At the end of World War II, the U.S. government transferred Dr. Wernher von Braun and his team of scientists from Germany to America. No one could have imagined that the greatest engineering feat in human history would result. Working together, the Germans and their American counterparts became the Apollo team capable of responding to a presidential challenge issued in 1962 to take mankind to the Moon before the decade's end. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center was the platform and team think thank that produced one of the most awe-inspiring machines ever built, the Saturn V rocket. In 1969, the Apollo/Saturn V team and their miracle of engineering landed two men on the Moon and provided the means of returning the three-man crew safely to Earth. Like the fire and billowing smoke of the mighty Saturn V, the fusion of German, American and Apollo cultures became evidenced in the surrounding economic, academic and social environments. One of the most advanced engineering and scientific communities in the world emerged: Huntsville, Alabama, Rocket City USA. Kenny Mitchell, a retired NASA engineer and consultant, began his career in Huntsville in 1959 as a co-op student at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency located at Redstone Arsenal. He worked his way up the ladder and managed many NASA projects, including establishing the first NASA office in Moscow, Russia as a U.S. diplomat. Mitchell lived the Apollo era first-hand, meticulously documenting his experience while also conducting exhaustive research into the contributions made by the men and women of Marshall Space Flight Center. Complete with untold stories of historical accounts, this book is a valuable resource for the next generation of space explorers whose contributions will continue the legacy. It gives special insight into the origins of the unique character of the city known as "the Cradle of American Space Exploration."

Describes and provides illustrations of the kinds of space exploration that may be done in the near future, and discusses the economic and political implications for the people of the earth

The author, flight director in NASA's Mission Control, tells of the challenges in space flight from the very early years to the current time and of "his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now."--Jacket.

Space is again in the headlines. E-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are planning to colonize Mars. President Trump wants a "Space Force" to achieve "space dominance" with expensive high-tech weapons. The space and nuclear arms control regimes are threadbare and disintegrating. Would-be asteroid collision diverters, space solar energy collectors, asteroid miners, and space geo-engineers insistently promote their Earth-changing mega-projects. Given our many looming planetary catastrophes (from extreme climate change to runaway artificial superintelligence), looking beyond the earth for solutions might seem like a sound strategy for humanity. And indeed, bolstered by a global network of fervent space advocates-and seemingly rendered plausible, even inevitable, by oceans of science fiction and the wizardly of modern cinema-space beckons as a fully hopeful path for human survival and flourishing, a positive future in increasingly dark times. But despite even basic questions of feasibility, will these many space ventures really have desirable effects, as their advocates insist? In the first book to critically assess the major consequences of space activities from their origins in the 1940s to the present and beyond, Daniel Deudney argues in Dark Skies that the major result of the "Space Age" has been to increase the likelihood of global nuclear war, a fact conveniently obscured by the failure of recognize that nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are inherently space weapons. The most important practical finding of Space Age science, also rarely emphasized, is the discovery that we live on Oasis Earth, tiny and fragile, and teeming with astounding life, but surrounded by an utterly desolate and inhospitable wilderness stretching at least many trillions of miles in all directions. As he stresses, our focus must be on Earth and nowhere else. Looking to the future, Deudney provides compelling reasons why space colonization will produce new threats to human survival and not alleviate the existing ones. That is why, he argues, we should fully relinquish the quest. Mind-bending and profound, Dark Skies challenges virtually all received wisdom about the final frontier.

Emphasizing the importance of the space programme to the scientific, social and cultural history of the last half of the 20th century, this brief history celebrates the almost unimaginable technological leap that the space programme represents, a feat of teamwork, innovation, dedication and mastery unprecedented in the history of mankind. Walsh's narrative begins just before the Mercury programme, covers the original seven astronauts, the Gemini and Apollo programmes, through Skylab and up to the space shuttle. The glories and emotion of space exploration are presented against the backdrop of the Cold War, the presidential administrations of Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter, and other singificant events in US history. The positive accomplishments of the astronauts are put in context of an increasingly negative domestic situation in the '60s and '70s, the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, assassinations, growing involvement in and dissension about Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, and Nixon's resignation.

Publisher Description

21st Century Science Grant.