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Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them despite their groundbreaking successes. Includes biographies on Dorothy Jackson Vaughan (1910-2008), Mary Winston Jackson (1921-2005), Katherine Colman Goble Johnson (1918-), Dr. Christine Mann Darden (1942-).
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Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in...
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As the fiftieth anniversary of the first lunar landing approaches, the award winning historian and perennial New York Times bestselling author takes a fresh look at the space program, President John F. Kennedy's inspiring challenge, and America's race to the moon. On May 25, 1961, JFK made an astonishing announcement: his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In this engrossing, fast-paced epic, Douglas Brinkley returns to the...
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"Today, everyone is familiar with Neil Armstrong's famous words as he first set foot on the moon: 'one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.' He made it look easy, but America's journey to the moon was anything but simple. In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, into orbit, America had barely crossed the starting line of the great Space Race. Later that year, our first attempt was such a failure that...
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On-point historical photographs combined with strong narration bring the story of the moon landing to life, discussing the cold war tensions between the US and the USSR that led to the space race, and the push from presidents Kennedy and Johnson to ensure the U.S. got to the moon first. Also discusses how this played out on TV, as all of the networks covered it, but Walter Cronkite and astronaut Wally Shirra were there to narrate how it happened with...
10) Hidden figures
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As the United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented...
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Laika began her life as a stray dog on the streets of Moscow and died in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik II. Initially the USSR reported that Laika, the first animal to orbit the earth, had survived in space for seven days, providing valuable data that would make future manned space flight possible. People believed that Laika died a painless death as her oxygen ran out. Only in recent decades has the real story become public: Laika died after...
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En el contexto del Sur de Jim Crow con su segregación racial, y el movimiento de derechos civiles. Esta es la verdadera historia, nunca antes contada, de las mujeres afroamericanas de la NASA expertas en matemáticas, que desempeñaron un papel crucial en el programa espacial de Estados Unidos, y cuyas contribuciones han permanecido anónimas... hasta ahora.Antes de que John Glenn girara en órbita alrededor de la Tierra, o Neil Armstrong caminara...
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"A witty, deeply researched history of the surprisingly ramshackle Soviet space program, and how its success was more spin than science. In the wake of World War II, with America ascendant and the Soviet Union devastated by the conflict, the Space Race should have been over before it started. But the underdog Soviets scored a series of victories--starting with the 1957 launch of Sputnik and continuing in the years following--that seemed to achieve...
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"A riveting history of the momentous Friendship 7 space flight that put America back into the space race. If the United States couldn't catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War-a moment when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the US to every major milestone in space....
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The race to space-- and to the moon-- was masterminded in the shadows by two engineers on opposite sides of the Cold War: Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi officer living in the US, and Sergei Korolev, a Russian rocket designer once jailed for crimes against his country. Von Braun became an American hero, while Korolev toiled in obscurity. These two brilliant rocketeers never met, but together they shaped the science of spaceflight and redefined modern...