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A captivating history of NASA’s Space Transportation System—the space shuttle—chronicling the inevitable failures of a doomed design. In Dark Star, Matthew Hersch challenges the existing narrative of the most significant human space program of the last 50 years, NASA’s space shuttle. He begins with the origins of the space shuttle: a century-long effort to develop a low-cost, reusable, rocket-powered airplane to militarize and commercialize space travel, which Hersch explains was built the wrong way, at the wrong time, and for all the wrong reasons. Describing the unique circumstances that led to the space shuttle’s creation by President Richard Nixon’s administration in 1972 and...
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An introduction to various careers in space exploration.
The creation and utilization of the International Space Station (ISS) is a milestone in space exploration. But without the Space Shuttle, it would have remained an impossible dream. Assembling and Supplying the ISS is the story of how, between 1998 and 2011, the Shuttle became the platform which enabled the construction and continued operation of the primary scientific research facility in Earth orbit. Fulfilling an objective it had been designed to complete decades before, 37 Shuttle missions carried the majority of the hardware needed to build the ISS and then acted as a ferry and supply train for early resident crews to the station. Building upon the decades of development and experience described in the companion volume Linking the Space Shuttle and Space Stations: Early Docking Technologies from Concept to Implementation, this book explores • a purpose-built hardware processing facility • challenging spacewalking objectives • extensive robotic operations • undocking a unmanned orbiter The experience and expertise gained through these missions allows space planners to improve space construction skills in advance of even more ambitious plans in the future.
Looks forward to the completion of the ISS, possibility of return to the moon, manned flights to Mars, and the prospect of safety and rescue far beyond. Describes the role of Mission Control and recovery forces in ensuring the support from the ground to the crew in space. Provides a unique range of historic archive of material on the Russian programme. Presents a review of the Columbia accident, its investigation and various proposed rescue scenarios. Details escape systems devised for rocket research aircraft, early manned spacecraft, abort and recovery options from Earth orbit, and from lunar distance. Demonstrates that crew safety has been a factor in planning and mounting on all manned spaceflights.
The great scientific, astronomical and technological advances of the 20th century inspired the science fiction genre to imagine distant worlds and futures, far beyond the discoveries of the here and now. This book explores science fiction films, television series, novels and short stories--from Lost in Space (1965-1968) to Fringe (2008-2013) to the works of Isaac Asimov and Stephen Baxter--with a focus on their underlying concepts of physics and astronomy. Assessing accuracy and plausibility, the author considers the possibilities of solar system, interstellar and faster than light travel; intelligent planets, dark (anti-) matter, the multiverse and string theory, time travel, alternate universes, teleportation and replication, weaponry, force fields, extraterrestrial life, subatomic life, emotional robots, super-human and parapsychological powers, asteroid impacts, space colonies and many other topics.