X-15 Rocket Plane (eBook)

Flying the First Wings into Space

Michelle Evans (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020
480 Seiten
Nebraska (Verlag)
978-1-4962-1168-2 (ISBN)

Infos

With the Soviet Union’s launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the Cold War soared to new heights as Americans feared losing the race into space. The X-15 Rocket Plane tells the enthralling yet little-known story of the hypersonic X-15, the winged rocket ship that met this challenge and opened the way into human-controlled spaceflight. Drawing on interviews with those who were there, Michelle Evans captures the drama and excitement of, yes, rocket science: how to handle the heat generated at speeds up to Mach 7, how to make a rocket propulsion system that could throttle, and how to safely reenter the atmosphere from space and make a precision landing. This book puts a human face on the feats of science and engineering that went into the X-15 program, many of them critical to the development of the Space Shuttle. And, finally, it introduces us to the largely unsung pilots of the X-15. By the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, thirty-one American astronauts had flown into space—eight of them astronaut-pilots of the X-15. The X-15 Rocket Plane restores these pioneers, and the others who made it happen, to their rightful place in the history of spaceflight.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.4.2020
• Vorwort: Joe H. Engle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie ► Astronomie / Astrophysik
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Luft- / Raumfahrttechnik
• ISBN-10: 1-4962-1168-5 / 1496211685
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4962-1168-2 / 9781496211682