L'Astronautique

A panoramic survey of French astronautics on the eve of the space age, Alexandre Ananoff's L'Astronautique (1950) covers in eight parts and twenty-six chapters the physical foundations of interplanetary flight, propellant chemistry, a detailed technical analysis of the V-2, the problems of the spacecraft, trajectory calculations, astronaut physiology, and the history of the young discipline. Prefaced by Pierre Rousseau in Fayard's "Savoir" series, the volume is illustrated with 155 figures including 50 photographs, and rounded out by a substantial bibliographical supplement and more than four hundred notes.