Both Jet-engine propelled aircraft and long-range rockets were first successfully flown during World War II. This led 10 rapid post-war improvements in both, and within two decades we had supersonic airplanes, communication satellites, and trips to the moon. Unmanned probes to Mars and the outer planets followed, as well as the International Space Station. The technology behind these advances is described, along with short biographies of key pioneers. Problems at high Mach numbers are reviewed. Possible future developments are discussed. Mora technical details, including mathematics, are in...

Both Jet-engine propelled aircraft and long-range rockets were first successfully flown during World War II. This led 10 rapid post-war improvements in both, and within two decades we had supersonic airplanes, communication satellites, and trips to the moon. Unmanned probes to Mars and the outer planets followed, as well as the International Space Station. The technology behind these advances is described, along with short biographies of key pioneers. Problems at high Mach numbers are reviewed. Possible future developments are discussed. Mora technical details, including mathematics, are in...

Let's assume that you, the reader, have been educated in the basics of science and perhaps some branch of engineering. You have access to textbooks and handbooks, and you are comfortable with a computer. One day, you find yourself faced with a technical problem. If this problem happens to be essentially identical to a previous problem, which you were trained to solve, clearly you will have no difficulty. Unfortunately, however, the variety of technical problems that you might encounter is enormous. The chance is small that a given problem will be an exact replica of a familiar problem. In...