Astronauts

The Ultimate Spotlight books have all the fun, facts, and hands-on action of the fabulously successful Ultimate series, but in a focused, more-compact, and affordable format. Flaps, pull tabs, and many other moveable parts show young children how astronauts train for missions into space. Pull a tab to launch a rocket, lift flaps to see inside a space suit, or turn the page to land the capsule safely on the ground. Chock-full of age appropriate information, this book is an out-of-this-world look at astronauts and what they do.

Discusses activities astronauts do while they're in space.

"There's something intriguing to be learned on practically every page... [How to Astronaut] captures the details of an extraordinary job and turns even the mundane aspects of space travel into something fascinating."––Publishers Weekly Ride shotgun on a trip to space with astronaut Terry Virts. A born storyteller with a gift for the surprising turn of phrase and eye for the perfect you-are-there details, he captures all the highs, lows, humor, and wonder of an experience few will ever know firsthand. Featuring stories covering survival training, space shuttle emergencies, bad bosses, the art of putting on a spacesuit, time travel, and much more!

Being an astronaut is out of this world! This book teaches kids about this fascinating career.

In the graphic novel Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier, Jim Ottaviani and illustrator Maris Wicks capture the great humor and incredible drive of Mary Cleave, Valentina Tereshkova, and the first women in space. The U.S. may have put the first man on the moon, but it was the Soviet space program that made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space. It took years to catch up, but soon NASA’s first female astronauts were racing past milestones of their own. The trail-blazing women of Group 9, NASA’s first mixed gender class, had the challenging task of convincing the powers that be that a woman’s place is in space, but they discovered that NASA had plenty to learn about how to make space travel possible for everyone.

A world-renowned astronomer and an esteemed science writer make the provocative argument for space exploration without astronauts. Human journeys into space fill us with wonder. But the thrill of space travel for astronauts comes at enormous expense and is fraught with peril. As our robot explorers grow more competent, governments and corporations must ask, does our desire to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars justify the cost and danger? Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees believe that beyond low-Earth orbit, space exploration should proceed without humans. In The End of Astronauts, Goldsmith and Rees weigh the benefits and risks of human exploration across the solar system. In space humans require air, food, and water, along with protection from potentially deadly radiation and high-energy particles, at a cost of more than ten times that of robotic exploration. Meanwhile, automated explorers have demonstrated the ability to investigate planetary surfaces efficiently and effectively, operating autonomously or under direction from Earth. Although Goldsmith and Rees are alert to the limits of artificial intelligence, they know that our robots steadily improve, while our bodies do not. Today a robot cannot equal a geologist's expertise, but by the time we land a geologist on Mars, this advantage will diminish significantly. Decades of research and experience, together with interviews with scientific authorities and former astronauts, offer convincing arguments that robots represent the future of space exploration. The End of Astronauts also examines how spacefaring AI might be regulated as corporations race to privatize the stars. We may eventually decide that humans belong in space despite the dangers and expense, but their paths will follow routes set by robots.

An introduction to astronauts that examines their tasks, clothing, tools, and education.

Near the end of the Apollo 15 mission, David Scott and fellow moonwalker James Irwin conducted a secret ceremony unsanctioned by NASA: they placed on the lunar soil a small tin figurine called The Fallen Astronaut, along with a plaque bearing a list of names. By telling the stories of those sixteen astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the quest to reach the moon between 1962 and 1972, this book enriches the saga of humankind’s greatest scientific undertaking, Project Apollo, and conveys the human cost of the space race. Many people are aware of the first manned Apollo mission, in which Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee lost their lives in a fire during a ground test, but few know of the other five fallen astronauts whose stories this book tells as well, including Ted Freeman and C.C. Williams, who died in the crashes of their T-38 jets; the “Gemini Twins,” Charlie Bassett and Elliot See, killed when their jet slammed into the building where their Gemini capsule was undergoing final construction; and Ed Givens, whose fatal car crash has until now been obscured by rumors. Supported by extensive interviews and archival material, the extraordinary lives and accomplishments of these and other fallen astronauts—including eight Russian cosmonauts who lost their lives during training—unfold here in intimate and compelling detail. Their stories return us to a stirring time in the history of our nation and remind us of the cost of fulfilling our dreams. This revised edition includes expanded and revised biographies and additional photographs.