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The story of America's space age is told with more than 400 carefully selected images, beginning with the 1950s test pilots and venturing ever faster and higher into the now-legendary missions that made astronauts into national heroes.
The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty. We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth. Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. They recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers to move, in some cases literally, from the cotton fields to the launching pad. The authors vividly describe what it was like to be the sole African American in a NASA work group and how these brave and determined men also helped to transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.
Sally Ride made history as the first American woman in space. A member of the first astronaut class to include women, she broke through a quarter-century of white male fighter jocks when NASA chose her for the seventh shuttle mission, cracking the celestial ceiling and inspiring several generations of women.After a second flight, Ride served on the panels investigating the Challenger explosion and the Columbia disintegration that killed all aboard. In both instances she faulted NASA's rush to meet mission deadlines and its organizational failures. She cofounded a company promoting science and education for children, especially girls.
As civil space policies and programs have evolved, the geopolitical environment has changed dramatically. Although the U.S. space program was originally driven in large part by competition with the Soviet Union, the nation now finds itself in a post-Cold War world in which many nations have established, or are aspiring to develop, independent space capabilities. Furthermore discoveries from developments in the first 50 years of the space age have led to an explosion of scientific and engineering knowledge and practical applications of space technology. The private sector has also been developing, fielding, and expanding the commercial use of space-based technology and systems. Recognizing the new national and international context for space activities, America's Future in Space is meant to advise the nation on key goals and critical issues in 21st century U.S. civil space policy.
Years before millions of Americans tuned in to watch her historic space flight aboard the Challenger in 1983, Sally Ride stayed up late to watch Neil Armstrong become the first person to walk on the moon. The next morning, she woke up to win her first round singles match at a national junior tennis tournament. Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America's Pioneering Woman Astronaut, is an intimate journey from her formative years to her final moments. Before she was an astronaut, Sally was a competitive tennis player who excelled at the game to such an extent that Billie Jean King told her she could play on the pro circuit. Before she earned a Ph.D. in physics, she was called an underachiever by her high school classmates. After her first historic space flight-she took a second in 1984-Sally continued to break ground as an inspirational advocate for space exploration, public policy, and science education, who fought gender stereotypes and opened doors for girls and women in all fields during the second half of the twentieth century. This vivid photobiography, written by Sally's life, writing, and business partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy, offers an intimate and revealing glimpse into the life and mind of the famously private, book-loving, tennis-playing physicist who made history.
"Discusses the United States' role in the space race in the 1960s, including the beginning of NASA, early space exploration, and the first moon landing by American astronauts"--Provided by publisher.
