Space Age Adventures

Over 100 Terrestrial Sites and Out of This World Stories

Mike Bezemek

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781496236524
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

When people think about space travel, they usually look skyward. But much of spaceflight history happened down here on Earth. Space Age Adventures presents more than one hundred terrestrial sites across the United States related to space exploration, where enthusiasts can have their own space age adventures. Before astronauts walked on the Moon, they trained at locations you can visit today—from NASA space centers and telescope observatories to impact craters and atomic testing grounds. Inside vast museum hangars, a visitor can walk beneath towering Saturn V rockets left over from the Apollo program or peer inside American and Soviet capsules. Elsewhere visitors can visit historic rocket pads, retired space shuttles, landed SpaceX boosters, and even watch scheduled launches. Mike Bezemek brings the artifacts and spacecraft to life with interwoven true stories that collectively span the entire Space Age. These stories offer a deeper understanding of the adventures behind the famous images. The combination of terrestrial sites and true stories makes this book the perfect guide for having unique adventures and discovering one of the most dramatic eras in human exploration.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface: Spaces Sites and Stories
• Acknowledgments
• Becoming a Space Age Adventurer
• Using This Book and Must-See Sites
• 1. The First Rockets
• 2. Birth of the Space Rocket
• 3. The V-2
• Sites in Washington dc and Virginia
• 4. The Cold War
• 5. Conquering Space
• 6. The Satellites
• Sites in New York City and the Northeast
• 7. The Space Race
• 8. Mercury vs. Vostok
• 9. In the Thick of It
• Sites Near Cape Canaveral, Florida
• 10. The Rise of Apollo
• 11. Adventures and Lessons
• 12. A Focus on the Moon
• Sites in the South and on the Gulf Coast
• 13. Bold Steps and Tragic Setbacks
• 14. Closing In
• 15. Around the Moon
• Sites in the Midwest
• 16. 1969
• 17. They Came from Outer Space
• 18. The Landings Continue
• Sites in the Great Plains
• 19. The End of the Space Race
• 20. Aiming for the Stars
• 21. The Soviets Regroup
• Sites in the Southwest
• 22. Adventures in Orbit
• 23. Destination Deep Space
• 24. The Billionaires’ Space Race
• Sites on the West Coast
• Appendix of Resources
• Bibliography
• About Mike Bezemek