Space History

Through immersive and intimate reporting, When the Heavens Went on Sale reveals the spectacular chaos of the new business of space, and what happens when the idealistic, ambitious minds of Silicon Valley turn their unbridled vision toward the limitless expanse of the stars. This is the tale of technology’s most pressing and controversial revolution, as told through fascinating characters chasing unimaginable stakes in the race to space.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, here shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity. According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; and God exists only as an idea in human minds.

In this grand poetic vision of the universe, Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world that underlies reality - and our place within it. Reality is not what you think or sense - it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive, and its inner workings seem at least as implausible as the idea that something can come from nothing. With his trademark wit and accessible style, Krauss leads us to realms so small that they are invisible to microscopes, to the birth and rebirth of light, and into the natural forces that govern our existence.

As the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing approaches, the award-winning historian and perennial New York Times best-selling author takes a fresh look at the space program, President John F. Kennedy’s inspiring challenge, and America’s race to the moon.

Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing? Krauss’ answers to these and other timeless questions, in a wildly popular lecture on YouTube, has attracted almost a million viewers. One of the few prominent scientists to have actively crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss reveals that modern science is indeed addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing—with surprising and fascinating results.

The original Star Trek series debuted in 1966 and has spawned five TV series spin-offs and a dozen feature films, with an upcoming one from Paramount arriving in 2016. The Fifty-Year Mission is a no-holds-barred oral history of five decades of Star Trek, told by the people who were there. Hear from the hundreds of television and film executives, programmers, writers, creators, and cast as they unveil the oftentimes shocking story of Star Trek's ongoing 50-year mission.

Who are we, and how did we get here? These are two of the most fundamental and far-reaching questions facing scientists and cosmologists alike and have rested at the center of human intellectual endeavor since its beginning. They are questions that stretch across numerous disciplines. Philosophy, theology, evolutionary biology, and mathematics are just some of the fields looking to explain the emergence of human life.

In August 1968 NASA made a bold decision: In just 16 weeks, the United States would launch humankind's first flight to the moon. Only the year before, three astronauts had burned to death in their spacecraft, and since then the Apollo program had suffered one setback after another. Meanwhile, the Russians were winning the space race, the Cold War was getting hotter by the month, and President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade seemed sure to be broken.

Carl Sagan, writer and scientist, returns from the frontier to tell us about how the world works. In his delightfully down-to-earth style, he explores and explains a mind-boggling future of intelligent robots, extraterrestrial life and its consequences, and other provocative, fascinating quandaries of the future that we want to see today.

Ignition! is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. This search was a hazardous enterprise carried out by rival labs who worked against the known laws of nature, with no guarantee of success or safety. John Drury Clark writes with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy about the development of the explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. The resulting volume is as much a memoir as a work of history, sharing a behind-the-scenes view of an enterprise that eventually took men to the moon.

In the most authoritative book ever written about Apollo, David Whitehouse reveals the true drama behind the mission, telling the story in the words of those who took part - based around exclusive interviews with the key players. This enthralling book takes us from the early rocket pioneers to the shock America received from the Soviets' launch of the first satellite, Sputnik; from the race to put the first person into space, through President Kennedy's enthusiasm and later doubts, to the astronauts' intense competition to leave the first footprint.

In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.

Earth evolves. From first atom to molecule, mineral to magma, granite crust to single cell to verdant living landscape, ours is a planet constantly in flux. In this radical new approach to Earth’s biography, senior Carnegie Institution researcher and national best-selling author Robert M. Hazen reveals how the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere - of rocks and living matter - has shaped our planet into the only one of its kind in the Solar System, if not the entire cosmos.

Longlisted for the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
How much should you pay for a return trip to the moon? How are Winnie the Pooh and the artificial heart related? Did teenagers exist before 1950? If not, who invented them? James May's 20th Century answers all these questions and more.

Are you puzzled by pulsars? Baffled by black holes? Bewildered by the big bang? If so, here are succinct, crystal-clear answers to more than 100 of the most significant questions about the essential nature of the universe - questions that have fired the imagination since the beginning of history. Over the course of this fantastic voyage, the origins, the discoveries, and the stunning achievements of astronomy will unfold before your eyes

Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour - 10 times faster than a rifle bullet - Yuri Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. From his windows, he sees the Earth as nobody has before, crossing a sunset and a sunrise, crossing oceans and continents, witnessing its beauty and its fragility. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing, he has become a world celebrity - the first human to leave the planet. Beyond tells the thrilling story behind that epic flight on its 60th anniversary.

The Narthani, a militant realm who believe their manifest destiny is to rule the entire planet, Anyar, plan to absorb Caedellium into their empire. Yozef Kolsko (a.k.a. Joe Colsco) works to find ways to increase the chances of resistance to the Narthani's planned conquest. The enemy is coming. The odds seem overwhelming, and it will take all Yozef can do, the courage of his new people, and luck, to survive.

Are you curious about the future of computing but confused about where to start? Are you fascinated by the quantum buzz but intimidated by dense academic jargon? I'm here to guide you through the fascinating universe of quantum tech, in the simplest way possible. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, software developer, eager student, or an innovator at heart, this book is tailored for minds like yours. I've translated qubits, quantum gates, and superposition in a refreshingly easy way, so you don't need a PhD to come along for the ride.

The flight of Apollo 11 was a triumph of human endeavor, persistence, and technology, one of the greatest achievements in human history. This book begins with the mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to the moon, then follows American spaceflight through the harrowing rescue of Apollo 13 before moving on to the successful joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Dava Sobel returns with the captivating, little-known true story of a group of women whose remarkable contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.