Aeronautics and Space Flight

During the latter half of the 20th century, the science of aeronautics played an increasingly powerful role in culture, technology and military operations, influencing everything from Cold War politics to astrophysics to the communication industry. Aeronautics and Space Flight: Global Origins of Modern Aviation and Rocketry is a fully searchable digitized collection that chronicles the history of modern aviation as it unfolded, offering valuable insight for students and researchers in a variety of disciplines.

A comprehensive archive of media and research
Between 1957 and 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency collected media from around the world and translated it into English, including tens of thousands of journal articles, government publications, newspapers, magazines, and transcribed television and radio broadcasts. These primary source documents capture the spectacular pace of aeronautics during those years, and the excitement and fear it inspired. The development of B52 bombers, for example, helped safeguard the world from nuclear war, but also wrought devastation on the ground in Vietnam and other war-torn nations.

Applications across STEM and humanities disciplines
In addition to its military applications, the science of rocketry and aviation has transformed society—sparking public imagination with the Apollo 11 moon landing, facilitating global communication through satellite technology, and changing the way we travel by giving rise to the commercial airline industry. Aeronautics and Space Flight: Global Origins of Modern Aviation and Rocketry is the most comprehensive archive of primary source material related to aeronautics, offering English translations of academic articles, media reports and government analysis that are unavailable elsewhere. Students and researchers across a broad range of disciplines, including STEM and Humanities, will find myriad applications for this material. And Readex’s intuitive online interface enables researchers to easily browse the collections by a broad range of topics, each providing highly relevant results for users at all levels.

A Global Origins of Modern Science and Technology collection
In addition to Aeronautics and Space Flight: Global Origins of Modern Aviation and Rocketry, closely related collections also derived from the Archives of the Central Intelligence Agency include Morality and Science: Global Origins of Modern Bioethics; Computing and Artificial Intelligence: Global Origins of the Digital Age; Climate Science and Sustainability: Global Origins of Modern Environmentalism; and Nuclear Energy: Global Origins of Energy Resource Management in the Atomic Age.