"A colorful page-turner." --Walter Isaacson, New York Times Book Review "As important a book on space as has ever been written."&nbsp;--Homer Hickam, Author of Rocket Boys The dramatic inside story of the historic flights that launched SpaceX--and Elon Musk--from a shaky startup into the world's leading-edge rocket company SpaceX has enjoyed a miraculous decade. Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a century after the space race it is private companies, led by SpaceX, standing alongside NASA pushing forward into the cosmos, and laying the foundation for our exploration of other worlds. But before it became one of the most powerful players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling startup, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket before the money ran dry. The engineering challenge was immense; numerous other private companies had failed similar attempts. And even if SpaceX succeeded, they would then have to compete for government contracts with titans such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who had tens of thousands of employees and tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. SpaceX had fewer than 200 employees and the relative pittance of $100 million in the bank. In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company's first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for more than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company's inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space. Filled with never-before-told stories of SpaceX's turbulent beginning, Liftoff is a saga of cosmic proportions.

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

Biographies & Memoirs

Berger, Eric

Professionals & Academics

William Morrow

“A colorful page-turner.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times Book Review 
“As important a book on space as has ever been written.” —Homer Hickam, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Boys 
The dramatic inside story of the historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky start-up into the world’s leading-edge rocket company. 
SpaceX has enjoyed a miraculous decade. Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a century after the space race it is private companies, led by SpaceX, standing alongside NASA, pushing forward into the cosmos, and laying the foundation for our exploration of other worlds. 
But before it became one of the most powerful players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling start-up, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket before the money ran dry. The engineering challenge was immense; numerous other private companies had failed similar attempts. And even if SpaceX succeeded, they would then have to compete for government contracts with titans such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who had tens of thousands of employees and tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. SpaceX had fewer than 200 employees and the relative pittance of $100 million in the bank. 
In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for more than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company’s inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space. 
Filled with never-before-told stories of SpaceX’s turbulent beginning, Liftoff is a saga of cosmic proportions.

William Morrow Paperbacks

Physical Universe

Science & Math

Konrad Krauskopf

Astronomy & Space Science

McGraw-Hill Education (ISE Editions)

2002 Physical Science Fifth Edition (P) by Bill W. Tillery ***Contains: #0072388978 Powerweb CD-ROM(CD) or #0072490861 PowerWeb Access Card(Card) ***ISBN-13: 9780072414943 ***Pages: 699

Physical Science

TILLERY

Biological Sciences

McGraw-Hill Professional

"Physical Science, Seventh Edition", is a straightforward, easy-to-read, but substantial introduction to the fundamental behavior of matter and energy. It is intended to serve the needs of non-science majors who are required to complete one or more physical science courses. It offers exceptional, straight-forward writing, complimented with useful pedagogical tools. Tillery introduces basic concepts and key ideas while providing opportunities for students to learn reasoning skills and a new way of thinking about their environment. No prior work in science is assumed. The text offers students complete coverage of the physical sciences with a level of explanation and detail appropriate for all students. The sequence of chapters in "Physical Science" is flexible, and the instructor can determine topic sequence and depth of coverage as needed. The materials are also designed to support a conceptual approach, or a combined conceptual and problem-solving approach. With laboratory studies, the text contains enough material for the instructor to select a sequence for a two-semester course. It can also serve as a text in a one-semester physics and chemistry course.

Tillery, Bill W.

McGraw-Hill Education

A revision of the leading text on experimental physics. The feature of this book that has made it one of the most loved texts on the subject is that it goes far beyond a mere description of key experiments in physics. The author successfully provides the reader with an understanding and appreciation of the 'physics' behind the experiments. The second edition will be an extensive revision introducing many new devices, including the use of computers and software programs, that have come into use since the publication of the first edition. In addition the important areas of condensed matter physics and optical physics will be added, including two entirely new chapters on lasers and optics.

Experiments in Modern Physics

Napolitano, Jim

Melissinos, Adrian C.

Research

Academic Press

Offers a concise and thorough presentation of engineering mechanics theory and application. The material is reinforced with numerous examples to illustrate principles and imaginative, well-illustrated problems of varying degrees of difficulty. The book is committed to developing users' problem-solving skills. Features new "Photorealistc" figures (approximately 200) that have been rendered in often 3D photo quality detail to appeal to visual learners. Features a large variety of problem types from a broad range of engineering disciplines, stressing practical, realistic situations encountered in professional practice, varying levels of difficulty, and problems that involve solution by computer. A thorough presentation of engineering mechanics theory and applications includes some of these topics: Force Vectors; Equilibrium of a Particle; Force System Resultants; Equilibrium of a Rigid Body; Structural Analysis; Internal Forces; Friction; Center of Gravity and Centroid; Moments of Inertia; and Virtual Work. For professionals in mechanical engineering, civil engineering, aeronautical engineering, and engineering mechanics careers.

Engineering Mechanics: Statics

Hibbeler, R.C.

History & Philosophy

Pearson College Div

Engineering Mechanics : Statics

Hibbeler, Russell C.

Prentice-Hall

Popular math at its most entertaining and enlightening. "Zero is really something"-Washington Post A New York Times Notable Book. The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything. In Zero, Science Journalist Charles Seife follows this innocent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. Here are the legendary thinkers—from Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today's astrophysicists—who have tried to understand it and whose clashes shook the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason, and its intransigence persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time: the quest for a theory of everything.

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Seife, Charles

Arts & Literature

Penguin Books

In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech’s improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech’s science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech’s founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits. Integrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, Genentech tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Synthesis)

Business & Money

Hughes, Sally Smith

Biography & History

University of Chicago Press

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