Outer Space - Observation & Exploration, Astronautical Engineering - Space Stations & Satellites, Astronautical Engineering - General & Miscellaneous, Aerospace & Defense Industries, The Solar System - Astronomical Studies & Observations

Space Age

Name: Space Age
Author: William J. Walter
ISBN: 9780679402954

by William J. Walter

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Overview

The exploration of space represents a cultural shift greater than the invention of agriculture or the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. It marks a biological leap as significant as the wriggling of the first fish onto land or the passage of the first primate from the jungle to the savannah. For the first time in human history, the sheer force of our curiosity has carried us beyond our own world. Space Age is the companion book to the extraordinary six-part PBS television series produced by WQED/Pittsburgh in association with the National Academy of Sciences. Written by journalist and filmmaker William J. Walter, it takes readers on an exciting and unexpected journey into the past and maps out strange and amazing possibilities for the future. It begins by telling the stories of the extraordinary rocket pioneers who made the primal dream of exploring the stars possible: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a deaf, small-town Russian schoolteacher, who in 1898 first calculated how to launch a rocket beyond Earth; Robert Goddard, the secretive and determined New England physics professor, who had the personality of a parson but the mind of a mad adventurer; and Hermann Oberth, a high school math teacher from Transylvania, whose failed effort to build a rocket for a publicity stunt in the 1920s became the first in a long line of rockets that led to the Saturn V booster - the mammoth ship that sent American astronauts to the moon forty years later. Space Age reveals how the pragmatic world of politics unexpectedly became linked with the dream-driven hopes of the old rocket pioneers; how Hitler's madness financed the development of the first true rocket designed by Werner von Braun; how Russia and America's mutual paranoia fueled not only the cold war, but the spectacular way in which both nations chose to wage it - through a space race that held the world breathless. The progeny of that competition was Sputnik, Mercury, and Apollo, which led us to the moon, and whose legacy e

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Editorials

Library Journal

A companion volume to an upcoming PBS series, this book attempts to provide a new perspective on recent advances in space, showing that space technology and space exploration have forever changed our view of the cosmos and of ourselves. As a general introduction, it succeeds quite well. Walter recaps the role of early Apollo photographs of earth in raising our ecological consciousness and of later, unstaffed planetary probes in reinforcing awareness of the fragility of our planet. How applications satellites have made a reality of the global village through worldwide communications, how weather satellites have revolutionized severe storm forecasting, and how earth resources satellite data are being used to manage the earth's finite resources--all are succinctly explained, as is the crucial role played by military spy satellites in keeping the Cold War cold. Walter concludes with a look ahead at plans for staffed lunar outposts, trips to Mars, and the economic potential of a space-based economy. The TV series may create demand, but libraries already owning the similar Blueprint for Space: Science Fiction to Science Fact ( LJ 2/15/92) may wish to skip this work. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/92.-- Thomas J. Frieling, Bain bridge Coll., Ga .

Roland Green

This companion volume to a PBS TV series will undoubtedly be greatly enhanced by the illustrations that were not available for review. Even without them, however, the text already gives the reader very little to complain about in its serviceable overview of the past, present, and future of spaceflight. Coverage includes not only the pioneering figures (scientists such as Tsiolkovsky, Korolev, Goddard, and von Braun, as well as astronauts), but also the notable milestones, the technological breakthroughs, the many roles satellites play today (e.g., environmental monitoring), and the future of both manned spaceflight and space-based astronomy. Written in clear, journalistic prose, the book should be a worthwhile addition to most collections despite, as well as because of, any interest in it generated by the PBS series.