Space and the American Imagination

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 0801898684
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Space and the American Imagination by : Howard E. McCurdy

Download or read book Space and the American Imagination written by Howard E. McCurdy and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People dreamed of cosmic exploration—winged spaceships and lunar voyages; space stations and robot astronauts—long before it actually happened. Space and the American Imagination traces the emergence of space travel in the popular mind, its expression in science fiction, and its influence on national space programs. Space exploration dramatically illustrates the power of imagination. Howard E. McCurdy shows how that power inspired people to attempt what they once deemed impossible. In a mere half-century since the launch of the first Earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, humans achieved much of what they had once only read about in the fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and the nonfiction of Willy Ley. Reaching these goals, however, required broad-based support, and McCurdy examines how advocates employed familiar metaphors to excite interest (promising, for example, that space exploration would recreate the American frontier experience) and prepare the public for daring missions into space. When unexpected realities and harsh obstacles threatened their progress, the space community intensified efforts to make their wildest dreams come true. This lively and important work remains relevant given contemporary questions about future plans at NASA. Fully revised and updated since its original publication in 1997, Space and the American Imagination includes a reworked introduction and conclusion and new chapters on robotics and space commerce.

SPACE & AMERN IMAGINATION

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Author :
Publisher : Smithsonian Books (DC)
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis SPACE & AMERN IMAGINATION by : Howard E. McCurdy

Download or read book SPACE & AMERN IMAGINATION written by Howard E. McCurdy and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1997-10-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining popular images that have helped motivate the most ambitious civil space program in the world, McCurdy argues that the spacefaring dream tapped into several of America's most deeply rooted cultural ideals. He also explains how space advocates, playing on the public's Cold War fears, convinced politicians that control of space meant control of the earth.He also contends that the gaps between expectations and reality led to public policy obligated to entertain as well as inform. 43 photos.

Heaven in the American Imagination

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199830701
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Heaven in the American Imagination by : Gary Scott Smith

Download or read book Heaven in the American Imagination written by Gary Scott Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.

Space, Time, and Aliens

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030416143
Total Pages : 795 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Space, Time, and Aliens by : Steven J. Dick

Download or read book Space, Time, and Aliens written by Steven J. Dick and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume, former NASA Chief Historian Steven Dick reflects on the exploration of space, astrobiology and its implications, cosmic evolution, astronomical institutions, discovering and classifying the cosmos, and the philosophy of astronomy. The unifying theme of the book is the connection between cosmos and culture, or what Carl Sagan many years ago called the “cosmic connection.” As both an astronomer and historian of science, Dr. Dick has been both a witness to and a participant in many of the astronomical events of the last half century. This collection of papers presents his reflections over the last forty years in a way accessible to historians, philosophers, and scientists alike. From the search for alien life to ongoing space exploration efforts, readers will find this volume full of engaging topics relevant to science, society, and our collective future on planet Earth and beyond.

The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way

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Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 082328705X
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way by : Colin Davey

Download or read book The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way written by Colin Davey and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extensive history of the American Museum of Natural History and Hayden Planetarium, featuring a cast of colorful characters. The American Museum of Natural History is one of New York City’s most beloved institutions, and one of the largest, most celebrated museums in the world. Since 1869, generations of New Yorkers and tourists of all ages have been educated and entertained here. Located across from Central Park, the sprawling structure, spanning four city blocks, is a fascinating conglomeration of many buildings of diverse architectural styles built over a period of 150 years. The first book to tell the history of the museum from the point of view of these buildings, including the planned Gilder Center, The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way contextualizes them within New York and American history and the history of science. Part II, “The Heavens in the Attic,” is the first detailed history of the Hayden Planetarium, from the museum’s earliest astronomy exhibits, to Clyde Fisher and the original planetarium, to Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and it features a photographic tour through the original Hayden Planetarium. Author Colin Davey spent much of his childhood literally and figuratively lost in the museum’s labyrinthine hallways. The museum grew in fits and starts according to the vicissitudes of backroom deals, personal agendas, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Cold War. Chronicling its evolution?from the selection of a desolate, rocky, hilly, swampy site, known as Manhattan Square to the present day?the book includes some of the most important and colorful characters in the city’s history, including the notoriously corrupt and powerful “Boss” Tweed, “Father of New York City” Andrew Haswell Green, and twentieth-century powerbroker and master builder Robert Moses; museum presidents Morris K. Jesup, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Ellen Futter; and American presidents, polar and African explorers, dinosaur hunters, and German rocket scientists. Features a new preface by the author and a new foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson. “This is, in many ways, a particularly American story, and anyone interested in history or museums will find this a very satisfying read. Author Colin Davey had a life-long love affair with the museum, growing up in New York and spending many, many hours happily lost in the museum collections, and that shines through in his writing as does his fine, in-depth research. Plenty of excellent graphics and photographs support this fascinating history.” —Seattle Book Review

Occidental Ideographs

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Publisher : Bucknell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780838751794
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis Occidental Ideographs by : Franklin R. Rogers

Download or read book Occidental Ideographs written by Franklin R. Rogers and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work proposes a new approach to literary history that locates the historicity of a literary work of art in the visual image that initiates the work and is fundamental to it, a visual metaphor of which the text is the verbalization.

Africa in the American Imagination

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Author :
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1617031534
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Africa in the American Imagination by : Carol Magee

Download or read book Africa in the American Imagination written by Carol Magee and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. Africa in the American Imagination: Popular Culture, Racialized Identities, and African Visual Culture explores this presence, examining Mattel’s world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Disney World, each of which repackages African visual culture for consumers. Because these cultural icons permeate American life, they represent the broader U.S. culture and its relationship to African culture. This study integrates approaches from art history and visual culture studies with those from culture, race, and popular culture studies to analyze this interchange. Two major threads weave throughout. One analyzes how the presentation of African visual culture in these popular culture forms conceptualizes Africa for the American public. The other investigates the way the uses of African visual culture focuses America’s own self-awareness, particularly around black and white racialized identities. In exploring the multiple meanings that “Africa” has in American popular culture, Africa in the American Imagination argues that these cultural products embody multiple perspectives and speak to various sociopolitical contexts: the Cold War, Civil Rights, and contemporary eras of the United States; the apartheid and postapartheid eras of South Africa; the colonial and postcolonial eras of Ghana; and the European era of African colonization.

Imagining Outer Space

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1349953393
Total Pages : 443 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (499 download)

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Book Synopsis Imagining Outer Space by : Alexander C.T. Geppert

Download or read book Imagining Outer Space written by Alexander C.T. Geppert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-25 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining Outer Space makes a captivating advance into the cultural history of outer space and extraterrestrial life in the European imagination. How was outer space conceived and communicated? What promises of interplanetary expansion and cosmic colonization propelled the project of human spaceflight to the forefront of twentieth-century modernity? In what way has West-European astroculture been affected by the continuous exploration of outer space? Tracing the thriving interest in spatiality to early attempts at exploring imaginary worlds beyond our own, the book analyzes contact points between science and fiction from a transdisciplinary perspective and examines sites and situations where utopian images and futuristic technologies contributed to the omnipresence of fantasmatic thought. Bringing together state-of-the-art work in this emerging field of historical research, the volume breaks new ground in the historicization of the Space Age.

Animation and the American Imagination

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440833605
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (48 download)

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Book Synopsis Animation and the American Imagination by : Gordon B. Arnold

Download or read book Animation and the American Imagination written by Gordon B. Arnold and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a detailed historical overview of animated film and television in the United States over more than a century, this book examines animation within the U.S. film and television industry as well as in the broader sociocultural context. From the early 1900s onwards, animated cartoons have always had a wide, enthusiastic audience. Not only did viewers delight in seeing drawn images come to life, tell fantastic stories, and depict impossible gags, but animation artists also relished working in a visual art form largely free from the constraints of the real world. This book takes a fresh look at the big picture of U.S. animation, both on and behind the screen. It reveals a range of fascinating animated cartoons and the colorful personalities, technological innovations, cultural influences and political agendas, and shifting audience expectations that shaped not only what appeared on screen but also how audiences reacted to thousands of productions. Animation and the American Imagination: A Brief History presents a concise, unified picture that brings together divergent strands of the story so readers can make sense of the flow of animation history in the United States. The book emphasizes the overall shape of animation history by identifying how key developments emerged from what came before and from the culture at large. It covers the major persons and studios of the various eras; identifies important social factors, including the Great Depression, World War II, the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and the struggles for civil rights and women's rights; addresses the critical role of technological and aesthetic changes; and discusses major works of animation and the responses to them.

Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438403518
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination by : Andrew Furman

Download or read book Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination written by Andrew Furman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CHOICE 1997 Outstanding Academic Books Analyzing a wide array of Jewish-American fiction on Israel, Andrew Furman explores the evolving relationship between the Israeli and American Jew. He devotes individual chapters to eight Jewish-American writers who have "imagined" Israel substantially in one or more of their works. In doing so, he gauges the impact of the Jewish state in forging the identity of the American Jewish community and the vision of the Jewish-American writer. Furman devotes individual chapters to Meyer Levin, Leon Uris, Saul Bellow, Hugh Nissenson, Chaim Potok, Philip Roth, Anne Roiphe, and Tova Reich. To chart the evolution of the Jewish-American relationship with Israel from pre-statehood until the present, he considers works from 1928 to 1995, examining them in their historical and political contexts. The writers Furman examines address the central issues which have linked and divided the American and Israeli Jewish communities: the role of Israel as both safe haven and spiritual core for Jews everywhere pitted against its secularism, militarism, and entrenched sexism. While the writers Furman examines depict contrasting images of the Middle East, the very persistence of Israel in occupying that imagination reveals, above all, how prominent a role Israel played and continues to play in shaping the Jewish-American identity.

Impossible Heights

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 145294296X
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Impossible Heights by : Adnan Morshed

Download or read book Impossible Heights written by Adnan Morshed and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The advent of the airplane and skyscraper in 1920s and ‘30s America offered the population an entirely new way to look at the world: from above. The captivating image of an airplane flying over the rising metropolis led many Americans to believe a new civilization had dawned. In Impossible Heights, Adnan Morshed examines the aesthetics that emerged from this valorization of heights and their impact on the built environment. The lofty vantage point from the sky ushered in a modernist impulse to cleanse crowded twentieth-century cities in anticipation of an ideal world of tomorrow. Inspired by great new heights, American architects became central to this endeavor and were regarded as heroic aviators. Combining close readings of a broad range of archival sources, Morshed offers new interpretations of works such as Hugh Ferriss’s Metropolis drawings, Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion houses, and Norman Bel Geddes’s Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Transformed by the populist imagination into “master builders,” these designers helped produce a new form of visuality: the aesthetics of ascension. By demonstrating how aerial movement and height intersect with popular “superman” discourses of the time, Morshed reveals the relationship between architecture, art, science, and interwar pop culture. Featuring a marvelous array of never before published illustrations, this richly textured study of utopian imaginings illustrates America’s propulsion into a new cultural consciousness.

Meals to Come

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520241510
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (415 download)

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Book Synopsis Meals to Come by : Warren James Belasco

Download or read book Meals to Come written by Warren James Belasco and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Warren Belasco is a witty, wonderfully observant guide to the hopes and fears that every era projects onto its culinary future. This enlightening study reads like time-travel for foodies."--Laura Shapiro, author of Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America "In his insightful look at human imaginings about their food and its future sufficiency, Warren Belasco makes use of everything from academic papers, films, and fiction to journalism, advertising and world's fairs to trace a pattern of public concern over two centuries. His wide-ranging scholarship humbles all would-be futurists by reminding us that ours is not the first generation, nor is it likely to be the last, to argue inconclusively about whether we can best feed the world with more spoons, better manners or a larger pie. Truly painless education; a wonderful read!"--Joan Dye Gussow, author This Organic Life "Warren Belasco serves up an intellectual feast, brilliantly dissecting two centuries of expectations regarding the future of food and hunger. Meals to Come provides an essential guide to thinking clearly about the worrisome question as to whether the world can ever be adequately and equitably fed."--Joseph J. Corn, co-author of Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future "This astute, sly, warmly human critique of the basic belly issues that have absorbed and defined Americans politically, socially, and economically for the past 200 years is a knockout. Warren Belasco's important book, crammed with knowledge, is absolutely necessary for an understanding of where we are now."--Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars

Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight

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Author :
Publisher : U. S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 680 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight by : Steven J. Dick

Download or read book Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight written by Steven J. Dick and published by U. S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration. This book was released on 2006 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March 2005, the NASA History Division and the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum brought together a distinguished group of scholars to consider the state of the discipline of space history. This volume is a collection of essays based on those deliberations. The meeting took place at a time of extraordinary transformation for NASA, stemming from the new Vision of Space Exploration announced by President George W. Bush in January 204: to go to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. This Vision, in turn, stemmed from a deep reevaluation of NASA?s goals in the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident and the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The new goals were seen as initiating a "New Age of Exploration" and were placed in the context of the importance of exploration and discovery to the American experiences. (Amazon).

The Unconstructable Earth

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Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823282597
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis The Unconstructable Earth by : Frédéric Neyrat

Download or read book The Unconstructable Earth written by Frédéric Neyrat and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Grand Prize, French Voices Award for Excellence in Publication and Translation The Space Age is over? Not at all! A new planet has appeared: Earth. In the age of the Anthropocene, the Earth is a post-natural planet that can be remade at will, controlled and managed thanks to the prowess of geoengineering. This new imaginary is also accompanied by a new kind of power—geopower—that takes the entire Earth, in its social, biological and geophysical dimensions, as an object of knowledge, intervention, and governmentality. In short, our rising awareness that we have destroyed our planet has simultaneously provided us not with remorse or resolve but with a new fantasy: that the Anthropocene delivers an opportunity to remake our terrestrial environment thanks to the power of technology. Such is the position we find ourselves in, when proposals for reengineering the earth’s ecosystems and geosystems are taken as the only politically feasible answer to ecological catastrophe. Yet far from being merely the fruit of geo-capitalism, this new grand narrative of geopower has also been activated by theorists of the constructivist turn—ecomodernist, postenvironmentalist, accelerationist—who have likewise called into question the great divide between nature and culture. With the collapse of this divide, a cyborg, hybrid, flexible nature has been built, an impoverished nature that does not exist without being performed by technologies that proliferate within the space of human needs and capitalist imperatives. Underneath this performative vision resides a hidden anaturalism denying all otherness to nature and the Earth, no longer by externalizing it as a thing to be dominated, but by radically internalizing it as something to be digested. Constructivist ecology thus finds itself in no position to confront the geoconstructivist project, with its claim that there is no nature and its aim to replace Earth with Earth 2.0. Against both positions, Neyrat stakes out the importance of the unconstructable Earth. Against the fusional myth of technology over nature, but without returning to the division between nature and culture, he proposes an “ecology of separation” that acknowledges the wild, subtractive capacity of nature. Against the capitalist, technocratic delusion of earth as a constructible object, but equally against an organicism marked by unacknowledged traces of racism and sexism, Neyrat shows what it means to appreciate Earth as an unsubstitutable becoming: a traject that cannot be replicated in a laboratory. Underway for billions of years, withdrawing into the most distant past and the most inaccessible future, Earth escapes the hubris of all who would remake and master it. This remarkable book, which will be of interest to those across the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, from theorists to shapers of policy, recasts the earth as a singular trajectory that invites humans to turn political ecology into a geopolitics.

Remembering the Space Age

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Remembering the Space Age by : Steven J. Dick

Download or read book Remembering the Space Age written by Steven J. Dick and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Publisher: Proceedings of October 2007 conference, sponsored by the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957 and the dawn of the space age.

Remembering the space age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference

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Author :
Publisher : Government Printing Office
ISBN 13 : 9780160867118
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (671 download)

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Book Synopsis Remembering the space age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference by :

Download or read book Remembering the space age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference written by and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Publisher: Proceedings of October 2007 conference, sponsored by the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957 and the dawn of the space age.

Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era and Beyond

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300227981
Total Pages : 415 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era and Beyond by : Valerie Neal

Download or read book Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era and Beyond written by Valerie Neal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the changing conceptions of the Space Shuttle program and a call for a new vision of spaceflight. The thirty years of Space Shuttle flights saw contrary changes in American visions of space. Valerie Neal, who has spent much of her career examining the Space Shuttle program, uses this iconic vehicle to question over four decades’ worth of thinking about, and struggling with, the meaning of human spaceflight. She examines the ideas, images, and icons that emerged as NASA, Congress, journalists, and others sought to communicate rationales for, or critiques of, the Space Shuttle missions. At times concurrently, the Space Shuttle was billed as delivery truck and orbiting science lab, near-Earth station and space explorer, costly disaster and pinnacle of engineering success. The book’s multidisciplinary approach reveals these competing depictions to examine the meaning of the spaceflight enterprise. Given the end of the Space Shuttle flights in 2011, Neal makes an appeal to reframe spaceflight once again to propel humanity forward. “Neal may be the one person who knows the space shuttle program better than the astronauts who flew this iconic vehicle. Her book casts new light on the program, exploring its cultural significance through a thoughtful analysis. As one who lived this history, I gained much from her broader perspective and deep insights.”—Kathryn D. Sullivan, retired NASA astronaut and former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “A much needed look at how to create a cultural narrative for human spaceflight that resonates with millennials rather than the Apollo generation. Quite valuable.”—Marcia Smith, Editor, SpacePolicyOnline.com