The American Quarter Horse is the world's most versatile breed, excelling in the show arena and at the racetrack. With racing dating back to colonial Virginia, the sport is rich in history and lore. From "Code Blue" to "A Case for Columbo," this unique collection of short essays describes the history of the breed, the excitement of the races, and the people and athletes involved in Quarter Horse racing.
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Rocket the Racehorse started out as a bedtime story the author told his daughter nightly. He wanted to preserve the story so that many young children could be entertained and inspired by the story.
"Insightful, instructive, and definitely worth the read."--Greg Andres, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada "As someone who has been teaching a course on space exploration for many years and has visited most of NASA's space centers, I have found plenty of new and valuable material in To a Distant Day. . . . I recommend the book to all who wish to know more about the conditions, people, and discoveries between 1890 and 1960 that led to the space age."--Pangratios Papacosta, Physics Today Although the dream of flying is as old as the human imagination, the notion of rocketing into space may have originated with Chinese gunpowder experiments during the Middle Ages. Rockets as both weapons and entertainment are examined in this engaging history of how human beings acquired the ability to catapult themselves into space. Chris Gainor's irresistible narrative introduces us to pioneers such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth, who pointed the way to the cosmos by generating the earliest wave of international enthusiasm for space exploration. It shows us German engineer Wernher von Braun creating the V-2, the first large rocket, which, though opening the door to space, failed utterly as the "wonder weapon" it was meant to be. From there Gainor follows the space race to the Soviet Union and the United States, giving us a close look at the competitive hysteria that led to Sputnik, satellites, space probes, and--finally--human flight into space in 1961. As much a story of cultural ambition and personal destiny as of scientific progress and technological history, To a Distant Day offers a complete and thoroughly compelling account of humanity's determined efforts--sometimes poignant, sometimes amazing, sometimes mad--to leave the earth behind.
Maverick Scientist is the memoir of Forrest Mims, who forged a distinguished scientific career despite having no academic training in science. Named one of the "50 Best Brains in Science" by Discover magazine, Forrest shares what sparked his childhood curiosity and relates a lifetime of improbable, dramatic, and occasionally outright dangerous experiences in the world of science. At thirteen he invented a new method of rocket control. At seventeen he designed and built an analog computer that could translate Russian into English and that the Smithsonian collected as an example of an early hobby computer. While majoring in government at Texas A&M University, Forrest created a hand-held, radar-like device to help guide the blind. And during his military service, he had to be given special clearance to do top secret laser research at the Air Force Weapons Lab. Why? Because while he lacked the required engineering degree, they wanted his outside-the-box thinking on the project. He went on to co-found MITS, Inc., producer of the first commercially successful personal computer, wrote a series of electronics books for Radio Shack that sold more than seven million copies, and designed the music synthesizer circuit that became known as the infamous Atari Punk Console. All this came before he started consulting for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and NOAA's famous Mauna Loa Observatory, and earning the prestigious Rolex Award. This intimate portrait of a self-made scientist shares a revelatory look inside the scientific community, and tells the story of a lifelong learner who stood by his convictions even when pressured by the establishment to get in line with conventional wisdom. With dozens of personal photos and illustrations, Maverick Scientist serves as proof that to be a scientist, you simply need to do science.
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.
The incredible story of spaceflight before the establishment of NASA. NASA's history is a familiar story, one that typically peaks with Neil Armstrong taking his small step on the Moon in 1969. But America's space agency wasn't created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer. In the 1930s, rockets were all the rage in Germany, the focus both of scientists hoping to fly into space and of the German armed forces, looking to circumvent the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. One of the key figures in this period was Wernher von Braun, an engineer who designed the rockets that became the devastating V-2. As the war came to its chaotic conclusion, von Braun escaped from the ruins of Nazi Germany, and was taken to America where he began developing missiles for the US Army. Meanwhile, the US Air Force was looking ahead to a time when men would fly in space, and test pilots like Neil Armstrong were flying cutting-edge, rocket-powered aircraft in the thin upper atmosphere. Breaking the Chains of Gravity tells the story of America's nascent space program, its scientific advances, its personalities and the rivalries it caused between the various arms of the US military. At this point getting a man in space became a national imperative, leading to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, otherwise known as NASA.
With the Soviet Union's launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the Cold War soared to new heights as Americans feared losing the race into space. The X-15 Rocket Plane tells the enthralling yet little-known story of the hypersonic X-15, the winged rocket ship that met this challenge and opened the way into human-controlled spaceflight. Drawing on interviews with those who were there, Michelle Evans captures the drama and excitement of, yes, rocket science: how to handle the heat generated at speeds up to Mach 7, how to make a rocket propulsion system that could throttle, and how to safely reenter the atmosphere from space and make a precision landing. This book puts a human face on the feats of science and engineering that went into the X-15 program, many of them critical to the development of the Space Shuttle. And, finally, it introduces us to the largely unsung pilots of the X-15. By the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, thirty-one American astronauts had flown into space--eight of them astronaut-pilots of the X-15. The X-15 Rocket Plane restores these pioneers, and the others who made it happen, to their rightful place in the history of spaceflight. Browse more spaceflight books at upinspace.org. Purchase the audio edition.
