In this inspiring, delightful memoir, a young woman decides to escape the daily grind and turn her “what if” fantasy into a reality, only to find work—and a man—she loves in one fell swoop, all in a secondhand bookstore in a quaint Scottish town. Jessica Fox was living in Hollywood, an ambitious 26-year-old film-maker with a high-stress job at NASA. Working late one night, craving another life, she was seized by a moment of inspiration and tapped “second hand bookshop Scotland” into Google. She clicked the first link she saw. A month later, she arrived 2,000 miles across the Atlantic in Wigtown, on the west coast of Scotland, and knocked on the door of the bookshop she would be living in for the next month . . . The rollercoaster journey that ensued—taking in Scottish Hanukkah, yoga on Galloway’s west coast, and a waxing that she will never forget—would both break and mend her heart. It would also teach her that sometimes we must have the courage to travel the path less taken. Only then can we truly become the writers of our own stories.

Surveys the invention, development, and different uses of rockets, from their beginnings in ancient Greece and China to modern efforts to explore outer space.

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program, but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoir of academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap. Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory near Moscow. Thirty years later, he was deputy to the founding figure of the Soviet space program, the mysterious "Chief Designer" Sergey Korolev. Chertok's 60-year-long career and the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program constitute the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread over four volumes (volumes two through four are forthcoming), academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society's quest to explore the cosmos. This book was edited by Asif Siddiqi, a historian of Russian space exploration, and General Tom Stafford contributed a foreword touching upon his significant work with the Russians on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Overall, this book is an engaging read while also contributing much new material to the literature about the Soviet space program.

Amazing Machines: Roaring Rockets follows Rabbit, Bird, and Mouse as they zoom to the Moon in a bright and bold rhyming picture book! Each page is filled with details that machine-mad kids will love including spacesuits, gravity boots, oxygen helmets, and much more. From electric cars to powerful rockets, the internationally bestselling Amazing Machines series is the perfect way for children to learn about all sorts of machines and vehicles! Each book introduces a new vehicle or machine and the many jobs it can do. Ant Parker's bright, engaging artwork and Tony Mitton's simple, rhyming text combine to make these fantastic books for young children. Kids will love getting to know the friendly animal characters who feature throughout the series and reading about their fast-paced adventures! Continue to explore all things that go with the rest of the Amazing Machines series, including Cool Cars, Patrolling Police Cars, and Amazing Airplanes.

This book teaches the reader to build rockets--powered by compressed air, water, and solid propellant--with the maximum possible fun, safety, and educational experience. Make: Rockets is for all the science geeks who look at the moon and try to figure out where Neil Armstrong walked, watch in awe as rockets lift off, and want to fly their own model rockets. Starting with the basics of rocket propulsion, readers will start out making rockets made from stuff lying around the house, and then move on up to air-, water-, and solid propellant-powered rockets. Most of the rockets in the book can be built from parts in the Estes Designer Special kit.

Join Cogz the Robot Dog and discover all about how space machines work, in this bright and fun STEM title. Cogz and his mice sidekicks, Nutty and Bolt, guide the reader through the workings of a rocket, looking closely at all the different parts and discovering information about real space missions and the spacecraft involved, including the Mars Rover and Apollo missions. Covering key STEM themes of engineering, physics, and inventions, and with a fun quiz to test young readers' knowledge, this book will get kids engaged and hands-on with learning. Perfect for vehicle-mad pre-schoolers, the Clever Cogz series lets young readers discover different vehicles, from space rockets to racing cars. Bite-sized text and colorful, informative illustrations introduce the transport topics in a simple, engaging way for young readers with a passion for machines.

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.

To a very great extent, Love and Rockets is synonymous with Hoppers' Maggie & Hopey and Palomar's Luba & Carmen & Heraclio & Tonantzin... but there was always more to L and R than that. Amor y Cohetes finally collects together in one convenient package all the non-Maggie and non-Palomar stories by all three Hernandez Brothers from that classic first, 50-issue Love and Rockets series—a dizzying array of styles and approaches that re-confirms these groundbreaking cartoonists' place in the history of comics.

Anyone can start making their own motors and rockets with this book, even if you never made a rocket or rocket motor in your life. You don't need a college degree in chemistry or engineering to be successful with this bookset. This first half of the book tells you how to design and build a rocket motor while the last half tells you how to design and build a rocket for your motor. This book shows you how to design and build your rocket motor out of PVC pipe and fittings or aluminum cases. We give you the knowledge to design and build your own rocket motor for the thrust-time curve you want. The book shows you how to calculate the limits of your motor case and design a solid rocket motor that does not exceed those limits. The book also explains how to design a rocket that will be stable off the launch rod, even in high wind conditions. It also explains how to get an FAA waiver for your high power rockets so you are always flying legally.