1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910797740603321

Autore

Gallentine Jay

Titolo

Infinity beckoned : adventuring through the inner solar system, 1969-1989 / / Jay Gallentine ; foreword by Bobak Ferdowsi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Lincoln, Nebraska ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Nebraska Press, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

0-8032-8515-9

0-8032-8517-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (497 p.)

Collana

Outward Odyssey, A People's History of Spaceflight

Classificazione

HIS037070

Disciplina

629.43/54

Soggetti

Space probes - History - 20th century

Artificial satellites - History - 20th century

Inner planets - Exploration - History - 20th century

Astronautics

Astronautics - History - 20th century

Moon Exploration History 20th century

Outer space Exploration History 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover ; Title Page ; Copyright Page ; Contents ; List of Illustrations; Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Beach Brainstorm; 2. What If; 3. Dead at Birth; 4. Failure to Communicate; 5. Halt the Work, Destroy All Materials; 6. There and Back Again; 7. Sitting Cosmonauts; 8. Cauldron of Contradictions; 9. Buy- In; 10. "Prepared Area"; 11. Laying Eggs (Somehow); 12. How Low Can You Go?; 13. Three Mistakes; 14. Devil from Redondo; 15. The Boy to Be Beaten; 16. How to Buy a Computer That Does Not Exist; 17. Downsurfing; 18. Gulliver's Travels; 19. Too Much Too Soon; 20. Scientific Charity

21. Last Man Home22. Bonneville, Notch Rock, Double Squirt, Sudden Death; 23. Postmortem; 24. Sons of a Bitch; 25. The Sum of All Nations; 26. Hang Time; 27. The Rules of Resigning; 28. Wonders Never Cease; Sources; Index

Sommario/riassunto

"Infinity Beckoned illuminates a critical period of space history when



humans dared an expansive leap into the inner solar system. With an irreverent and engaging style, Jay Gallentine conveys the trials and triumphs of the people on the ground who conceived and engineered the missions that put robotic spacecraft on the heavenly bodies nearest our own. These dedicated space pioneers include such individuals as Soviet Russia's director of planetary missions, who hated his job but kept at it for fifteen years, enduring a paranoid bureaucracy where even the copy machines were strictly regulated. Based on numerous interviews, Gallentine delivers a rich variety of stories involving the men and women, American and Russian, responsible for such groundbreaking endeavors as the Mars Viking missions of the 1970s and the Soviet Venera flights to Venus in the 1980s. From the dreamers responsible for the Venus landing who discovered that dropping down through heavy clouds of sulfuric acid and 900-degree heat was best accomplished by surfing to the five-man teams puppeteering the Soviet moon rovers from a top-secret, off-the-map town without a name, the people who come to life in these pages persevered in often trying, thankless circumstances. Their legacy is our better understanding of our own planet and our place in the cosmos"--

"Account of unmanned lunar and planetary exploration from the early 1970s to the early 1990s"--