Reddit reviews The Right Stuff
We found 8 Reddit comments about The Right Stuff. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Reddit reviews The Right StuffWe found 8 Reddit comments about The Right Stuff. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
They had The Right Stuff. (Read it, it's fantastic.)
This question gets asked all the time on this sub. I did a search for the term books and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:
How to Read the Solar System: A Guide to the Stars and Planets by Christ North and Paul Abel.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.
Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.
Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield.
You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station by Chris Hadfield.
Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.
Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.
No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.
Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.
Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.
Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.
The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.
Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.
An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.
Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.
Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.
Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.
Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.
Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.
Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.
The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.
Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.
The Martian by Andy Weir.
Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.
The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.
Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.
The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.
Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.
International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.
How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.
This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.
The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.
Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Eugene Cernan.
Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
The end
If you read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe you'll really learn and appreciate how goddamn cool this guy is
Read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. It's a really fascinating read about the mentality of the guys who competed to be the Mercury astronauts.
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. Recounts the journey of the Mercury astronauts among other aerospace research in the early days of high speed jets.
What country are you in? I ask because The Right Stuff is on Kindle and in paperback on Amazon. And it is a phenomenal book.
I've found quite a few interesting references in these comments. Here they are all in one place for you:
Books
Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys. Michael Collins' autobiography. (from this comment)
Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story. Children's version of his autobiography, apparently very inspirational. (from this comment)
Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon. About the Apollo 11 mission. Great mix of information and anecdote.
The Right Stuff. The classic book, not the movie. About the test pilots who broke the sound barrier and went on into space. (from this comment)
Documentaries
In the Shadow of the Moon. (that's a link to the comment, which I think is an interesting review. Here's a link to the documentary in IMDB, in case the comment ever gets deleted). (from this comment)
Music
Jethro Tull: For Michael Collins, Jeffrey And Me. And here are the lyrics, many of which I missed when listening to the song. (from this comment)
Miscellaneous
Question and answer session with Michael Collins, about Apollo 11 (from this comment)
Official NASA photo of the crew of Apollo 11 (from this comment)
"Mike Collins", usage as a verb (from this comment)
Poetry - The Ride Not Taken. With apologies to Robert Frost. (from this comment)
Brasseye - Apollo, The Truth!, for those who can't take these things too seriously (don't watch if you have a serious man crush on either Collins or Aldrin). (from this comment)
EDIT: Added links to the comments where I found these references.
I assume you mean just learning about rockets, not literally building your own. Building your own is a hundreds of thousands of dollars endeavor (at the cheapest) and requires regulatory approval from your nation's government - it's no easy task.
I've found that /r/SpaceX is a good place to learn the ins and outs of orbital rockets, though as you might expect it's pretty heavily SpaceX focused, so you'll learn a lot more about Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy than other launch vehicles. The sub's wiki and FAQ sections give a very good overview of SpaceX and rocketry in general, and you should consider giving those a read.
Beyond that, the best thing you can do is seek out opportunities to learn. Do you have a favorite science, engineering, or mathematics professor at school? Talk to them about your interest in spaceflight and what opportunities there are to learn more. There are some great books out there about spaceflight as well, from historical narratives like "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe, which talks about the history of spaceflight. John Anderson's Introduction to Flight was a textbook I used in one of my introductory aerospace classes, it's a bit pricey (though you can save money on an old edition) and obviously reads like a textbook, but give a good technical overview on both air and space systems.
After you've done all that, if you really want to get into the details of orbital mechanics and spacecraft design, you're going to need a college education. Are you in the United States or interested in studying here? I'd be happy to recommend some schools to keep an eye on if you're considering making a career out of this.
Edit: formatting