Аннотация

In a world divided by the ideological struggles of the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, more than one-fifth of the people on the planet paused to watch the live transmission of the Apollo 11 mission. To watch as humanity took a giant leap forward.A companion book to the landmark documentary series on BBC TV.The journey from Cape Canaveral to the Moon was a tremendous achievement of human courage and ingenuity. It was also a long, deadly march, haunted by the possibility of catastrophic failure on the world’s stage. In an era when the most advanced portable computer weighed 70 pounds, had a 36-kilobite memory and operated on less power than a 60-watt lightbulb, the sheer audacity of the goal is breath-taking. But the triumph of imagination and the unity of the Earth that day would change the world.Based on eyewitness accounts and newly discovered archival material, Chasing the Moon reveals the unknown stories of the individuals who made the Moon landing a possibility, from inspirational science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark and controversial engineer Wernher von Braun, to pioneers like mathematician Poppy Northcutt and astronaut Edward Dwight. It vividly revisits the dawn of the Space Age, a heady time of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama.

Аннотация

Аннотация

Аннотация

Chasing the Moon thoroughly reimagines the race to the moon, upending much of the conventional mythology. With newly revealed stories about the moon race, from its earliest days to the monumental achievement of the lunar landing in 1969, the book features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events.Utilising a wealth of previously overlooked and lost archival material, much of which has never before been revealed to the public, the Space Age is recast as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama in this fascinating new book.Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet premier and a leading Soviet rocket engineer; Poppy Northcutt, a 25-year old ‘mathematics whiz’ who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut.