The First Eight Million Miles; A Biography of James Van Allen by Abigail Foerstner. September 11, 2008
Posted by webmaster in : Astro Culture, Great Books of Science , add a commentThe tale of unmanned space exploration is an unsung saga of 20th century science.
James Van Allen: the First Eight Billion Miles by Abigail Foerstner.
(University of Iowa Press).
James Van Allen: the First Eight Billion Miles by Abigail Foerstner (University of Iowa Press) traces the life of one of the true visionaries of the American space program. When my wife saw me reading it, the cover elicited a “who’s he?” that no doubt would echo through a majority of the American adult population. After the initial flurry of interest in the first Explorer series of satellites subsided, few remember this Iowa physicist of the early Space Age. (more…)
In The Shadow of The Moon: A Review. August 21, 2008
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In The Shadow of the Moon.
Next year will mark 40 years since man first stepped on the Moon. The documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, directed by David Sington, depicts the voyage of the man to the Moon using exclusively the voices of the astronauts themselves. (more…)
Titan Unveiled by Ralph Lorenz & Jacqueline Mitton July 30, 2008
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A New Look: Three Faces of Titan.
Perhaps no world in the Solar System is as enigmatic as Titan. Until the last decade or so, what was known about this distant moon of Saturn could barely fill out a postcard, let alone a book. Titan Unveiled published by Princeton University Press is the first book solely dedicated to the moon, centering mostly on the phenomenally successful Cassini-Huygens mission to the ringed planet. (more…)