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Sally Ride : America's first woman in space
This book is a biography of Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, with exclusive insights from her family and partner, and by the ABC reporter who covered NASA during its transformation from a test-pilot boys' club to a more inclusive elite. A member of the first astronaut class to include women, Ride broke through a quarter-century of white male fighter jocks when NASA chose her for the seventh shuttle mission, cracking the celestial ceiling and inspiring several generations of women. She also served on the panels investigating the Challenger explosion and the Columbia disintegration that killed all aboard. In both instances she faulted NASA's rush to meet mission deadlines and its organizational failures. The author also writes about her scrupulously guarded personal life to show us a woman whose life intersected with revolutionary social and scientific changes in America.
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We Could Not Fail
The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth. Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA work group and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.
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The first Soviet cosmonaut team : their lives, legacy, and historical impact
\"The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team\" will relate who these men were and offer far more extensive background stories, in addition to those of the more familiar names of early Soviet space explorers from that group.
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Shattered Dreams
Shattered Dreamsdelves into the personal stories and recollections of several men and women who were in line to fly a specific or future space mission but lost that opportunity due to personal reasons, mission cancellations, or even tragedies. While some of the subjects are familiar names in spaceflight history, the accounts of others are told here for the first time. Colin Burgess features spaceflight candidates from the United States, Russia, Indonesia, Australia, and Great Britain.Shattered Dreamsbrings to new life such episodes and upheavals in spaceflight history as the saga of the three Apollo missions that were cancelled due to budgetary constraints and never flew; NASA astronaut Patricia Hilliard Robertson, who died of burn injuries after her airplane crashed before she had a chance to fly into space; and a female cosmonaut who might have become the first journalist to fly in space. Another NASA astronaut was preparing to fly an Apollo mission before he was diagnosed with a disqualifying illness. There is also the amazing story of the pilot who could have bailed out of his damaged aircraft but held off while heroically avoiding a populated area and later applied to NASA to fulfill his cherished dream of becoming an astronaut despite having lost both legs in the accident. These are the incredibly human stories of competitive realists fired with an unquenchable passion. Their accounts reveal in their own words-and those of others close to them-how their shared ambition would go awry through personal accidents, illness, theChallengerdisaster, death, or other circumstances.
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Women spacefarers : sixty different paths to space
This book tells the fascinating stories of the valiant women who broke down barriers to join the space program. Beginning with the orbital flight of USSR cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, they became players in the greatest adventure of our time. The author contextualizes their accomplishments in light of the political and cultural climate, from the Cold War in the background to the changing status of women in society at large during the Seventies. The book includes the biographies of, and in some cases interviews with, the sixty women who flew in space in the first half century of space history. It reports their achievements and some little known details. The result is a gallery of pioneering women who reached for the stars: women who, with exceptional skill, hard work, and dedication, reached impressive careers as accomplished pilots, researchers, and engineers; many are now in high level managerial positions both at NASA or in public and private organizations, and all left a legacy of strength.
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Forever Young
He walked on the Moon. He flew six space missions in three different programs--more than any other human. He served with NASA for more than four decades. His peers called him the astronaut's astronaut.
Enthusiasts of space exploration have long waited for John Young to tell the story of his two Gemini flights, his two Apollo missions, the first-ever Space Shuttle flight, and the first Spacelab mission. Forever Young delivers all that and more: Young's personal journey from engineering graduate to fighter pilot, to test pilot, to astronaut, to high NASA official, to clear-headed predictor of the fate of Planet Earth.
Young, with the assistance of internationally distinguished aerospace historian James Hansen, recounts the great episodes of his amazing flying career in fascinating detail and with wry humor. He portrays astronauts as ordinary human beings and NASA as an institution with the same ups and downs as other major bureaucracies. He frankly discusses the risks of space travel, including what went wrong with the Challenger and Columbia shuttles.
Forever Young is one of the last memoirs produced by an early American astronaut. It is the first memoir written by a chief of the NASA astronaut corps. Young's experiences and candor make this book indispensable to everyone interested in the U.S. space program.
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Mae Jemison : trailblazing astronaut, doctor, and teacher
\"The first African American woman to travel in space, Mae Jemison has broken barriers in science and medicine to become one of the most admired women worldwide. This fascinating book describes how Jemison refused to let anyone stand in the way of her dreams. She became a doctor and worked in the Peace Corps until NASA invited her to join the astronaut program. Today, she is an important advocate for science in education--especially for girls and women. Jemison also continues to push scientific research to improve life in developing countries.\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Light of Earth
Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden was one of the
highest-profile personalities among the Apollo astronauts, renowned
for his outspokenness and potent views but also recognized as a
warm and well-liked person who devoted much of his life after
retiring from NASA to sharing his spaceflight experiences. Worden
had nearly finished writing this book before his passing in 2020 at
the age of eighty-eight. Coauthored with spaceflight historian
Francis French, The Light of Earth is Worden's
wide-ranging look at the greatest-ever scientific undertaking, in
which he was privileged to be a leading participant. Here Worden
gives readers his refreshingly candid opinions on the space
program, flying to the moon, and the people involved in the Apollo
and later shuttle programs, as well as sharing hard-hitting
reflections on the space shuttle program, the agonies and
extraordinary sights and delights of being a NASA Apollo astronaut,
and the space program's triumphs and failures. Worden delves into
areas of personal grief that reveal the noble and truly human side
of the space program's earliest years. He does not hold back when
discussing the shocking deaths of his fellow astronauts in the
three major tragedies that struck the space agency, nor does he shy
away from sharing his personal feelings about fellow Apollo
astronauts including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Worden was
known as a charismatic speaker and one of the most thoughtful
Apollo astronauts. His candid, entertaining, and unique perspective
in The Light of Earth will captivate and surprise.
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Chasing space
A memoir by the former NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver traces his personal journey from the gridiron to the stars, examining the intersecting roles of community, perseverance, and grace that create opportunities for success.
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The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling
\\u201cLet's go!\\u201d With that, the boyish, grinning Yuri
Gagarin launched into space on April 12, 1961, becoming the first
human being to exit Earth's orbit. The twenty-seven-year-old
lieutenant colonel departed for the stars from within the shadowy
world of the Soviet military-industrial complex. Barbed wires,
no-entry placards, armed guards, false identities, mendacious maps,
and a myriad of secret signs had hidden Gagarin from prying
outsiders-not even his friends or family knew what he had been up
to. Coming less than four years after the Russians launched Sputnik
into orbit, Gagarin's voyage was cause for another round of
capitalist shock and Soviet rejoicing. The Cosmonaut Who Couldn't
Stop Smiling relates this twentieth-century icon's remarkable life
while exploring the fascinating world of Soviet culture. Gagarin's
flight brought him massive international fame-in the early 1960s,
he was possibly the most photographed person in the world, flashing
his trademark smile while rubbing elbows with the varied likes of
Nehru, Castro, Queen Elizabeth II, and Italian sex symbol Gina
Lollobrigida. Outside of the spotlight, Andrew L. Jenks reveals,
his tragic and mysterious death in a jet crash became fodder for
morality tales and conspiracy theories in his home country, and,
long after his demise, his life continues to provide grist for the
Russian popular-culture mill. This is the story of a legend, both
the official one and the one of myth, which reflected the
fantasies, perversions, hopes and dreams of Gagarin's fellow
Russians. With this rich, lively chronicle of Gagarin's life and
times, Jenks recreates the elaborately secretive world of space-age
Russia while providing insights into Soviet history that will
captivate a range of readers.
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