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Books > Professional & Technical > Other technologies > Space science
In this fascinating foray into the millennia-long relationship between science and military power, "the world's best science communicator" (Times Literary Supplement), astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and it's a two- way street", say the authors, because the astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi- spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance. Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry and power that will introduce Tyson's millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and our world.
Space debris and asteroid impacts pose a very real, very near-term threat to Earth. In order to help study and mitigate these risks, the Stardust program was formed in 2013. This training and research network was devoted to developing and mastering techniques such as removal, deflection, exploitation, and tracking. This book is a collection of many of the topics addressed at the Final Stardust Conference, describing the latest in asteroid monitoring and how engineering efforts can help us reduce space debris. It is a selection of studies bringing together specialists from universities, research institutions, and industry, tasked with the mission of pushing the boundaries of space research with innovative ideas and visionary concepts. Topics covered by the Symposium: Orbital and Attitude Dynamics Modeling Long Term Orbit and Attitude Evolution Particle Cloud Modeling and Simulation Collision and Impact Modelling and Simulation, Re-entry Modeling and Simulation Asteroid Origins and Characterization Orbit and Attitude Determination Impact Prediction and Risk Analysis, Mission Analysis-Proximity Operations, Active Removal/Deflection Control Under Uncertainty, Active Removal/Deflection Technologies, and Asteroid Manipulation
In recent decades, great progress has been made in our understanding of zonal jets across many subjects - atmospheric science, oceanography, planetary science, geophysical fluid dynamics, plasma physics, magnetohydrodynamics, turbulence theory - but communication between researchers from different fields has been weak or non-existent. Even the terminology in different fields may be so disparate that researchers working on similar problems do not understand each other. This comprehensive, multidisciplinary volume will break cross-disciplinary barriers and aid the advancement of the subject. It presents a state-of-the-art summary of all relevant branches of the physics of zonal jets, from the leading experts. The phenomena and concepts are introduced at a level accessible to beginning graduate students and researchers from different fields. The book also includes a very extensive bibliography.
This monograph addresses the legal and policy issues relating to the commercial exploitation of natural resources in outer space. It begins by establishing the economic necessity and technical feasibility of space mining today, an estimate of the financial commitments required, followed by a risk analysis of a commercial mining venture in space, identifying the economic and legal risks. This leads to the recognition that the legal risks must be minimised to enable such projects to be financed. This is followed by a discussion of the principles of international space law, particularly dealing with state responsibility and international liability, as well as some of the issues arising from space mining activities. Much detail is devoted to the analysis of the content of the common heritage of mankind doctrine. The monograph then attempts to balance such interests in creating a legal and policy compromise to create a new regulatory regime.
In July 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins piloted the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the moon. Fifty years later, it is still one of the greatest achievements in human history. In this remarkable memoir, a defining classic, Michael Collins conveys, in a very personal way, the drama, beauty, and humour of that adventure. He also traces his development from his first flight experiences in the air force, through his days as a test pilot, to his involvement in Project Gemini and his first spaceflight on Gemini 10. He presents an evocative picture of the famous Apollo 11 spacewalk, detailing the joys of flight and a new perspective on time, light, and movement from someone who has seen the fragile Earth from the other side of the moon. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon-landing, Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins is the utterly absorbing and truly compelling classic account of what it was like to be a member of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
A lively and engaging exploration of orbital mechanics and its role
in aerospace design and development Inspired by its author's
internationally renowned short course by the same name, Orbital
Mechanics is a practical introduction to a field of study of
crucial importance to today's aerospace initiatives. Drawing upon
nearly four decades of experience as an aerospace engineer and
student of orbital mechanics, Tom Logsdon provides aerospace
professionals and students with many important and useful insights
into the ways in which orbiting bodies interact and the behavior of
satellites and rockets traveling through space. From the
investigations of Renaissance astronomers to contemporary
trajectory control systems, Logsdon covers all the bases,
including:
Meteorite tells the fascinating story of the stones from outer space scattered across our planet. From the impact that finished off the dinosaurs to the dagger made of extraterrestrial iron found in Tutankhamun's tomb, this book is packed full of surprising information, unlikely pioneers and eye-opening science. Dr Tim Gregory explains how these rocky fragments offer clues not just to the earliest origins of everything, but also to humanity's survival into the future. 'A passionate communicator, Tim Gregory conjures colourful environments and events far outside the human' NATURE 'Meticulous and eminently readable, served with clarity, erudition and humour' WALL STREET JOURNAL 'Tim Gregory gets it. He has an uncanny ability to swiftly understand, to clearly explain, and to be joyful' CHRIS HADFIELD
This book summarizes what is currently known about gravity sensing and response mechanisms in microorganisms, fungi, lower and higher plants; starting from the historical eye-opening experiments from the 19th century up to today's extremely rapid advancing cellular, molecular and biotechnological research. All forms of life are constantly exposed to gravity and it can be assumed that almost all organisms have developed sensors and respond in one way or the other to the unidirectional acceleration force,this books shows us some of these different ways. The book is written for plant biologists and microbiologists as well as scientists interested in space and gravitational biology.
How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive Beat America to the Moon. "Fascinating . . . packed with technical and historical detail for the space expert and enthusiast alike . . . Great stuff!"—New Scientist "In this exceptional book, James Harford pieces together a most compelling and well-written tale. . . . Must reading."—Space News. "Through masterful research and an engaging narrative style, James Harford gives the world its first in-depth look at the man who should rightly be called the father of the Soviet space program."—Norman R. Augustine, CEO, Lockheed Martin. "In Korolev, James Harford has written a masterly biography of this enigmatic 'Chief Designer' whose role the Soviets kept secret for fear that Western agents might 'get at' him."—Daily Telegraph. "Harford's fluency in Russian and his intimate knowledge of space technology give us insights that few, if any, Americans and Russians have had into this dark history of Soviet space."—Dr. Herbert Friedman, Chief Scientist, Hulburt Center for Space Research Naval Research Laboratory. "Reveals the complex, driven personality of a man who, despite unjust imprisonment in the Gulag, toiled tirelessly for the Soviet military industrial complex. . . . More than just a biography, this is also a history of the Soviet space program at the height of the Cold War. . . . Highly recommended."—Library Journal. "For decades the identity of the Russian Chief Designer who shocked the world with the launching of the first Sputnik was one of the Soviet Union's best-kept secrets. This book tells vividly the story of that man, Sergei Korolev, in remarkable detail, with many facts and anecdotes previously unavailable to the West."—Sergei Khrushchev, Visiting Senior Fellow, Center for Foreign Policy Development.
The book introduces readers to the concept of weightlessness and microgravity, and presents several examples of microgravity research in fluid physics, the material sciences and human physiology. Further, it explains a range of basic physical concepts (inertia, reference frames, mass and weight, accelerations, gravitation and weightiness, free fall, trajectories, and platforms for microgravity research) in simple terms. The last section addresses the physiological effects of weightlessness. The book's simple didactic approach makes it easy to read: equations are kept to a minimum, while examples and applications are presented in the appendices. Simple sketches and photos from actual space missions illustrate the main content. This book allows readers to understand the space environment that astronauts experience on board space stations, and to more closely follow on-going and future space missions in Earth orbit and to Mars.
Failure is always an option... For more than 50 years, NASA's Mission Control has been known for two things: perfect decision making in extreme situations and producing generations of steely-eyed missile men and women who continue that tradition. A key to that legacy of brilliant performance is a particular brand of leadership, especially at the working level in Mission Control. Take the ultimate insiders look at the leadership values and culture that created the best team on this planet. Paul Sean Hill was responsible for NASA's Mission Operations support for manned space flight from 2007-2011. In this candid book he shows that the secret to Mission Control's success has never been rocket science and that the real practice of perfect decision making can be applied to any organisation or team. By demonstrating how his Mission Control team nurtured a culture which has delivered impossible wins for decades, Hill provides a guide for all leaders to boost their company's performance at all levels. Whether failure means cost and schedule overruns, quality reduction, loss of market share, bankruptcy - or putting someone's life a risk, how we lead can determine whether even small mistakes are dealt with or are left to snowball out of control and destroy an enterprise. Discover how to take leadership from the Mission Control Room to your boardroom and beyond, and achieve this out-of-this-world leadership environment in your team.
This text focuses on conservation laws in magnetohydrodynamics, gasdynamics and hydrodynamics. A grasp of new conservation laws is essential in fusion and space plasmas, as well as in geophysical fluid dynamics; they can be used to test numerical codes, or to reveal new aspects of the underlying physics, e.g., by identifying the time history of the fluid elements as an important key to understanding fluid vorticity or in investigating the stability of steady flows. The ten Galilean Lie point symmetries of the fundamental action discussed in this book give rise to the conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum and center of mass conservation laws via Noether's first theorem. The advected invariants are related to fluid relabeling symmetries - so-called diffeomorphisms associated with the Lagrangian map - and are obtained by applying the Euler-Poincare approach to Noether's second theorem. The book discusses several variants of helicity including kinetic helicity, cross helicity, magnetic helicity, Ertels' theorem and potential vorticity, the Hollman invariant, and the Godbillon Vey invariant. The book develops the non-canonical Hamiltonian approach to MHD using the non-canonical Poisson bracket, while also refining the multisymplectic approach to ideal MHD and obtaining novel nonlocal conservation laws. It also briefly discusses Anco and Bluman's direct method for deriving conservation laws. A range of examples is used to illustrate topological invariants in MHD and fluid dynamics, including the Hopf invariant, the Calugareanu invariant, the Taylor magnetic helicity reconnection hypothesis for magnetic fields in highly conducting plasmas, and the magnetic helicity of Alfven simple waves, MHD topological solitons, and the Parker Archimedean spiral magnetic field. The Lagrangian map is used to obtain a class of solutions for incompressible MHD. The Aharonov-Bohm interpretation of magnetic helicity and cross helicity is discussed. In closing, examples of magnetosonic N-waves are used to illustrate the role of the wave number and group velocity concepts for MHD waves. This self-contained and pedagogical guide to the fundamentals will benefit postgraduate-level newcomers and seasoned researchers alike.
Why do nation states choose to develop national space programs? How can they justify national efforts to acquire capabilities by arguing for membership of the space club? This book provides a unique perspective of the past, current and future of space exploration and technological development in world politics. A country that sees itself as a power deserving of a seat at the table of world governance is expected to race for space. Based on a rich and detailed analysis of a range of space programs of states which are not usually at the focus of world politics and its research, the author shows that joining the space club is a legitimate and rational decision. The book provides a different way of looking at international relations, through a relatively under-studied area of policy - the space club.
Outstanding Academic Title, 1991, Choice Magazine Although building a space station has been an extraordinary challenge for America's scientists and engineers, the securing and sustaining of presidential approval, congressional support, and long-term funding for the project was an enormous task for bureaucrats. The Space Station Decision examines the history of this controversial initiative and illustrates how bureaucracy shapes public policy. Using primary documents and interviews, Howard E. McCurdy describes the events that led up to the 1984 decision to build a permanently occupied, international space station in low Earth orbit. As he follows the trail of the space station proposal through the labyrinth of White House policy review, McCurdy explains the evolution of the presidential budget review process, the breakup of the cabinet system, the proliferation of subcabinets and Executive Office interagency, the involvement of White House staff in framing issues for presidential review, and the role of bureaucracy in advancing administration legislation on Capitol Hill. Comparing the space station decision to earlier decisions to go to the moon and to build the space shuttle, McCurdy shows how public officials responsible for long-term science and technology policy maneuvered in a political system that demanded short-term flexibility.
Manned space programs attract the most media attention, and it is not hard to understand why: the danger, the heroism, the sheer adventure we as earthbound observers can imagine when humans are involved. But robotic missions deserve a respectful and detailed history and analysis of their own, and this book provides it. Instead of describing one specific spacecraft or mission, Michel van Pelt offers a "behind the scenes" look at the life of a space probe from its first conceptual design to the analysis of the scientific data returned by the spacecraft.
Afterword by Professor Stephen Hawking "Reads like a thriller - and reveals many secrets... one of the great entrepreneurial stories of our time" (Washington Post) From the age of eight, when he watched Apollo 11 land on the Moon, Peter Diamandis's singular goal was to get to space. When he realized NASA was winding down manned space flight, he set out on one of the great entrepreneurial adventure stories of our time. If the government wouldn't send him to space, he would create a private space flight industry himself. In the 1990s, this idea was the stuff of science fiction. Undaunted, Diamandis found inspiration in the golden age of aviation. He discovered that Charles Lindbergh made his transatlantic flight to win a $25,000 prize. The flight made Lindbergh the most famous man on earth and galvanized the airline industry. Why, Diamandis thought, couldn't the same be done for space flight? The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne, and the other teams in the hunt for a $10 million prize is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible. In the end, as Diamandis dreamed, the result wasn't just a victory for one team; it was the foundation for a new industry.
Given the near incomprehensible enormity of the universe, it appears almost inevitable that humankind will one day find a planet that appears to be much like the Earth. This discovery will no doubt reignite the lure of interplanetary travel. Will we be up to the task? And, given our limited resources, biological constraints, and the general hostility of space, what shape should we expect such expeditions to take? In "Robots in Space, " Roger Launius and Howard McCurdy tackle these seemingly fanciful questions with rigorous scholarship and disciplined imagination, jumping comfortably among the worlds of rocketry, engineering, public policy, and science fantasy to expound upon the possibilities and improbabilities involved in trekking across the Milky Way and beyond. They survey the literature--fictional as well as academic studies; outline the progress of space programs in the United States and other nations; and assess the current state of affairs to offer a conclusion startling only to those who haven't spent time with Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke: to traverse the cosmos, humans must embrace and entwine themselves with advanced robotic technologies. Their discussion is as entertaining as it is edifying and their assertions are as sound as they are fantastical. Rather than asking us to suspend disbelief, "Robots in Space" demands that we accept facts as they evolve.
Amazing 3-D images take readers inside the birth and death of stars.This visually amazing volume, with text and 3-D images, takes readers inside the birthplace of stars--the cosmic clouds called nebulae. Nebulae (from the Latin for "cloud" or "fog") are stellar nurseries, frequently intermingled with clusters of young stars. Seen in the night sky, they glow, energized by the new stars within and around them. Cosmic Clouds 3-D offers hundreds of magnificent images of nebulae captured by ground-based and space telescopes. Along with the high-resolution views of nebulae are unique stereo views that show the nebulae in three dimensions. As we observe the birth of stars in these great clouds of gas, we are peering into the world of infant suns, seeing a process that for our own Sun took place some 4.6 billion years ago. The story of elements in nature, of why we are here, of our cosmic roots, is strongly tied to the story of stars in our galaxy and universe. And that means exploring the lives of stars, how stars come to be, what happens during their lifetimes, and how they, too--like humans--eventually die. We may not all know it, but we are part of the biggest recycling program that exists--the birth, life, and death of stars. A 3-D viewer, designed by astrophysicist (and lead guitarist with the rock group Queen) Brian May, is included with the book.
The Production and consumption of alcohol has played a significant role in human society since the dawn of civilization. Will this still hold true when humanity is exploring and Settling the outer reaches of space? This first book on the topic examines the history of alcohol in space, as well as dozens of companies and projects that are exploring the possibilities of interstellar alcohol Production. Covering the long history of alcohol in human society, how alcohol has been addressed in science fiction, and space agriculture technologies, this book investigates a broad sweep of questions that bear on the manufacture of alcohol in space, as well as human space Settlement in general.
This famous and practical handbook for Space Mission Engineering draws on leading aerospace experts to carry readers through mission design, from orbit selection to ground ops. SMAD III updates the technology, provides greater emphasis on small spacecraft design and the cost-reduction process, and includes more detail on multi-satellite manufacturing, space computers, payload design and autonomous systems.
This short book grapples with two vast questions: the nature of our minds, and our place in the wider universe. It considers how one mutually influences the development of the other. The changes and challenges that will accompany the first humans to leave Earth and travel to another planet, or even further, will not only impact our technical capabilities, but will also represent a watershed moment within our individual and collective human psychology. Many of the problems of resource use, environmental degradation, and waste or destructive processes are contained in the larger process of exploring another environment and planet. But This book also offers a shift in perspective that allows us to consider humanity from an alternative, more holistic perspective, reappraising our own minds both individually and within dynamic social processes. The Psychology of Space Exploration considers our place and purpose in the widest possible perspective, that of space exploration and the natural universe. It doesn't seek to answer these questions, but provides a perspective to explore even further. |
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