Since Amazon hasn't posted an editorial review, here's the description from the flyleaf to help you decide if this book is for you: "Atlantis, a new look at a lost continent ... the building of the Great Pyramid ... the dodos, the moas and the pangolins ... the sound of meteors ... the legal question of who will own the planets ... these are just a few of the subjects discussed in this new collection of sixteen science and natural history essays by Willy Ley."

A refreshing relief from the "true psychic experiences" pulp. Scholarly discussion of many scientific phenomena.

This book had me glued to it from start to finish. It covers everything from the Chaldean's clay tablets up to the work of Carl Sagan. Since it was published in 1963 and 1966, there are a few passages that reflect on the expectations of the NASA missions of the then near future--especially unmanned probes to the planets and the upcoming Moon landing--but everything before is covered in thorough but easily understood detail, save a few footnotes in Latin, French, German, etc. Ley breaks up the history into segments turning on the most important discoveries made by scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. The book continues on with a description of all the then known Solar System components. He then finishes with a section about Deep Space. All the while he describes who these scientists were and why they were involved in astronomy, and also the hundreds of associated scientists (and others) who supported, revised, or dismissed their discoveries. Throughout his narrative, he never loses the connection from one astronomer to the other, and the history has a connected feel passing from step to step. Some parts of the book remind me of the contemporary works of James Burke of Connections fame because of the overlapping time or concepts and the inclusion of other scientists, politicians, lay persons, or religious figures who had relevant input on a particular discovery, good or bad. It was also fascinating to read about how an astronomer could be so brilliant with one discovery, and absolutely intellectually blind with another due to various reasons.

The only dawback in this work is that there are a few minor mistakes concerning dates--but they are easliy overcome by paying attention to the story.

The 50's - it's a Willy Ley era, German engineer and popularizer of space exploration whose impact was almost on the level of Alan Watts' Zen. His reign was roughly that entire decade - before he fell out-of-date. But the rocket designs that illustrated his books had a far-reaching impact on everything from sci fi pulps to POPULAR MECHANICS spin-offs. Their look still has an elegance that will certainly be a source of nostalgic rediscovery in the decades to come. A book of Ley's became the George Pal-produced CONQUEST OF SPACE (1955).

In ROCEKTS, MISSLES & SPACE TRAVEL, we don't have the fanciful color illustrations that enlivened some of his work, but it's surprising what a rock-solid history of rocketry this book still remains.

i read a 1968 version of this book and loved it, i highly reccomend this book to those who are new to rocketry. it is an example of how to take a semi complex subject and teach it without oversimplifying or getting out of reach of the reader. i was engrossed until i finished the book.

I consider myself very fortunate to have found a 1953 edition of this book. As a person with a background in physics and astronomy and a little collection of 50s and 60s books on space travel, I read it with delight. Written in plain English by one of the German rocket pioneers, it contains everything you need to understand the fundamentals (and a lot of the details) of rocketry.
There is a comprehensive history of rocketry from its earliest beginnings to the tests of modified German and new American rockets in White Sands and elsewhere. There is the author's fascinating personal account of events and people involved in rocket development, experiments and politics. There are lots of drawings, diagrams and tables, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand them.
You learn about the accidents, why they happened and what was done to prevent them. You learn about the principles of space travel: How can you reach the Moon and the planets, and how can you return safely? You learn how the early rockets were controlled and monitored. You learn not only about the A-series including the A-4, a.k.a. V-2, but also something about little known German WW II designs: Rheinbote, Taifun, Schmetterling, Wasserfall, Enzian, Rheintochter, X-4 and Hs-293.
Rocket-propelled airplanes and spaceplanes (for example Eugen Sänger's antipodal bomber design) and their flight characteristics are discussed at length in an appendix. Appendix 2 contains numbers and specifications, while appendix 3 is a collection of remarks by Dr. Wernher v. Braun.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Now please take the following as entertainment ONLY. The information in this book even prompted me to develop my own pet theory about the "Roswell incident", based on the following facts: Dozens of German V-2 rockets were transported to the U.S. and test fired, mostly from White Sands, NM, which places Roswell well within range. Several of these V-2 rockets developed problems during the test - one actually flew into Mexico, where it crashed without doing any damage. The test rockets' heads were routinely separated from their bodies by explosives before reentering the denser parts of the atmosphere, so that air resistance could slow down the parts, producing an easily recoverable field of debris instead of one mangled rocket 20 feet deep in the ground (some of the early, unexploded test rockets were never recovered). The White Sands V-2 test program officially ended about six weeks before the debris near Roswell was discovered (why?), but newer rocket designs were still tested at White Sands for the following years.

Willy Ley is best known for his writings on rockets and space, but he had an interest in a wide variety of things. In this volume, he writes entertainingly on such diverse items as unicorns, pterodactyls, sea serpents, and even carniverous trees, all fron a popular-scientific perspective. Someone wanting information about clues to the possible existence of dinosaurs in a Babylonian wall pictorial, or apparent human handprints in sandstone around the time of the dinosaurs, will find all that and more in this book,

It was published in 1959, and a little of the information is dated. But not much.