SPESIF Banquet Speaker

Unknown Stories from Space

In the last fifty years the human race has begun the exploration of the cosmos. Sometimes, the events have been newsworthy and famous, such as Yuri Gagarin's first flight and the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Other times, the adventures of men and women in space have been been ignored, hidden, or just plain forgotten. Did you know, for example, that a Russian cosmonaut once did a three hour spacewalk with a spacesuit held together by a home made repair kit? Or that the first female tourist in space actually flew more than eighteen years ago? Colonizing the planets shall be the most challenging task the human race will ever undertake. In telling some of these obscure space tales, Mr. Zimmerman will explain why these tales are important for future space explorers, and how they illustrate the best in human nature.

Biography

Robert Zimmerman is an award-winning science journalist and historian who has written four books and more than a hundred articles on science, engineering, and the history of space exploration and technology. His newest book, The Universe In A Mirror: The Saga Of The Hubble Space Telescope And The Visionaries Who Built It (Princeton University Press), tells the story of the people who conceived, built, and saved the Hubble Space Telescope. His previous book, Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, And The Quest For Interplanetary Travel (Joseph Henry Press), was awarded the American Astronautical Society's Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award in 2003 as the best space history for the general public. His other books include Genesis, The Story Of Apollo 8 (Four Walls Eight Windows), which describes the family and political tale behind the first manned mission to another world, and The Chronological Encyclopedia Of Discoveries In Space (Oryx Press), a detailed reference book describing what was accomplished on every single space mission, from October 1957 with Sputnik through December 1999.

His magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Air & Space, Natural History, The Wall Street Journal, Usa Today, Wired, Invention & Technology and a host of other publications. In 2000 he was co-winner of the David N. Schramm Award, given by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for Science Journalism, for his essay in The Sciences, "There She Blows," on the 35-year-old astronomical mystery of gamma ray bursts.

In addition to his writing, Mr. Zimmerman is also a cave explorer and cartographer, and has participated in numerous projects exploring and mapping previously unknown caves across the eastern United States. It is this activity that has allowed him to actually "go where no one has gone before," thus providing him a better understanding of the perspective of engineers and scientists as they struggle to push the limits of human knowledge.

See his books and essays at: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3cxxp/zimbib.htm