In 1954, before the United States had even launched its first satellite into orbit, a Nebraska shoe salesman named Orville Carlisle developed a small black powder motor that could fire a toy rocket to 1,000 feet or more, blast out a parachute with a small "ejection charge," and allow the model to float harmlessly to the ground. America was hooked and hobby rocketry was born. Complete with explanations of the events and scientific developments that led to the proliferation of hobby rocketry, Launch Magazine's History of Rockets Model Rockets is a full-color pictorial history of aerospace endeavors around the world.
A must-have for anyone fascinated by space travel, rocketry, NASA, SpaceX, and more! A new era in spaceflight, led by SpaceX and other commercial rocket companies, is generating the kind of worldwide interest in space travel that we haven’t seen since the space race of the 1960s. Kids are dreaming of becoming astronauts again. New feats, such as SpaceX’s remarkable ability to land booster rockets, under powered descent, back on land or sea has galvanized a new generation of rocket enthusiasts. Yet none of this would be possible without the advances of rocketry over the past century. The Chinese were the first to develop black-powder fireworks and rockets centuries ago, but modern rocketry truly began with Robert Goddard’s launch of a liquid-fueled rocket on a Massachusetts farm in 1926. That metal contraption—which flew just 41 feet high before arching over and streaking 184 feet into a cabbage patch—came just 43 years before Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. Armstrong’s Apollo 11 mission was made possible by a giant 36-story-tall Saturn V rocket that used some of the same propulsion principles as Goddard’s first tiny, crude rockets. The beginning of the “Space Age” is considered to be Russia’s launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. But it was the pioneering human spaceflights of the 1960s that captured the imagination of the world and turned astronauts into heroes. Weapons of war—the Redstone, Atlas, and Titan II missiles—were converted into civilian launch boosters and led to the success of the Mercury and Gemini programs. All the while, Saturn rockets were being developed that would ultimately lead to the moon missions. Kids were so excited about these pioneering space flights that an entirely new hobby—model rocketry—was created to serve their interests. Small scale models of NASA’s big rockets were ordered by the millions, generating a $100 million hobby at a time when there were no video games, no internet, and no cable, just three broadcast television networks. Now, the next generation of rockets from SpaceX and other commercial companies, along with NASA’s new launch vehicles and Orion spacecraft, will lead the United States and the world into a new era of rocketry—beginning with crewed flights to the moon as early as 2024, and ultimately to Mars within the first half of this century.
Winner of the Luigi Napolitano Award (2006) from the International Academy of Astronautics This book presents the fascinating story of the events that paved the way to space. It introduces the reader to the history of early rocketry and the subsequent developments that led into the space age. People of various nations and from various lands contributed to the breakthrough to space, and the book takes the reader to faraway places on five continents. It also includes many quotes to give readers a flavor of how the participants viewed the developments. Most publications on the topic either target narrow aspects of rocket history or are popular books that scratch the surface, with minimal and sometimes inaccurate technical details. This book bridges the gap. It contains numerous technical details usually unavailable in popular publications. The details are not overbearing and anyone interested in rocketry and space exploration will navigate through the book without difficulty. There are 340 figures and photographs, many appearing for the first time.
The book enables us to visualize the pinnacle of multiple historical events in rocket science and traces the origin of modern rocketry to India, its birthplace and cradle of multiple global innovations in the past and on track to rewrite the frontiers of innovation in future.
From the first Bumper V-2 launch in1950 to the Atlas V vehicles of today, over 55 years of Cape Canaveral history is captured in this exhaustive collection of photographs celebrating the development and evolution of one of space exploration's most famous and significant facilities. Detailed maps and historical aerial photographs reveal the famous launch complexes and basic infrastructure of this storied base, while missile and rocket tests are featured in never-before-seen images with descriptive captions. The bustling daily activity of thousands of employees at the Cape is captured in pictures, providing an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at America's rocket launches. The book includes information on the current generation of space launch vehicles, trivia on various rockets and satellites that have flown out of Cape Canaveral and also provides anecdotes about America's first spaceport.
Access -- no single word better describes the primary concern of the exploration and development of space. Every participant in space activities -- civil, military, scientific, or commercial -- needs affordable, reliable, frequent, and flexible access to space. To Reach the High Frontier details the histories of the various space access vehicles developed in the United States since the birth of the space age in 1957. Each case study has been written by a specialist knowledgeable about the vehicle described and places each system in the larger context of the history of spaceflight. The technical challenge of reaching space with chemical rockets, the high costs associated with space launch, the long lead times necessary for scheduling flights, and the poor reliability of the rockets themselves show launch vehicles to be the space program's most difficult challenge.
It reviews the work of three great pioneers of the early part of the twentieth century - America's Goddard, Germany's Oberth, and Russia's Tsiolkovsky - as well as the accomplishments of Esnault-Pelterie in France, Isaac Lubbock's work on liquid propellants in Great Britain, and the development of the Russian "Katyusha". It details the experiments of von Braun and Walter R Dornberger in German before World War II, and gives a full account of the work of their development team on the V-2 rocket at the Peenemunde Center. The dramatic story of the German scientists' surrender to American forces in 1945, as well as their eventual accomplishments at the Army's Redstone Arsenal and subsequently NASA's Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is also told at first hand.
