Covers the history of space flight from the beginning of the twentieth century through the year 2202, with the story of man's conquest of the stars chronicled in illustrations and star maps

With log entries indexed to actual Earth date calenders, this complete year-by-year chronology, with material from both original and new series, details every event in the Trek legend--from Captain Kirk's birth and his tenure on the U.S.S. Enterprise up through the Next Generation crew. Over 150 photographs.

A concise history of spaceflight, from military rocketry through Sputnik, Apollo, robots in space, space culture, and human spaceflight today. Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the twentieth century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than twelve years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Michael Neufeld offers a concise history of spaceflight, mapping the full spectrum of activities that humans have developed in space. Neufeld explains that “the space program” should not be equated only with human spaceflight. Since the 1960s, unmanned military and commercial spacecraft have been orbiting near the Earth, and robotic deep-space explorers have sent back stunning images of faraway planets. Neufeld begins with the origins of space ideas and the discovery that rocketry could be used for spaceflight. He then discusses the Soviet-U.S. Cold War space race and reminds us that NASA resisted adding female astronauts even after the Soviets sent the first female cosmonaut into orbit. He analyzes the two rationales for the Apollo program: prestige and scientific discovery (this last something of an afterthought). He describes the internationalization and privatization of human spaceflight after the Cold War, the cultural influence of space science fiction, including Star Trek and Star Wars, space tourism for the ultra-rich, and the popular desire to go into space. Whether we become a multiplanet species, as some predict, or continue to call Earth home, this book offers a useful primer.

When a mining colony on an endangered moon is threatened, it’s a race against time for the Enterprise crew to find a solution in this original novel set in the universe of Star Trek: The Original Series. The USS Enterprise responds to a distress call from a vital dilithium-mining colony in the Klondike system. The colony is located on Skagway, a moon orbiting Klondike-6, a gas giant not unlike Saturn. For unknown reasons, the planet’s rings are coming apart, threatening the colony and its inhabitants. Kirk and his crew need to find a solution—fast.There are more than 3,000 colonists, including hundreds of families, on Skagway, which is more than even the Enterprise can take on, and there are no other rescue ships or habitable planets anywhere in the vicinity. Meanwhile, an approaching comet that may be the source of the crisis turns out to be a mysterious alien probe. Sensors indicate that the probe is incredibly old and running low on power. Suspecting that the probe may have something to do with the threat to Skagway, Kirk has the probe beamed aboard the Enterprise. Suddenly after a blinding flash, Kirk suddenly finds himself floating in orbit above Saturn in our solar system, drifting in space wearing a twenty-first century NASA spacesuit. What just happened?

Klingon Capt. Krenn is a ruthless war strategist. But on a mission to Earth, Krenn learns a lesson in peace when his empire hatches a covert plan to shatter the Federation. Only Krenn can prevent a war--at the risk of his own life!

The technology of the next few decades could possibly allow us to explore with robotic probes the closest stars outside our Solar System, and maybe even observe some of the recently discovered planets circling these stars. This book looks at the reasons for exploring our stellar neighbors and at the technologies we are developing to build space probes that can traverse the enormous distances between the stars. In order to reach the nearest stars, we must first develop a propulsion technology that would take our robotic probes there in a reasonable time. Such propulsion technology has radically different requirements from conventional chemical rockets, because of the enormous distances that must be crossed. Surprisingly, many propulsion schemes for interstellar travel have been suggested and await only practical engineering solutions and the political will to make them a reality. This is a result of the tremendous advances in astrophysics that have been made in recent decades and the perseverance and imagination of tenacious theoretical physicists. This book explores these different propulsion schemes – all based on current physics – and the challenges they present to physicists, engineers, and space exploration entrepreneurs. This book will be helpful to anyone who really wants to understand the principles behind and likely future course of interstellar travel and who wants to recognizes the distinctions between pure fantasy (such as Star Trek’s ‘warp drive’) and methods that are grounded in real physics and offer practical technological solutions for exploring the stars in the decades to come.

The planets Earth and Vulcan experience a mysterious first contact in this fascinating Star Trek novel featuring the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Years before the formal first contact between Earth and another planet’s inhabitants, a Vulcan space vessel crash landed in the South Pacific, forcing humanity to decide whether to offer the hand of friendship, or the fist of war. Complicating matters is a second visitation: a group of people from two hundred years in the future, who serve on a starship called Enterprise. Discover the astonishing truth about this heretofore unknown first contact and the nightmares that plague Admiral James T. Kirk. Dreams of his dead comrades, of his earliest days aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, and of a forgotten past in which he somehow changed the course of history and destroyed the Federation before it began.

Volume one of a fifty year oral history of Star Trek by the people who were there, in their own words, sharing never-before-told stories.