Rockets, missiles, and men in space

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1. PaulHouleApr 2025
   Loved his book "Rockets, Missiles and Men in Space"

   https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.161.3844.874

   which had a great description of the activities of his rocket club while the Nazis were closing in. At some point the police shut them down because "somebody might get hurt" but somebody from the rocket club convinced the authorities that this was a feature and not a bug and pretty soon they were spirited away to

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usedom

   and the rest was history. Increasingly though my favorite prophet of the space age is

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky

   because he figured out pretty much everything about space travel based on the kinetic theory of gases and the conservation of momentum and energy without building a single piece of hardware.

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2. arjnSep 2013
   1) Rockets, Missiles and Men in Space - Willy Ley ( side note: I rescued this book from a friend who was using it for target practice with an airgun!)

   2) Chaos - James Gleick

   (I have to mention this one too) The Armchair Universe : An exploration of Computer Worlds - A. K. Dewdney

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