Spacecraft takes a long look at humankind's attempts and advances in leaving Earth through incredible illustrations and authoritatively written profiles on Sputnik, to the ISS, and beyond.

In 1957, the world looked on with both uncertainty and amazement as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first manmade orbiter. Sputnik 1 would spend three months circling Earth every 98 minutes and covering 71 million miles in the process. The world's space programs have gone far (literally and figuratively) since then, and the spacecraft they have developed and deployed represent almost unthinkable advances for such a relatively short period.

This ambitiously illustrated aerospace history profiles and depicts spacecraft fromSputnik 1, through the International Space Station, and everything in between, including concepts that have yet to actually venture outside the Earth's atmosphere. Illustrator and aerospace professional Giuseppe De Chiara teams up with aerospace historian Michael Gorn to present a huge, profusely illustrated, and authoritatively written collection of profiles depicting and describing the design, development, and deployment of these manned and unmanned spacecraft. Satellites, capsules, spaceplanes, rockets, and space stations are illustrated in multiple-view and sometimes cross-section, and in many cases shown in archival period photography to provide further historical context.

Dividing the book by era, De Chiara and Gorn feature spacecraft not only from the United States and Soviet Union/Russia, but also from the European Space Agency and China. Authoritatively written and profusely illustrated with more than 300 stunning artworks, Spacecraft: 100 Machines That Put Man in Space is sure to become a definitive guide to the history of manned space exploration.