Into The Blue American Writing On Aviation And Spaceflight

Author : Joseph J. Corn
Publisher : Library of America
Page : 1018 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2011-10-13
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 9781598531855

Get Book

Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight by Joseph J. Corn Pdf

Into the Blue revisits the remarkable trajectory of Americans in air and space, gathering sixty of the best eyewitness and participant narratives from Benjamin Franklin's letters on the first hot air balloons to Chris Jones's account of being marooned on the International Space Station. Here are those who made flight happen: Orville and Wilbur Wright, self-taught pioneers whose homespun invention stunned the world; World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose memoirs (excerpted here for the first time in unedited form) describe the frightening novelties of aerial combat; and daredevils like Texas barnstormer Slats Rodgers and test pilot Jimmy Collins. Ernest Hemingway offers a vivid dispatch on a 1922 flight over France, and Gertrude Stein muses on the look of America from the air; Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart narrate their groundbreaking transatlantic flights; Ralph Ellison reflects on the experience of African American airmen at Tuskegee; William F. Buckley Jr. recounts his mishaps as an amateur pilot; Wernher von Braun envisions a space station of the future, while astronauts John Glenn, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin provide firsthand recollections of the conquest of space. Here too, among many other subjects, are scenes and episodes in the development of commercial aviation, from the hiring of the first stewardesses and the high stress lives of air traffic controllers to the new ubiquity of what Walter Kirn calls "Airworld." A thirty-two-page insert offers photographs, some previously unpublished, of the writers and their crafts.

Author : Brian D. Laslie
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2024-03-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9780806194394

Get Book

Fighting from Above by Brian D. Laslie Pdf

The story of the United States Air Force (USAF) stretches back to aerial operations prior to the First World War—well before the USAF became a separate service—and looks forward to a new era of airpower in space. Fighting from Above presents a concise account of this expansive history, offering a new perspective on how the air forces of the United States created an independent way of warfare over time. From the earliest battles of the USAF’s predecessor organizations to its modern incarnation, Brian D. Laslie identifies four distinct and observable ways of war that developed over four distinct epochs. Beginning with the development of early air power (1906–1941), he highlights the creation of roles and missions, with bombardment theory and practice ascendant. An era of strategic dominance (1942–1975) followed in which the ideas of strategic bombardment ruled the air force; when such notions were unceremoniously proven false during the Vietnam-era conflicts, a period of tactical ascendancy (1975–2019) began. Finally, Laslie considers the current environment, where much of the story of the USAF remains unwritten as it grapples with the prospects and challenges posed by drones and the U.S. Space Force. While detailing combat operations, Fighting from Above also pays close attention to technology, politics, rivalries, logistics, policy, organization, equipping, and training. Thorough, concise, and innovative in its approach, it is an authoritative, exceptionally readable history of the development of American airpower.

Author : Guru Madhavan
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2024-03-26
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780393651478

Get Book

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World by Guru Madhavan Pdf

An ode to systems engineers—whose invisible work undergirds our life—and an exploration of the wicked problems they tackle. Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects—often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy—are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon. In linked chapters focusing on key facets of systems engineering—efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience—engineer Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines best-known tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. Braided throughout is the uplifting tale of Edwin Link, an unsung hero who revolutionized aviation with his flight trainer. In Link’s story, Madhavan uncovers a model mindset to engage with wickedness. An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice—one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.

Author : Sharon Wright
Publisher : Grub Street Publishers
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2018-03-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526708366

Get Book

Balloonomania Belles by Sharon Wright Pdf

Award-winning journalist Sharon Wright presents a fascinating account of the fabulous eighteenth and nineteenth-century female pioneers of balloon flight. More than a century before the first airplane took flight, women were heading for the heavens in crazy, inspired contraptions that brought both danger and glory. Women were in the vanguard of the “Balloonomania” craze that took hold in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sweeping across Europe and then the world. Their exploits were a vital element of our first voyages into the sky. In a time when women’s lives were often severely limited by law and convention, these intrepid pioneers took on an exhilarating quest for spectacle, adventure, and danger. From the perilous ascent in 1784 by feisty French teenager Elisabeth Thible, female aeronauts have never looked back . . . or down. But who were these brave women who fearlessly—and scandalously—took to the air? In Balloonomania Belles, journalist Sharon Wright reveals the hair-raising adventures of the first flying women in a book that celebrates the brightest stars of an extraordinary era in human achievement.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Library of America
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2015-02-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9781598534023

Get Book

President Lincoln Assassinated!!: The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Tr by Anonim Pdf

For the 150th anniversary, Harold Holzer (The Civil War in 150 Objects) presents an unprecedented firsthand chronicle of one of the most pivotal moments in American history. On April 14, 1865, Good Friday, the Civil War claimed its ultimate sacrifice. President Lincoln Assassinated!! recaptures the dramatic immediacy of Lincoln’s assassination, the hunt for the conspirators and their military trial, and the nation’s mourning for the martyred president. The fateful story is told in more than eighty original documents—eyewitness reports, medical records, trial transcripts, newspaper articles, speeches, letters, diary entries, and poems—by more than seventy-five participants and observers, including the assassin John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett, the soldier who shot him. Courtroom testimony exposes the intricacies of the plot to kill the president; eulogies by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and Benjamin Disraeli and poetry by Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and Julia Ward Howe give eloquent voice to grief; two emotional speeches by Frederick Douglass—one of them never before published—reveal his evolving perspective on Lincoln’s legacy. Together these voices combine to reveal the full panorama of one the most shocking and tragic events in our history.

Author : Sharon Wright
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2021-08-31
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 9781399005395

Get Book

The Lost History of the Lady Aeronauts by Sharon Wright Pdf

“A simply brilliant history that rescues from undeserved obscurity a roster of pioneering women in the very beginning of the age of aviation.” —Midwest Book Review From have-a-go Georgians to emancipated Edwardians, the lady aeronauts were actresses, writers, heiresses, scientists, engineers, explorers, showgirls and suffragettes. These unsung trailblazers for female freedom enjoyed lives shot through with sheer courage and joie de vivre. Yet they were all but forgotten. Hold on tight for a white-knuckle balloon ride through their remarkable real-life stories . . . “You couldn’t want for a better antidote to pinkness than these tales of girls and women unleashing their pluck and inventiveness in the unregulated age of balloonomania . . . This is history at its most satisfying.” —Damesnet “Sharon Wright tells a fabulous tale, and has uncovered some terrific stories of long forgotten heroines of the air. Some stories are comic, many are tragic, many are a bit of both, and she tells it brilliantly.” —Bristol Post “History has never been so much fun!” —What’sHerName Podcast

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 526 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2012-04
Category : Aeronautics
ISBN : UGA:32108053092691

Get Book

Air & Space Smithsonian by Anonim Pdf

Author : Christopher J. Petty
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 523 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2020-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781496223531

Get Book

Beyond Blue Skies by Christopher J. Petty Pdf

In 1945 some experts still considered the so-called sound barrier an impenetrable wall, while winged rocket planes remained largely relegated to science fiction. But soon a series of unique rocket-powered research aircraft and the dedicated individuals who built, maintained, and flew them began to push the boundaries of flight in aviation's quest to move ever higher, ever faster, toward the unknown. Beyond Blue Skies examines the thirty-year period after World War II during which aviation experienced an unprecedented era of progress that led the United States to the boundaries of outer space. Between 1946 and 1975, an ancient dry lakebed in California's High Desert played host to a series of rocket-powered research aircraft built to investigate the outer reaches of flight. The western Mojave's Rogers Dry Lake became home to Edwards Air Force Base, NASA's Flight Research Center, and an elite cadre of test pilots. Although one of them--Chuck Yeager--would rank among the most famous names in history, most who flew there during those years played their parts away from public view. The risks they routinely accepted were every bit as real as those facing NASA's astronauts, but no magazine stories or free Corvettes awaited them--just long days in a close-knit community in the High Desert. The role of not only the test pilots but the engineers, aerodynamicists, and support staff in making supersonic flight possible has been widely overlooked. Beyond Blue Skies charts the triumphs and tragedies of the rocket-plane era and the unsung efforts of the men and women who made amazing achievements possible.

Author : Roger E. Bilstein
Publisher : Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2001-09-17
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : UOM:39015053752427

Get Book

The Enterprise of Flight by Roger E. Bilstein Pdf

In a new introduction for this paperback edition (originally titled "The American Aerospace Industry"), Bilstein explains how international competition has affected American aerospace airline manufacturers and updates the controversy over the high cost of military aircraft, such as the F-22 Raptor.

Author : Roger E. Bilstein
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Science
ISBN : STANFORD:36105003469462

Get Book

Flight in America by Roger E. Bilstein Pdf

When first published in 1984, Roger Bilstein's Flight in America was widely hailed as the foremost history of what is arguably the most remarkable achievement of the twentieth century--human flight. Now, in this newly revised and expanded edition, Bilstein continues his comprehensive history to the closing decade of the present century and offers a glimpse of developments in the next. "The most comprehensive survey of the history of American aeronautics and space flight yet published."--Technology and Culture. "Bilstein casts wide and far to net virtually everything from technological trends and research and development to the effect of air travel on the expansion of major league baseball in the 1950s and early 1960s... A superior work that will satisfy aero buffsand professionals alike."--Journal of American History.

Author : Roger E. Bilstein
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : History
ISBN : NWU:35556020900510

Get Book

Flight in America, 1900-1983 by Roger E. Bilstein Pdf

A comprehensive survey of the history of American aeronautics and space flight.

Author : William Henry Rankin
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1960
Category : Electronic
ISBN : LCCN:60016622

Get Book

The Man who Rode the Thunder by William Henry Rankin Pdf

Author : Scott Magelssen
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2020-01-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780472054534

Get Book

Performing Flight by Scott Magelssen Pdf

Performing Flight sheds new light on moments in the history of US aviation and spaceflight through the lens of performance studies. From pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman to the emerging industry of space tourism, performance has consistently shaped public perception of the enterprise of flight and has guaranteed its success as a mode of entertainment, travel, research, and warfare. The book reveals fundamental connections between performance and human aviation and space travel over the past 100 years, beginning with the early aerial entertainers known as barnstormers (named after itinerant 19th century theater troupes) to the performative history of the Enola Gay and its pilot Paul Tibbets, who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, thus ushering in the atomic age. The book also explores the phenomenon of “the pilot voice”; the creation of the American Astronaut, on whose performative success the Cold War, the Space Race, and funding of the US Space Program all depended; and the performative strategies employed to cement notions of space tourism as both manifest destiny and an escape route from a failed planet. A final chapter addresses the four hijacked flights of 9/11 and their representations in discourse and in memorials. Performing Flight effectively and imaginatively demonstrates the ways in which performance and flight in the United States have been inextricably linked for more than a century.

Author : J. Christopher Holloway,Claire Humphreys
Publisher : SAGE
Page : 517 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2022-09-07
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781529794410

Get Book

The Business of Tourism by J. Christopher Holloway,Claire Humphreys Pdf

Tourism as an industry is constantly evolving. Trends and attitudes are susceptible to changes in what people look for in a holiday, which can change within different economic contexts; generational shifts; the political landscape; and most recently, the Covid-19 global pandemic. This popular and comprehensive textbook helps students to not only understand these changes but study them with a critical mindset and historical perspective, desirable for success in assessments. The text also continues to retain its focus on ‘business’ and the operational aspects of tourism, making it especially useful for students considering a career and/or short term placement in the tourism industry. This 12th edition of The Business of Tourism includes updates to take in changes to the tourism industry and consumption behaviours as a result of: Brexit (the UK’s decision to leave the European Union) the pandemic and its impacts on nature; the operation of attractions; event tourism; hotel chains; transport; and governmental support Sustainability and the reduction of the negative impacts caused by tourism Chris Holloway was a former Professor of Tourism Management at the University of the West of England. Claire Humphreys is a former Head of Department and Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster.

Author : Julian Guthrie
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2016-09-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780698405851

Get Book

How to Make a Spaceship by Julian Guthrie Pdf

A New York Times bestseller! The historic race that reawakened the promise of manned spaceflight A Finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Alone in a Spartan black cockpit, test pilot Mike Melvill rocketed toward space. He had eighty seconds to exceed the speed of sound and begin the climb to a target no civilian pilot had ever reached. He might not make it back alive. If he did, he would make history as the world’s first commercial astronaut. The spectacle defied reason, the result of a competition dreamed up by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, whose vision for a new race to space required small teams to do what only the world’s largest governments had done before. Peter Diamandis was the son of hardworking immigrants who wanted their science prodigy to make the family proud and become a doctor. But from the age of eight, when he watched Apollo 11 land on the Moon, his singular goal was to get to space. When he realized NASA was winding down manned space flight, Diamandis set out on one of the great entrepreneurial adventure stories of our time. If the government wouldn’t send him to space, he would create a private space flight industry himself. In the 1990s, this idea was the stuff of science fiction. Undaunted, Diamandis found inspiration in an unlikely place: the golden age of aviation. He discovered that Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight to win a $25,000 prize. The flight made Lindbergh the most famous man on earth and galvanized the airline industry. Why, Diamandis thought, couldn’t the same be done for space flight? The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne, and the other teams in the hunt, is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. It is driven by outsized characters—Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, John Carmack, Paul Allen—and obsessive pursuits. In the end, as Diamandis dreamed, the result wasn’t just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry and a new age.