The First Space Race; Launching the World's First Satellites

College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Trade paperback. Very good. Illustrations. Notes. Suggested Reading. Index. Foreword by James A. Van Allen Cover has slight wear and soiling. This is number 8 in the Centennial of Flight series. Matt Bille is a science writer and historian. He is an "Apollo kid" who watched the lunar launches, commanded an Air Force missile crew, and published papers on launch vehicles, microsatellites, and space history. His 2004 book The First Space Race was a groundbreaking and well-reviewed history of the world's first satellites. Erika Lishock is a Satellite Systems Engineer with consulting firm ISYS Technologies and a freelance writer on space history. She has co-authored numerous articles with Matt Bille on the topic of space since 1997 and is currently working with the Missile Defense Agency's Space Experimentation Center on the Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE) research satellite. From 1955 to 1958, American and Soviet engineers battled to successfully launch the world's first satellite. The race to orbit featured two American teams led by rival services and a Soviet effort that few even knew it existed. This race ushered in the Space Age with a saga of science, politics, technology,and engineering. The concept of an artificial satellite had been only theorized. The first nation to transform theory into practice would gain advantages in science, the propaganda contest, and the military balance of power. Visionaries such as von Braun and Korolev knew these fields would be affected by the launch of a satellite. In this book, authors Matt Bille and Erika Lishock tell the whole story of the first space race. They trace the tale from the origins of spaceflight theory and through the military and political events that engendered the all-out efforts needed to turn dreams into reality and shaped the modern world.