James R. Hansen

James R. Hansen (born 1952) is Professor Emeritus of history at Auburn University in Alabama. His book From the Ground Up won the History Book Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1988. For his work, The Wind and Beyond (NASA) - (six-volume series), he was awarded the Eugene Ferguson Prize for Outstanding Reference Work by the Society for the History of Technology in 2005.

Biography Hansen is from Fort Wayne, Indiana. received the American Astronautical Society's Prize for Astronautical Literature. Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space (2012), with John W. Young A Difficult Par: Robert Trent Jones Sr. and the Making of Modern Golf (Gotham Penguin, 2014). The book was awarded the Herbert Warren Wind Award by the United States Golf Association as the best golf book of the year. Completely Mad: Tom McClean, John Fairfax, and the Epic Race to Row Solo Across the Atlantic (2023)

Science The Bird Is on the Wing: Aerodynamics and the Progress of the American Airplane (Texas A&M University Press, 2003)

History Engineer In Charge: A History Of The Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1917 1958 (1987) Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (University Press of Florida, 2009), with Allan J. McDonald Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept (1995), with National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Monograph in Aerospace History series #4 Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo (2013)

Adaptations

First Man (2018), film directed by Damien Chazelle, based on book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong