To a Distant Day
The Rocket Pioneers
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- 26,99 €
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- 26,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
“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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When mankind first made the leap into space in the late 1950s, one commentator compared it to life crawling out of the primordial goop onto land. In this wide-ranging study, technology historian Gainor (Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race) takes readers from ancient Chinese experiments with gunpowder to Robert Goddard's epiphany in his cherry tree when he was 17 and the thrilling moment Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Much of Gainor's book will be familiar to die-hard space buffs, but he has dug out shiny nuggets with which to dazzle readers, such as that the assassin of Czar Alexander II was a rocket buff and that the countdown was first used by director Fritz Lang in his film Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon). Gainor overlooks some worthwhile research, such as recent revelations that 13 women almost had a chance to join the early U.S. space program. On the whole, this is a detailed, deftly written history that should appeal to all would-be rocketeers, whether launching from fields on weekend afternoons or just dreaming of space in a comfortable chair. Photos.
