NASA's free history e-book collection | Hacker News Reader

NASA's free history e-book collection

history.nasa.gov

165 points_Microft24 comments

While you're at it, the Dept of Energy has some amazing in-depth history e-books covering nuclear technology from weapons to submarines to space reactors to power reactors.

https://www.energy.gov/management/office-management/operatio...

I've been reading "Rockets and People" by Boris Chertok from this collection, and would recommend it. Chertok was a high-level engineer in the Russian Space industry, and its a much different story than the American side of things, with engineers having to work through a constant churn in the leadership caused by the purges, and than having their factories literally packed up and moved to avoid the German invasion, and than the scarcity of the post-WWII years.

(on the downside, Chertok really likes pausing the narrative to map out the exact bureaucratic flow-chart of the different agencies and departments involved in rocket development, which is pretty tedious, but I've found I can just skim those sections without losing the ability to understand the rest of the story.)

It's not on the NASA site but the book is also readily available online in the original Russian, for those who are into that sort of thing.

Same here -- it's absolutely fascinating to see the space race from the other side, as well as seeing Soviet impressions of the Apollo program and the Cold War. Highly recommended.

This sounds like interesting reading; I've read Challenges to Apollo, which mostly covers post-WW2 Russian/Soviet history; I'm not as familiar with the earlier events.

Why is pdf the default/de facto single-file publication format, even in public domain or copyleft works?

It has so many drawbacks: it's usually unparseable; it's usually unsearchable; incompatible with all sorts of format conversions; its rigid pagination makes it cumbersome to read when not in zoomed-in, especially on mobile; its best features require proprietary software when authoring them, yet most people seem to use generic pdf file export; it's been subject to exploits... and the list goes on.

Because these PDFs are publicly/freely available, it could be undertaken to convert them to mobi and ePub formats (if one were so inclined). Maybe see if existing free ebook processors [1] [2] would accept these into their pipelines?

Heck, the US gov even has a service to do this for departments who pay for it [3].

[1] https://www.pgdp.net/

[2] https://www.gitenberg.org/updates

[3] https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/services-for-...

I clicked on a book at random, and it had ePub and Mobi formats available for download.

I guess it's just down to whatever format the book is in within their archives.

Some of them, like "Flights of Discovery", are clearly scanned book copies. It takes a lot of manual work to convert a scanned book into an ebook format.

My guess is that opening particular file formats is a much more common problem and PDFs just shine there.

Totally agree. Mobi or ePub would be much better for most purposes.

Highly recommend "Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience" by James E. Tomayko

Had a newer version at my local library and got me interested in computer hardware in Middle School years.

Oh Lordy! So many books, so little time.

For those who enjoy any one of these title, please post your thoughts and experience.

I just commented on another HN post, "Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?" [1], with a recommended fiction book (series) that was even more enjoyable because of the three non-fiction books I was reading at the same time [2].

Right now I'm reading The Expanse series by (pen name) James S. A. Corey and watching the Picard series (streaming free on CBS right now). Any books from the NASA collection which crossed over themes from this fiction series would be AMAZING!

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22718592

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22719983

I like "Stages to Saturn" (which I already owned). It has good information on the engineering details which I like (cuz I'm an engineer), but has too much on organization and administration which doesn't interest me.

> the Picard series (streaming free on CBS right now)

I went to look at this, and it appears to be part of a $10 / month subscription, not free. Is there a giveaway somewhere?

Using promo code GIFT gets you 1 month free but you have to sign up for CBS all access to get it. Best before 4/23 is what I think the ad said.

This is what I did (though I haven't checked my CC history yet :P)

The ad I saw was for a one month free trial. Maybe that's the source of confusion.

And if you're looking for Apollo-era photos, they have a gallery organized by mission:

https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/index.htm...

This page is a subset of NASA's broader ebooks collection: https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/index.html

I seriously recommend A Challenge to Apollo.

An in-depth look at the soviet space program. Its very gritty stuff and a story rarely told.

Just made the lockdowns and quarantines super interesting! Thank you @_Microft and NASA!

You are welcome but better thank Buzz Aldrin, he posted this on Twitter and I thought some people here might like it.

https://twitter.com/TheRealBuzz/status/1243958872131481601

Priceless.

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