num_pages: 496
description: What we know today about the Moon, Mars, and Venus has been erected on a colorful foundation of human experience reaching back to the 1960s. Where to begin?-	A flawless machine telling us that Mars had life was conjured-up by a guy who’d only been trying to provide clean water.-	Soviet moon rovers were puppeteered by hush-hush five-man teams working behind three layers of guarded gates inside a top-secret, off-the-map town without even a name.-	The dreamers responsible for landing on Venus realized that dropping down through heavy clouds of sulfuric acid and 900-degree heat was best accomplished by surfing. -	Soviet Russia’s director of planetary missions absolutely hated the job. But he spent fifteen years there anyway, enduring a paranoid bureaucracy where even the copy machines were strictly regulated.Why did these people do it? Drawn to the unknown – to the majestic mystery of just what lay out there in the great beyond – they submitted to curiosity and wonder. In sum, Infinity Beckoned.This new work by Jay Gallentine delivers a rich complement of never-before-heard stories from first-person perspectives. Built upon a slew of brand-new interviews, Infinity Beckoned provides an immediate human context. It’s not even about space so much as it is about driven people engaged in brand-new undertakings. Learn how the clean-water machine got to Mars. How the top-secret town came to be. Learn much more: all from the point of view of those who actually lived it, and whose tireless efforts have expanded our knowledge of the inner solar system.
language: English
title: Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969–1989
publisher: University of Nebraska Press