British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle

British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle PDF Author: Daniel Sharp
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910809020
Category : Space shuttles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Even as America and Russia stepped up their efforts in the early 1960s to design ever faster bombers and put men and equipment into space, Britain quietly set to work devising its own hypersonic aircraft and manned space vehicles. British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttletells the story of how, from 1963 to 1966, English Electric/BAC's Preston works secretly led the world in re-useable spacecraft design. A huge variety of designs formed the P.42 project with more than 100 proposals for hypersonic interceptors, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, satellite launchers, spacecraft launchers, orbital spy planes and satellite killers. The end result was the 'Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device' (MUSTARD), which pre-dated the USA's Space Shuttle program by six years. Based on unique access to the original project drawings, photographs, archives and interviews with surviving members of the design team, British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttleoffers a unique insight into this hitherto little-known chapter in the secret history of the UK manned space flight program.

British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle

British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle PDF Author: Daniel Sharp
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910809020
Category : Space shuttles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Even as America and Russia stepped up their efforts in the early 1960s to design ever faster bombers and put men and equipment into space, Britain quietly set to work devising its own hypersonic aircraft and manned space vehicles. British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttletells the story of how, from 1963 to 1966, English Electric/BAC's Preston works secretly led the world in re-useable spacecraft design. A huge variety of designs formed the P.42 project with more than 100 proposals for hypersonic interceptors, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, satellite launchers, spacecraft launchers, orbital spy planes and satellite killers. The end result was the 'Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device' (MUSTARD), which pre-dated the USA's Space Shuttle program by six years. Based on unique access to the original project drawings, photographs, archives and interviews with surviving members of the design team, British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttleoffers a unique insight into this hitherto little-known chapter in the secret history of the UK manned space flight program.

The Vickers Viscount

The Vickers Viscount PDF Author: Nick Stroud
Publisher: Air World
ISBN: 9781526701954
Category : Transport planes
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
By some margin the most successful British medium-range airliner ever produced, the world-beating Viscount was a sublime combination of Vickers' state-of-the-art postwar design and Rolls-Royce's cutting-edge power-plant technology, both companies being at the very peak of their powers during the type's genesis and evolution. Tracing its origins back to the wartime Brabazon Committee, the Viscount was one of several designs from various British aircraft manufacturers produced to fulfill the committee's specifications for a fast, economical short- to medium-range airliner to satisfy the demands of the burgeoning postwar civil aviation market, which was predicted to grow at a healthy rate over the following decades. Vickers' chief designer and Managing Director George Edwards was quick to respond, the result being the Dart turboprop-powered Vickers V.630, which made its first flight in July 1948, despite its future looking uncertain after British European Airways having twenty examples of ordered its chief rival, Airspeed's Ambassador, six months before. The Viscount nevertheless entered full service with BEA in 1953, much to the relief of its manufacturer, orders flooding in thereafter from numerous airlines -- and air forces -- all over the world. Ultimately, some 200 individual airlines, companies and organizations in more than eighty countries operated the dependable and, crucially, development-friendly Viscount over its long and distinguished career. This book tells the full story of the world's first turboprop airliner, from its Brabazon Committee beginnings, through its early flight trials program and entry into service, to its almost unassailable position as the world's number one medium-haul turboprop, including its astonishing breakthrough in the USA, where it single-handedly broke the big American manufacturers' stranglehold on the airliner market. The type's military career is also covered, as is its construction; also included in this volume are details of the numerous variants produced and those of the 444 built still surviving as exhibits today, along with twenty-four superb artworks by world-renowned aviation illustrator Juanita Franzi.

World Engines: Destroyer

World Engines: Destroyer PDF Author: Stephen Baxter
Publisher: Gollancz
ISBN: 1473223202
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
In the year 2570, a sleeper will wake . . . In the mid-21st century, the Kernel, a strange object on a five-hundred-year-orbit, is detected coming from high above the plane of the solar system. Could it be an alien artefact? In the middle of climate-change crises, there is no mood for space-exploration stunts - but Reid Malenfant, elderly, once a shuttle pilot and frustrated would-be asteroid miner, decides to go take a look anyway. Nothing more is heard of him. But his ex-wife, Emma Stoney, sets up a trust fund to search for him the next time the Kernel returns . . . By 2570 Earth is transformed. A mere billion people are supported by advanced technology on a world that is almost indistinguishable from the natural, with recovered forests, oceans, ice caps. It is not an age for expansion; there are only small science bases beyond the Earth. But this is a world you would want to live in: a Star Trek without the stars. After 500 years the Kernel returns, and a descendant of Stoney, who Malenfant will call Emma II, mounts a mission to see what became of Malenfant. She finds him still alive, cryo-preserved . . . His culture-shock encounter with a conservative future is entertaining . . . But the Kernel itself turns out to be attached to a kind of wormhole, through which Malenfant and Emma II, exploring further, plummet back in time, across five billion years . . .

Ascent

Ascent PDF Author: Jed Mercurio
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 141653900X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Sun swings behind the world. Night engulfs him. The dull metal craft plunges through space, its portholes pale beacons containing the silhouette of a man, and the only other lights are the stars themselves. Can one act define a man? Or his country? Ascent is the spellbinding thriller by critically acclaimed British novelist Jed Mercurio. Inspired by the secrets still surrounding the USSR's race against the United States to put a man on the moon, Mercurio asks the chilling question, What if the Americans weren't first? Ascent takes us on the perilous journey of its singular hero, the brave and determined Yefgenii Yeremin. Yefgenii rises from the privation of a Stalingrad orphanage in 1946 to the heights of the cosmonaut corps. During the Korean War he joins an elite Soviet squadron conducting a secret air war against the famous aces of the U.S. Air Force. Dubbed Ivan the Terrible, he amasses more jet kills than any fighter pilot in history, but his feats must remain unknown to his countrymen, his victories un-celebrated. After the war, his achievements are scrubbed from the records and he is exiled to a base above the Arctic Circle, where he flies patrols on the edge of American airspace. There he learns that Yuri Gagarin has become the first man in space, the greatest of all heroes. And then, as America's Apollo astronauts prepare to reach the Moon, he is given a new name and sent into cosmonaut training. Throughout his career, he has craved a place in history, in the climactic clash between the two great powers. At last his country calls him. And somewhere between the Earth and the Moon, Ivan the Terrible finds his mission to create history, to exceed his own life. With one of the most fascinating heroes in recent fiction, Ascent builds a terrifying scenario within the shadowy history of the space race. Haunting, tragic, boldly inventive, Ascent is a tour de force of imagination.

Energiya-Buran

Energiya-Buran PDF Author: Bart Hendrickx
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 038773984X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
This absorbing book describes the long development of the Soviet space shuttle system, its infrastructure and the space agency’s plans to follow up the first historic unmanned mission. The book includes comparisons with the American shuttle system and offers accounts of the Soviet test pilots chosen for training to fly the system, and the operational, political and engineering problems that finally sealed the fate of Buran and ultimately of NASA’s Shuttle fleet.

British Secret Projects 2

British Secret Projects 2 PDF Author: Tony Buttler
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781910809105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Like fighters, many bomber projects were drawn by British aircraft manufacturing companies in times of potential or actual combat. While names such as Canberra, Vulcan, Victor, TSR2, Harrier and Tornado are known to many as they made it into the skies, the fact that so many other projects from different companies remained on the drawing board provides a rich diversity of 'might-have-been' aircraft designs ripe for coverage. As with British Secret Projects 1: Jet Fighters Since 1950, the author has researched extensively with particular emphasis on the design and development work that took place within various tender design competitions. Many little-known projects are included that help to illustrate how British bomber development changed against a backdrop of political upheaval, shrinking defense expenditure and technological advancement including supersonic flight, nuclear weapons and VTOL. The story which starts with Britain's quest for a jet-powered Mosquito replacement and concludes with reference to the next leap forward, FOAS, an unarmed bomber flown by pilots on the ground. Accompanied by detailed appendices of all British post-war bomber projects and specifications, color photographs and artwork, British Secret Projects 2: Jet Bombers Since 1949 provides a wealth of detailed information on the fascinating world of Cold War secret bomber projects.

British Secret Projects

British Secret Projects PDF Author: Tony Buttler
Publisher: Voyageur Press (MN)
ISBN: 9781857800951
Category : Aircraft
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A large number of fighter projects have been drawn by British companies over the last fifty years, but very few have turned into hardware, and very little has been published about these fascinating "might-have-beens". This book makes extensive use of previously unpublished, primary-source material-much recently declassified. It gives an insight into a secret world where the public has had little idea of what was going on, while at the same time presenting a coherent nationwide picture of fighter development and evolution. Particular emphasis is placed on tender design competitions and some of the events that led to certain aircraft either being canceled or produced. Some of the many and varied types included are the Hawker P.1103/P.1136/P.1121 series, and the Fairey "Delta III". The book includes many illustrations, plus specially commissioned renditions of "might-have-been" types in contemporary markings.

Backroom Boys

Backroom Boys PDF Author: Francis Spufford
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571266444
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A brilliant, beautiful account of how British boffins triumphed across the decades in creating everything from computer games to Martian landers. The book contains chapters on the Beagle II, Elite - the 80s computer game, the Blue Streak missile, Concorde, mobile phone technology and the Human Genome Project, among others. Britain is the only country in the world to have cancelled its space programme just as it put its first rocket into orbit. Starting with this forgotten episode, 'Backroom Boys' tells the bittersweet story of how one country lost its industrial tradition and got back something else. Sad, inspiring, funny and ultimately triumphant, it follows the technologists whose work kept Concorde flying, created the computer game, conquered the mobile-phone business, saved the human genome for the human race - and who now are sending the Beagle 2 probe to burrow in the cinnamon sands of Mars. 'Backroom Boys' is a vivid love-letter to quiet men in pullovers, to those whose imaginings take shape not in words but in mild steel and carbon fibre and lines of code. Above all, it is a celebration of big dreams achieved with slender means.

The Malaria Project

The Malaria Project PDF Author: Karen M. Masterson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698140133
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
A fascinating and shocking historical exposé, The Malaria Project is the story of America's secret mission to combat malaria during World War II—a campaign modeled after a German project which tested experimental drugs on men gone mad from syphilis. American war planners, foreseeing the tactical need for a malaria drug, recreated the German model, then grew it tenfold. Quickly becoming the biggest and most important medical initiative of the war, the project tasked dozens of the country’s top research scientists and university labs to find a treatment to remedy half a million U.S. troops incapacitated by malaria. Spearheading the new U.S. effort was Dr. Lowell T. Coggeshall, the son of a poor Indiana farmer whose persistent drive and curiosity led him to become one of the most innovative thinkers in solving the malaria problem. He recruited private corporations, such as today's Squibb and Eli Lilly, and the nation’s best chemists out of Harvard and Johns Hopkins to make novel compounds that skilled technicians tested on birds. Giants in the field of clinical research, including the future NIH director James Shannon, then tested the drugs on mental health patients and convicted criminals—including infamous murderer Nathan Leopold. By 1943, a dozen strains of malaria brought home in the veins of sick soldiers were injected into these human guinea pigs for drug studies. After hundreds of trials and many deaths, they found their “magic bullet,” but not in a U.S. laboratory. America 's best weapon against malaria, still used today, was captured in battle from the Nazis. Called chloroquine, it went on to save more lives than any other drug in history. Karen M. Masterson, a journalist turned malaria researcher, uncovers the complete story behind this dark tale of science, medicine and war. Illuminating, riveting and surprising, The Malaria Project captures the ethical perils of seeking treatments for disease while ignoring the human condition.

Among the Thugs

Among the Thugs PDF Author: Bill Buford
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804150516
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.