Space Engineering

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?

Few perspectives epitomize the sheer drama and sacrifice of combat more perfectly than those of the fighter pilots of World War II. As romanticized as any soldier in history, the World War II fighter pilot was viewed as larger than life: a dashing soul waging war amongst the clouds. In the 65-plus years since the Allied victory, stories of these pilots' heroics have never been in short supply. But what about their adversaries - the highly skilled German aviators who pushed the Allies to the very brink of defeat?

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, and the space race was born. Desperate to beat the Russians into space, NASA put together a crew of the nation's most daring test pilots: the seven men who were to lead America to the moon. The first into space was Alan Shepard; the last was Deke Slayton, whose irregular heartbeat kept him grounded until 1975. They spent the 1960s at the forefront of NASA's effort to conquer space, and Moon Shot is their inside account of what many call the 20th century's greatest feat - landing humans on another world.

It's 2040. After decades of research, scientists of the European Union believe that they have at last conquered humankind's most pernicious foe: old age. For the first time, technology holds out the promise of not merely slowing the aging process but actually reversing it. The first subject for treatment is 78-year-old philanthropist Jeff Baker. After 18 months in a rejuvenation tank, Jeff emerges looking like a 20-year-old. And the change is more than skin deep. From his hair cells down to his DNA, Jeff is 20 - with a breadth of life experience.

Blackhawk: a wanderer, a man running from a dark and sinister past. A genetically-engineered warrior, a capable and accomplished killer, he is also a lost soul, a man who has fled to the deepest reaches of space seeking his true identity. The Far Stars: the farthest extent of human habitation in the galaxy, a sector of a hundred inhabited worlds, it is a dangerous expanse full of pirates, mercenaries, and cutthroats.

Black holes are a constant source of fascination to many due to their mysterious nature. This Very Short Introduction audiobook addresses a variety of questions, including what a black hole actually is, how they are characterized and discovered, and what would happen if you came too close to one.

On January 28, 1986, NASA's space shuttle Challenger exploded after blasting off from Cape Canaveral. Christa McAuliffe, America's "Teacher in Space", was instantly killed, along with the other six members of the mission. At least that's what most of us remember. Kevin Cook tells us what really happened on that ill-fated, unforgettable day. He traces the pressures - leading from NASA to the White House - that triggered the fatal order to launch on an ice-cold Florida morning.

On October 4, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth's first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.

For more than half a century, physicists and astronomers engaged in heated dispute over the possibility of black holes in the universe. The weirdly alien notion of a space-time abyss from which nothing escapes - not even light - seemed to confound all logic. This engrossing audiobook tells the story of the fierce black hole debates and the contributions of Einstein, Hawking, and other leading thinkers who completely altered our view of the universe.

The Genevians are at war with Nietzschea...and they’re losing. In a last-ditch hope, the Genevian mech program was founded. Its goal to augment humans into cyborg fighting machines; mechanized warriors sent to hold the front lines against an enemy that was storming a hundred worlds. Yet few wished to undergo the brutal process, and so criminals were used, their minds enslaved by control chips and obedience enforced through discipline.

AN INVASION. A CONSPIRACY. ONE SHOT AT REDEMPTION. Three never-before-published books bundled together! The Lost Galaxy series follows the adventures of a lone lawman, his aging and possibly insane spaceship, and a trio of mercenaries, new recruits, and hardened criminals who are all swept together behind an alien invasion that could wipe out humanity. As Provincial Sergeant Jack Bowman and his ragtag group race to save themselves and warn humanity of the invasion force, they learn that there is more at stake than anyone—human or alien—could have guessed. A conspiracy could bring down ...

"The Universal One" by Walter Russell is an ambitious and comprehensive work that endeavors to blend the realms of science, philosophy, and spirituality into a singular, cohesive theory of the universe.

Earth...Population: 1 Her name is Eve14. She is the result of a 1000-year project by the robots of Earth to restore the planet after all life was wiped out in 2065. 27 robotic minds, copied from Earth's great scientists, carried on after the species died. They mixed and matched those minds in endless combinations, producing a whole race of machines with human personalities. Immortal, but with memories of sensations they can no longer experience, some renegade robots now have a daring agenda. They want human bodies.

At the dawn of the 20th century, when human flight was still considered an impossibility, Germany’s Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin vied with the Wright Brothers to build the world’s first successful flying machine. As the Wrights labored to invent the airplane, Zeppelin fathered the remarkable airship, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two types of aircraft and their innovators that would last for decades, in the quest to control one of humanity’s most inspiring achievements. And it was the airship—not the airplane—that led the way.

In a rare blend of scientific insight and writing as elegant as the theories it explains, Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away the layers of mystery surrounding string theory to reveal a universe that consists of 11 dimensions where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter-from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas-is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy.

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God — where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.

Author of the New York Times best seller The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch, explores the four most fundamental strands of human knowledge: quantum physics, and the theories of knowledge, computation, and evolution - and their unexpected connections. Taken together, these four strands reveal a deeply integrated, rational, and optimistic worldview. It describes a unified fabric of reality that is objective and comprehensible, in which human action and thought are central.

Dragons don’t exist. Except on the Astral Plane where humans aren’t welcome. When humanity built spaceships and headed to the stars, they found the dragons waiting. Some places they’ll let humans go. Others they won’t. And sometimes humanity refuses to be denied. That’s where the Mystics come in. They commune with the Astral Plane. They deal with the dragons. They suffer the dragon’s fury. And sometimes they bend the dragons to their will. Very few have the gift of seeing the Astral Plane. Their innate talents are nurtured in the Mystic Academy while Earth Fleet has its own ...

For years, a monolithic Timberwolf-class starship has been hidden, but now it’s about to reappear. Together with his girlfriend Sam and the rest of the Striker Force Raptor team, Joel has been assigned to retrieve this ghost ship and return it to its rightful owners. But what seems like an exhilarating adventure takes a dangerous turn amid chance encounters with black holes and hidden planets. When the team find the crew of the ghost ship dead with no discernible cause, they must figure out what happened—and if they themselves are at risk. In this quest for answers, Joel is about to ...

The stars and constellations are among the few remaining objects that appear to us just as they appeared to our distant ancestors. From anywhere on Earth, a person may view the celestial panorama simply by stepping outside at night and gazing upward. This nonfiction narrative presents the tales of the 48 classical constellations, compiled from literature spanning a thousand years from Homer to Claudius Ptolemy. These age-old tales have captured the human imagination from ancient times to the present.