers on the Moon, Orphaned Martian Robots, and Other Fascinating Accounts from the Annals of Spaceflight: Library Edition

Tantor Media, Inc.

In the next decade, NASA, by itself and in collaboration with the European Space Agency, is planning a minimum of four separate missions to Mars. Clearly, exciting times are ahead for Mars exploration. This is an insider's look into the amazing projects now being developed here and abroad to visit the legendary red planet. Drawing on his contacts at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the author provides stunning insights into the history of Mars exploration and the difficulties and dangers of traveling there. After an entertaining survey of the human fascination with Mars over the centuries, the author offers an introduction to the geography, geology, and water processes of the planet. He then briefly describes the many successful missions by NASA and others to that distant world. But failure and frustration also get their due. As the author makes clear, going to Mars is not, and never will be, easy. Later in the book, he describes in detail what each upcoming mission will involve. In the second half of the book, he offers the reader a glimpse inside the world of Earth-based "Mars analogs," places on Earth where scientists are conducting research in hostile environments that are eerily "Martian." Finally, he constructs a probable scenario of a crewed expedition to Mars, so that readers can see how earlier robotic missions and human Earth simulations will fit together. All this is punctuated by numerous firsthand interviews with some of the finest Mars explorers of our day, including Stephen Squyres (Mars Exploration Rover), Bruce Murray (former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and Peter Smith (chief of the Mars Phoenix Lander and the upcoming OSIRIS-REx missions). These stellar individuals give us an insider's view of the difficulties and rewards of roaming the red planet. The author's infectious enthusiasm and firsthand knowledge of the international space industry combine to make a uniquely appealing and accessible book about Mars.

Destination Mars: New Explorations of the Red Planet

Prometheus

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pyle, Rod. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pyle, Rod

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pyle, Rod. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Destination Moon

Destination Moon: The Apollo Missions in the Astronauts' Own Words

Mars: The Missions That Have Transformed Our Understanding of the Red Planet

Mars: Making Contact

Mars: The Missions That Have Transformed Our Understanding of the Red Planet

Missions to the Moon: The Complete Story of Man's Greatest Adventure

Blueprint for a Battlestar: Serious Scientific Explanations Behind Sci-Fi's Greatest Inventions

First on the Moon: The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience

Amazing Stories of the Space Age: True Tales of Nazis in Orbit, Soldiers on the Moon, Orphaned Martian Robots, and Other Fascinating Accounts from the Annals of Spaceflight: Library Edition

Destination Mars: New Explorations of the Red Planet