Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight

Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight PDF

Author: Stephen J. Dick

Publisher: U. S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13:

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In March 2005, the NASA History Division and the Division of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum brought together a distinguished group of scholars to consider the state of the discipline of space history. This volume is a collection of essays based on those deliberations. The meeting took place at a time of extraordinary transformation for NASA, stemming from the new Vision of Space Exploration announced by President George W. Bush in January 204: to go to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. This Vision, in turn, stemmed from a deep reevaluation of NASA?s goals in the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident and the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The new goals were seen as initiating a "New Age of Exploration" and were placed in the context of the importance of exploration and discovery to the American experiences. (Amazon).

The Analogue Alternative

The Analogue Alternative PDF

Author: James S. Small

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1134699026

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We are in the midst of a digital revolution - until recently, the majority of appliances used in everyday life have been developed with analogue technology. Now, either at home or out and about, we are surrounded by digital technology such as digital 'film', audio systems, computers and telephones. From the late 1940s until the 1970s, analogue technology was a genuine alternative to digital, and the two competing technologies ran parallel with each other. During this period, a community of engineers, scientists, academics and businessmen continued to develop and promote the analogue computer. At the height of the Cold War, this community and its technology met with considerable success in meeting the urgent demand for high speed computing for use in the design and simulation of rockets, aircraft and manned space vehicles. The Analogue Alternative tracks the development, commercialisation and ultimate decline of the electronic analogue computer in the USA and Britain. It examines the roles played by technical, economic and cultural factors in the competition between the alternative technologies, but more importantly, James Small demonstrates that non-technical factors, such as the role of 'military enterprise' and the working practices of analogue engineers, have been the most crucial in analogue's demise.^l This book will be of interest to students of the history and sociology of science and technology, particularly computing. It will also be relevant to those interested in technical change and innovation, and the study of scientific cultures.

Westland and the British Helicopter Industry, 1945-1960

Westland and the British Helicopter Industry, 1945-1960 PDF

Author: Matthew R.H. Uttley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-22

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1135282382

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This study explains how Westland dominated British helicopter production and why government funding and support failed to generate competitive "all-British" alternatives. In doing so, the book evaluates broader historiographic assumptions about the purported "failure" of british aircraft procurement during the early post-war period and considers the scope and limitations of licensed production as a government-mandated procurement strategy.

Arms, Economics and British Strategy

Arms, Economics and British Strategy PDF

Author: G. C. Peden

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-02-08

Total Pages: 16

ISBN-13: 113946292X

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This book integrates strategy, technology and economics and presents a new way of looking at twentieth-century military history and Britain's decline as a great power. G. C. Peden explores how from the Edwardian era to the 1960s warfare was transformed by a series of innovations, including dreadnoughts, submarines, aircraft, tanks, radar, nuclear weapons and guided missiles. He shows that the cost of these new weapons tended to rise more quickly than national income and argues that strategy had to be adapted to take account of both the increased potency of new weapons and the economy's diminishing ability to sustain armed forces of a given size. Prior to the development of nuclear weapons, British strategy was based on an ability to wear down an enemy through blockade, attrition (in the First World War) and strategic bombing (in the Second), and therefore power rested as much on economic strength as on armaments.

The Long Road To Desert Storm And Beyond: The Development Of Precision Guided Bombs

The Long Road To Desert Storm And Beyond: The Development Of Precision Guided Bombs PDF

Author: Major Donald I. Blackwelder

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 178625610X

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This paper examines the long development of precision guided bombs to show that the accuracy attained in Desert Storm was an evolution not a revolution in aerial warfare. This evolution continues and gives offensive airpower the advantage over the defense. Guided bomb development started during World War One with the “aerial torpedo”. During World War Two the German Fritz X and Hs-293 were visually guided bombs and both experienced success against allied shipping. The Army Air Corps also developed a wide variety of TV, heat, radar, and visually guided bombs. The visually guided AZON was successful in Burma and the radar guided Bat was successful against Japanese ships. During the Korean War visually guided RAZON and TARZON bombs had some success. In Vietnam the Paveway I laser-guided bombs and Walleye TV-guided bombs were successful on a much broader scale. Paveway II and III, Walleye II, and GBU-15s were developed and successfully combat tested throughout the 1970s and 1980s. When Desert Storm initiated in 1991 there were very few guided weapons that had not been extensively tested on training ranges and in combat. The precision demonstrated to the World during Desert Storm started evolving when airpower was first envisioned as a new dimension for conducting war, and was far from a revolution. Now, the continued development of imaging infrared, laser radar, synthetic aperture radar, and millimeter wave radar autonomous seekers further increases the flexibility, range, and effectiveness of guided bombs.

European Integration Beyond Brussels

European Integration Beyond Brussels PDF

Author: Matthew Broad

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 3030454452

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Europe is a continent whose history has, in one form or another, long been dominated by integration. And yet the European integration process is often treated as synonymous with the evolution of just one particular, and until recently geographically quite limited, Western-centred organisation: the European Union (EU). This trend obscures the multitude of ways European states have acted collectively on both sides of the Iron Curtain – and continue to do so throughout the continent today. With contributors drawn from history and political science, this book explores some of these diverse integration efforts ‘beyond Brussels’. We shine a light on international organisations, trade frameworks, and various political, social, scientific and cultural forms of unity in both Eastern and Western Europe. In so doing, the book seeks to redefine the history of the European integration process not only as a less purely EU-centric phenomenon but as a less strictly Western European one too.