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The Space Race: The journey to the Moon and beyond

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Blast off alongside space expert Sarah Cruddas on a journey through space exploration history, from the Apollo Moon landings to mind-boggling plans for living on Mars.

How did we land on the Moon? What will the space jobs of the future look like? And why did we send a car to space? The Space Race answers all of the big questions that kids have about space travel. Sarah Cruddas brings to life the hidden stories behind the most famous space missions, before taking the reader on a journey through our space future.

This children's book includes a foreword by NASA astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission. It also includes fascinating insights from Sarah's interviews with real-life astronauts including Apollo 17's Eugene Cernan and Virgin Galactic Test Pilot Kelly Latimer. Space-mad kids will delight in the detail, photographs and information on each page, and will love seeing intricate diagrams of iconic spaceships, Moon cars and space suits created by artist Mark Ruffle.

Propelled by recent scientific discoveries and printed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, The Space Race is an essential children's handbook to understanding every aspect of the history, and future, of human space travel.

192 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2019

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Sarah Cruddas

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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Profile Image for Matti Karjalainen.
3,256 reviews88 followers
June 27, 2019
Sarah Cruddasin "Kilpajuoksu avaruuteen: Matka kuuhun ja sen tuolle puolen" (Readme.fi, 2019) on erinomainen lasten tietokirja, jossa kerrotaan mukaansatempaavasti avaruustutkimuksen historiasta, nykypäivästä ja huimista tulevaisuudennäkymistä.

Kirjan alkupuoli keskittyy Yhdysvaltojen ja Neuvostoliiton väliseen avaruuskilpailuun. Werher von Braun, Sergei Koroljov, Sputnik, Laika, Ham-simpanssi, Valentina Tereskova ja Juri Gagarin tulevat kaikki tutuiksi. Neil Armstrongin, Buzz Aldrinin ja Michael Collinsin Apollo 11 -lento saa luonnollisesti runsaasti palstatilaa: historiallinen urakka ei ollut helppo, ja ilman erästä ihan tavallista ja arkipäiväistä kapistusta olisi lento saattanut jäädä kuun kamaralle (s. 76).

Teoksen tarjoamat tulevaisuudenvisiot ovat yhtä lailla kiehtovia. "Jonakin päivänä ihmiset asuvat ja työskentelevät Marsissa", kirja toteaa, mutta vaikka matka maan pinnalta avaruuteen ei ole kuin sata kilometriä, vaatii sinne matkustaminen ja siellä asuminen melkoisia ponnistuksia: muun muassa avaruussäteilyn ja pitkäkestoinen painottumuuden vaikutus ihmiskehoon ovat haasteita. Luultavasti ensimmäinen Marsin kannalle astuja on kuitenkin jo syntynyt ja käy parasta aikaa koulua! Lomamatkat avaruuteen ovat muuten jo nyt totta. Ensimmäinen avaruusturisti oli amerikkalainen Dennis Tito, joka maksoi kahdeksan päivän vierailusta ISS:lla 20 miljoonaa dollaria.

Avaruustutkimuksessa vaikuttaneiden naisten osuutta ei kirjassa ole unohdettu. "Yksikään nainen ei ole kävellyt Kuussa. Kyse ei ole naisten kyvykkyyden puutteesta, vaan siitä, että tuon aikakauden kulttuuri ei sallinut astronautin uraa naisille", toteaa astronautti Eileen Collins, ensimmäinen naispuolinen avaruussukkulan komentaja. kirjan esipuheessa. Lukijoita muistutetaan myös pitämään huolta "avaruusalus Maasta".

Lapsiyleisölle suunniteltu teksti tempaisee aikuisenkin mukaansa, ja kokonaisuutta täydentää runsas valokuvista ja piirroksista koostuva kuvitus. Vinkkaukseen, ehdottomasti!
Profile Image for Erin.
2,481 reviews41 followers
August 18, 2019
Wonderful illustrations and info graphs about the past, present, and future of space exploration.
Profile Image for Tim Roast.
790 reviews19 followers
March 28, 2019
My 8-year-old daughter has been fascinated by this book. Not only has it got a shiny, space-age cover to instantly attract her to it, the first image inside is the famous Earthrise photograph taken on the Apollo 8 mission. This photo has blown her mind away, that everything she knows and loves and which seems so big is so tiny. How do people not fall off the bottom of the Earth as well? That 50-year-old photo was a great intro to the book and has really piqued her interest in this book and the subject. It's lovely to see her sitting and reading this book by herself without prompting.

I have read this book too. It really brings the other-worldly nature of space exploration across. For example out there somewhere is a planet mostly made of diamond (name not given in book), a planet that may have red grass (Kepler-186f) and a planet with a blue sunset (Mars).

The book starts with that photo but also with a foreword by Eileen Collins, the first female Space Shuttle Commander who talks about her career path to becoming an astronaut. This is a good intro for those aspiring to do the same (although later in the book it mentions that future jobs in space may not just be for astronauts). Then it goes into the basics like the Solar System and galaxies before focusing on the space race and how it developed, through sending objects like Sputnik into space, then animals, then humans, and then humans walking on the moon. Reading it in order is quite exciting as each new bit of progress is made.

After that are chapters on "After Apollo 11" including "Houston we've had a problem", what the soviets did next, space stations, and speculation of the future where humans could live on the moon or Mars or elsewhere. It really is a great book which is further enhanced by all the photos (taken from a wide range of sources), the great diagrams and the art along the way, plus it also gives good coverage to women involved with space exploration too which is good for my daughter to see, and something that DK publishing have done well in other books too.

This book is aimed at children - the language is kept simple for children, the layout is good for children, the chunks of text are bitesize which is good for children. However this book is great for adults too. We've both had our minds blown.
Profile Image for Annette.
781 reviews23 followers
August 2, 2019
Review by James, age 10. 8/2/19

This book begins with the Space Race between Russia and the United States, trying to be the first to do things like the first satellite, the first man in space, the first space walk, and the first man on the moon. Russia got all but the first man on the moon. During the time, a lot of people were very concerned that the space race would become all-out war. However, plenty of people were excited as well. This book mostly skips everything but the first man on the moon, so we're just going to skip that as well.
NASA was getting desperate. Russia was beating them to everything. So they just decided to hurry plans to put the first man on the moon. They used the Saturn V rocket, a huge rocket. The problem with this is they couldn't just build the biggest rocket in the world, because they had to find the sweet spot between how much fuel and how heavy the rocket was. Because if they had too much fuel, it would make the rocket too heavy, but if they had too little they wouldn't be able to make it to space. Eventually NASA solved this by creating a 3-stage rocket, where after each stage burned its fuel, it detached and fell back. Most of it burned up in the atmosphere, but some survived. This reduced the weight for the other stages, allowing them to reach the moon. However, once they reached space they needed a lot less fuel to move it, because there was nothing pushing them down.

This book talks about a lot of things that have not happened yet, such as landing on Mars, future spaceship designs, future space suits, advanced robots, a Moon base, asteroid miners, and the like.

I really liked this book because I enjoy reading about what our future will be like.
Once I start seeing something like the Future Spaceship in this book, I might like to work in the space program.
1,861 reviews8 followers
February 28, 2021
Wow. This book has a lot of information in it but reads like little stories. It is a children's book but as an adult I loved it. It gave all the pertinent information you'd want to know without bogging you down with technical jargon like some space books. It explains our solar system as well as everything involved in going to space. From the people involved and what their jobs are to how the rockets are made and how they work this book is filled with everything you would want to know. NASA's space missions are covered as well as the space stations, satellites, asteroids and other things in space. I especially liked the mission control room diagram explaining each job and where the person sat in the room. Great pictures, some from actual missions add to the learning. The book is large with illustrations, color and excitement on every page. This really is a fun book to read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews

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