The Birth of NASA
The Birth of NASA

Author: Manfred "Dutch" von Ehrenfried

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 3319284282

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This is the story of the work of the original NASA space pioneers; men and women who were suddenly organized in 1958 from the then National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) into the Space Task Group. A relatively small group, they developed the initial mission concept plans and procedures for the U. S. space program. Then they boldly built hardware and facilities to accomplish those missions. The group existed only three years before they were transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, in 1962, but their organization left a large mark on what would follow.Von Ehrenfried's personal experience with the STG at Langley uniquely positions him to describe the way the group was structured and how it reacted to the new demands of a post-Sputnik era. He artfully analyzes how the growing space program was managed and what techniques enabled it to develop so quickly from an operations perspective. The result is a fascinating window into history, amply backed up by first person documentation and interviews.

Apollo Mission Control
Apollo Mission Control

Author: Manfred "Dutch" von Ehrenfried

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-21

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3319766848

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This book describes the history of this now iconic room which represents America’s space program during the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz and early Space Shuttle eras. It is now a National Historic Landmark and is being restored to a level which represents the day the flight control teams walked out after the last lunar landing missions. The book is dedicated to the estimated 3,000 men and women who supported the flights and tells the story from their perspective. It describes the rooms of people supporting this control center; those rooms of engineers, analysts and scientists most people never knew about. Some called it a “shrine” and some called it a “cathedral.” Now it will be restored to its former glory and soon thousands will be able to view the place where America flew to the moon.

Stratonauts
Stratonauts

Author: Manfred "Dutch" von Ehrenfired

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-12-13

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 3319029010

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Just what does it take to be a stratonaut, soaring to higher and higher altitudes of Earth's atmosphere? Brave men and women have reached extreme heights in balloons, aircraft and rocket ships over the past two centuries, from the first untethered balloon flight to the first flights in the newly defined stratosphere, through to the present flights that continue to set new records. This book defines the altitudes related to the stratosphere, how it changes with latitude and the effects on ascending aviators. Also described is how over time technology enabled aircraft and balloons to achieve higher altitudes. The book shows the clear influence of the military on designs that initially focused on speed and maneuverability, but only later on reaching new altitudes. The early flights into the troposphere and eventually the mid to upper reaches of the stratosphere are chronicled, with great emphasis on flight operations. This includes decompression, bailouts, inertia coupling, ejections, catastrophic disintegration, crashes and deaths. Although the book highlights major altitude attempts and records, it also focuses on the life-threatening problems confronting the would-be stratonaut and the causes of many of their deaths. In doing so, it tries to define just what it takes to be a stratonaut.

Exploring the Martian Moons
Exploring the Martian Moons

Author: Manfred "Dutch" von Ehrenfried

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 3319527002

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This book explores the once popular idea of 'Flexible Path' in terms of Mars, a strategy that would focus on a manned orbital mission to Mars's moons rather than the more risky, expensive and time-consuming trip to land humans on the Martian surface. While currently still not the most popular idea, this mission would take advantage of the operational, scientific and engineering lessons to be learned from going to Mars's moons first. Unlike a trip to the planet's surface, an orbital mission avoids the dangers of the deep gravity well of Mars and a very long stay on the surface. This is analogous to Apollo 8 and 10, which preceded the landing on the Moon of Apollo 11. Furthermore, a Mars orbital mission could be achieved at least five years, possibly 10 before a landing mission. Nor would an orbital mission require all of the extra vehicles, equipment and supplies needed for a landing and a stay on the planet for over a year. The cost difference between the two types of missions is in the order of tens of billions of dollars. An orbital mission to Deimos and Phobos would provide an early opportunity to acquire scientific knowledge of the moons and Mars as well, since some of the regolith is presumed to be soil ejected from Mars. It may also offer the opportunity to deploy scientific instruments on the moons which would aid subsequent missions. It would provide early operational experience in the Mars environment without the risk of a landing. The author convincingly argues this experience would enhance the probability of a safe and successful Mars landing by NASA at a later date, and lays out the best way to approach an orbital mission in great detail. Combining path-breaking science with achievable goals on a fast timetable, this approach is the best of both worlds--and our best path to reaching Mars safely in the future.

Apollo 15: Preliminary Science Report
Apollo 15: Preliminary Science Report

Author: Manned Spacecraft Center (U.S.)

Publisher:

Published: 1972

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13:

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"The Apollo 15 mission was the first of the Apollo missions to utilize the full capability of a complex set of spacecraft and launch vehicles... provided results that furnish many new insights into lunar history and structure. Perhaps most important of all, this mission provided results that give a meaningful overall picture of the Moon. The scientific endeavors of the Apollo 15 mission can be divided into three distinct kinds of activities: (1) the orbital experiments, 12) the package of lunar-surface experiments, and (3) the surface sampling and observation."--p. xi.

Hollywood Highbrow
Hollywood Highbrow

Author: Shyon Baumann

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0691187282

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Today's moviegoers and critics generally consider some Hollywood products--even some blockbusters--to be legitimate works of art. But during the first half century of motion pictures very few Americans would have thought to call an American movie "art." Up through the 1950s, American movies were regarded as a form of popular, even lower-class, entertainment. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, viewers were regularly judging Hollywood films by artistic criteria previously applied only to high art forms. In Hollywood Highbrow, Shyon Baumann for the first time tells how social and cultural forces radically changed the public's perceptions of American movies just as those forces were radically changing the movies themselves. The development in the United States of an appreciation of film as an art was, Baumann shows, the product of large changes in Hollywood and American society as a whole. With the postwar rise of television, American movie audiences shrank dramatically and Hollywood responded by appealing to richer and more educated viewers. Around the same time, European ideas about the director as artist, an easing of censorship, and the development of art-house cinemas, film festivals, and the academic field of film studies encouraged the idea that some American movies--and not just European ones--deserved to be considered art.

To a Rocky Moon
To a Rocky Moon

Author: Don E. Wilhelms

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13:

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When human exploration of the lunar surface began in 1969, it marked not only an unprecedented technological achievement but also the culmination of scientific efforts to understand lunar geology. Memoirs of the Apollo astronauts have preserved the exploratory aspects of these missions; now a geologist who was an active participant in the lunar program offers a detailed historical view of those events--including the pre-Apollo era--from a heretofore untold scientific perspective. It was the responsibility of the scientific team of which Don Wilhelms was a member to assemble an overall picture of the Moon's structure and history in order to recommend where on the lunar surface fieldwork should be conducted and samples collected. His book relates the site-selection process in detail, and draws in concomitant events concerning mission operations to show how they affected the course of the scientific program. While discussing all six landings in detail, it tells the behind-the-scenes story of telescopic and spacecraft investigations before, during, and after the manned landings. Intended for anyone interested the space program, the history of science, or the application of geology to planetology, To a Rocky Moon will leave all readers with a better idea of what the Moon is really like. In so expertly summarizing this earlier phase of exploration, it stands as an authoritative touchstone for those involved in the next.

Yvain
Yvain

Author: Chretien de Troyes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1987-09-10

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0300187580

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The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Yet because of the difficulty of capturing his swift-moving style in translation, English-speaking audiences are largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in verse that fully and satisfyingly captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Yvain is a courtly romance with a moral tenor; it is ironic and sometimes bawdy; the poetry is crisp and vivid. In addition, the psychological and the socio-historical perceptions of the poem are of profound literary and historical importance, for it evokes the emotions and the values of a flourishing, vibrant medieval past.