Kategoria BISAC: Technology & Engineering >> Aeronautics & Astronautics

In the 1950s and early 1960s a small fraternity of daring, brilliant men made the first exploratory trips into the upper stratosphere, reaching the edge of outer space in tiny capsules suspended beneath plastic balloons. This book tells the story of these tenacious men as they labored on the cusp of a new age, seeing things that no one had ever seen and experiencing conditions no one was sure they could survive.

Mostly U.S. Air Force and Navy officers, among them doctors, physicists, meteorologists, engineers, astronomers, and test pilots, they struggled with meager budgets,...

Explains the politics, science and organisation of the European Space Programme and the many technological achievements of its satellites and rockets.-

Highlights the major contributions of the European Space Agency s scientific and applications programmes and puts them in a global perspective.-

Focuses on Europe placing the various national programmes in a European context.

This is the very first inside story of a key part of the Soviet manned space programme, detailing the development of Soviet/Russian spacesuits. The authors, as participants in the programme, provide details of events, previously unknown in the West, including their technical development. These space suits were an important part of the many Soviet firsts in the space race Yuri Gagarin s flight, Valentina Tereskova, the first woman in space, the first space walk by Alexei Leonov, and the first transfer on orbit from one spacecraft to another.

All previous books on Soviet manned space...

From the reviews:

..".I enjoyed the historical descriptions of the contributions of the early rocket pioneers Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Wernher von Braun, as well as the American and Russian manned programs...The book is aimed at the science-literate public, although the material varies in level of detail." (George D. Nelson, PHYSICS TODAY, June 2005)