Space Book Recomendations

Highly recomended book on the history and development of every major U.S. launch vehicle - Atlas, Delta, Titan, Saturn, Shuttle, and the Centaur upper stage.

This best-selling reference guide contains the most reliable and up-to-date material on launch programs in Brazil, China, Europe, India, Israel, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.

Packed with illustrations and figures, the third edition has been extensively updated and expanded, and offers a quick and easy data retrieval source for policymakers, planners, engineers, launch buyers, and students.

Jenkins has produced the most complete overview of the development of the Space Shutte and the operations of the first 100 Shuttle missions

Table of Contents
Army in Space; Automobiles; Aviation, Biographies; Cold War, Desert Storm, Installation
History, Lance, Missilery, Monographs, NIKE history, Oral History, Photo Archives, Redstone
Firsts, Von Braun, Women's History, World War II, Pioneering Efforts in Space.

A great, detailed History of the Titan-2 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program

This is the Sixth Edition of the leading textbook on rocket propulsion for courses in aerospace engineering. It covers the basic physical principles of rocket propulsion such as nozzle thermodynamics, heat transfer, flight performance, and fuel chemistry. It also includes the design rationale of components such as nozzles, fuel chambers, structures, and control systems. All rocket types are covered, i.e., liquid, solid, hybrid fueled, and electric propulsion systems.

A text explaining why deep space exploration would be desirable and necessary, and how to create robots and probes capable of reaching the outer limits of the solar system, and beyond. Also includes discussion about human interstellar exploration, and the logistics of such a journey.

A decade in the making, this book is based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with each of the twenty-four moon voyagers, as well as those who contributed their brain power, training and teamwork on Earth. In his preface Chaikin writes, "We touched the face of another world and became a people without limits."

In 1961, only a few weeks after Alan Shepherd completed the first American suborbital flight, President John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. The next year, NASA awarded the right to meet the extraordinary challenge of building a lunar excursion module to a small airplane company called Grumman from Long Island, New York. Chief engineer Thomas J. Kelly gives a first-hand account of designing, building, testing, and flying the Apollo Lunar Module

The pages within contain a pictorial record encompassing the entire history of the Russian space programme, from its inception at the end of World War II to the present day.
The sheer wealth of original and durable technology is a testament to the ingenuity of a remarkable people and gives a unique glimpse a the future of the historic partnership between East and West.
Published for the first time completely in English, Rocket & Space Corporation Energia features rare pictures and diagrams including:
Sputnik - Yuri Gagarin's Vostok capsule - the world's first Space Stations - the enormous lunar rocket N1 - Russia's interplanetary probes and the Buran shuttle.

Brilliant documentation of the soviet efforts to reach the moon - highly recomended.

The NASA controller best known for his role in Apollo 13 entitles his autobiography with his personal motto. Kranz's NASA career, which followed a short stint as a fighter pilot, began way back in the Mercury days, with Alan Shepard's 1961 suborbital flight and the painful process of testing the Atlas booster for manned missions. Besides Apollo 13, the high points of Kranz's narrative are John Glenn's orbital flight, the moon-orbiting Apollo 8, and the first moon landing, Apollo 11--experiences...

The history of the intensely secretive Soviet space program makes a riveting backdrop to this lucid biography of the dominant figure in that program, Sergei Korolev (1907-66). A brilliant engineer and superb organizer, Korolev also possessed the cynicism and political cunning necessary to get his work done and protect his staff from a government so paranoid he was forced to work in anonymity, known only as the Chief Designer. The author, himself an aerospace professional, interviewed many of Korolev's colleagues in Russia and brings to life both his enormous achievements and his earthy personality.