The Father Son And Holy Shuttle

Download or read book The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle written by Patrick Mullane and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many children grow up with the dream of becoming an astronaut, Patrick Mullane grew up the child of one. In The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle: Growing Up an Astronaut's Kid in the Glorious 80s, Mullane shares his unique and outrageous coming-of-age tale. It is a tale about his father's unusual astronaut profession, a secret long-held by his mother, and his often-hilarious efforts to be a person of consequence. In 1978, when Mullane was ten years old, his father, Mike Mullane, was chosen in the very first group of space shuttle astronauts - a group that included Sally Ride and four members of the Challenger crew who were lost when it tore apart in 1986. In The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle, he tells of how his father's profession defined him, first as a young boy hopping from military base to military base with his parents and two sisters, and then as a pimple-faced, unknown nerd in a large Houston high school where he often felt like one of the pathetic underdog characters in a John Hughes film of the day. The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle is about Mullane trying to be a hero in his own world as he believed his father and his pop culture idols - Indiana Jones, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker - were in theirs. While unequivocally a memoir, Mullane weaves into his story a non-technical history of the early space shuttle program as seen through the eyes of somebody who witnessed that history in an intimate way. From the opening scene describing his dad's first launch attempt when a failure led Mullane to believe he had witnessed his father's death three miles distant, to the description of the day Challenger exploded and three of his high school classmates lost a parent, to stories of Sally Ride having a beer after work in his backyard, Mullane shares with readers a perspective that has yet to be explored in any book and does so with an infusion of 80s pop culture and colorful real-life characters that will leave readers nostalgic for a decade that shaped the millions. But more than anything, The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle is a story of the love between a father and son - a love shaped by a mutual wonder at the magnificence of the world, the majesty of the universe, and the beauty of flight.

Download or read book Riding Rockets written by Mike Mullane and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-02-06 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts, Mike Mullane completed three missions and logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery and Atlantis shuttles. It was a dream come true. As a boy, Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction, but the launch of Sputnik changed all that. Space flight became a possible dream and Mike Mullane set out to make it come true. In this absorbing memoir, Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious, sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts - a class that included Vietnam War veterans, feminists, and propeller-headed scientists. With unprecedented candour, Mullane describes the chilling fear and unparalleled joy of space flight. As his career centred around the Challenger disaster, Mullane also recounts the heartache of burying his friends and colleagues. And he pulls no punches as he reveals the ins and outs of NASA, frank in his criticisms of the agency. A blast from start to finish, Riding Rockets is a straight-from-the-gut account of what it means to be an astronaut, just in time for this latest generation of stargazers.

Download or read book The Shuttle written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-07-20 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Shuttle" deals with themes of intermarriages between wealthy American heiresses and impoverished British nobles. It is about wealthy American heiresses who could not make the best societal marriages because their family fortune came from new rather than old money. To solve this issue, they travelled to England. They married poor but Aristocratic husbands who needed money to finance their neglected estates.

Download or read book Foxmask written by Juliet Marillier and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foxmask is the second book of a fantasy duet from Juliet Marillier, weaving history and folklore into a saga of adventure, romance, and magic. The Norseman Eyvind, a fierce and loyal Wolfskin, came to a new land on top of the world to find his destiny. With his priestess bride Nessa he saved the land and weathered the treachery that was caused by Eyvind's blood-sworn friend Somerled. After much pain and sorrow the two lovers have managed to create a society where the Norse warriors and the gentle folks of the Orkney Isles live and thrive in contentment at last. A decade and more has passed since the devastating events of the creation of the settlement and Eyvind and Nessa have watched their children grow and thrive in peace. But not all on the islands are content or at peace. Thorvald, the young son of Margaret, widow of the slain king and Eyvind's war leader, has always felt apart and at odds with all he knows. He learns upon his coming to manhood that he is not his father's son but that of the love that Margaret bore for the hated Somerled and that Somerled was not killed for his treachery but sent on a boat, adrift with little more than a knife and skein of water, doomed to the god's will. Thorvald is determined to find a boat and cast off to the West in a desperate bid to find a father he never knew...and to find out if he is made of the same stuff as the heinous traitor. The tragedy of this scheme would be horrific enough...if it were not for the fact that Creidhe, the winsome daughter of Eyvind and Nessa has loved Thorvald since birth and unbeknownst to him conspires to go along on this most perilous of quests. What happens to them on their journey of discovery will ultimately change the lives of all they know and love...and will doom (or redeem) an entire people. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Von Braun written by Michael Neufeld and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curator and space historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum delivers a brilliantly nuanced biography of controversial space pioneer Wernher von Braun. Chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the U.S. space program, Wernher von Braun is a source of consistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, he was a man of profound moral complexities, whose intelligence and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition. Based on new sources, Neufeld's biography delivers a meticulously researched and authoritative portrait of the creator of the V-2 rocket and his times, detailing how he was a man caught between morality and progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.

Download or read book Wonders All Around written by Bruce McCandless III and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Man You Never Knew You Knew It’s one of the most powerful and popular images in the history of space exploration: an astronaut in a snow-white spacesuit, untethered and floating alone in an expanse of blue. Bruce McCandless II is the man in that spacesuit, and Wonders All Around: The Incredible True Story of Astronaut Bruce McCandless II and the First Untethered Flight in Space is the thoroughly engrossing, extensively researched story of his inspiring life and groundbreaking accomplishments, as told by his son, a gifted writer and storyteller. Bruce McCandless II, a Navy fighter pilot, joined NASA in 1966. He was Houston’s capsule communicator—the person talking to the astronauts—as Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for mankind in 1969. McCandless supported subsequent Apollo flights and developed technology and techniques his fellow astronauts used during the Skylab program, working behind the scenes until he was chosen to ride Challenger into space on the tenth shuttle mission. When he stepped into the cosmos to test the Manned Maneuvering Unit, he became a space flight icon. But the road to that incredible feat was not the sure bet it should have been for such a gifted man. Bruce McCandless II was an astronaut for 24 years, and his story encompasses the development of the space agency itself—the changes in focus, in personnel, in approach, and in the city of Houston that grew up with it. Wonders All Around is more than a catalogue of McCandless’s extraordinary achievements, which included work on the design, deployment, and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also a tale of perseverance and devotion. Recounted with insight and humor, this book explores the relationship between a father and a son, men of two very different generations. And finally, it is an exploration of the mindset of one unique individual, and the courage, imagination, and tenacity that propelled him and his country to their place in the forefront of space history. From Wonders All Around: "Bruce McCandless turned his Jeep around and screeched out of the cul-de-sac in front of our house for the ten-minute drive to the space center. The moon, a waxing crescent, was standing thirty degrees above the western horizon, and my father slipped into a sort of reverie as he sped toward it on NASA Road One. The moon floated serene and imperturbable in front of him like a black-and-white photograph of itself, Earth’s gravitational remora, her pale silent sister, movie star and legend, goddess and mirage. Bruce McCandless had just turned thirty-two. He was an engineer, a true son of science, a distant nephew of Sir Isaac Newton. He knew the formulas required for achieving orbital velocity, could tell you the fuel mixtures you needed, the stages and timing of rocket-booster separations. He brushed sentiments away like so many spider webs. But even he was having trouble believing that human beings—his colleagues and friends—were up there in the sky, getting ready to do something no one had ever done before. He was going to be part of it. He would be talking to two men as they walked on the moon. The young astronaut hadn’t quite reached his lifelong goal of touching the lunar surface, but he was close. He was almost there. He could feel it."

Download or read book Red Rising written by Pierce Brown and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dys­topian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER