A mission to send humans to explore the surface of Mars has been the ultimate goal of planetary exploration since the 1950s, when von Braun conjectured a flotilla of 10 interplanetary vessels carrying a crew of at least 70 humans. Since then, more than 1,000 studies were carried out on human missions to Mars, but after 60 years of study, we remain in the early planning stages. The second edition of this book now includes an annotated history of Mars mission studies, with quantitative data wherever possible. Retained from the first edition, Donald Rapp looks at human missions to Mars from an engineering perspective. He divides the mission into a number of stages: Earth's surface to low-Earth orbit (LEO); departing from LEO toward Mars; Mars orbit insertion and entry, descent and landing; ascent from Mars; trans-Earth injection from Mars orbit and Earth return. For each segment, he analyzes requirements for candidate technologies. In this connection, he discusses the status and potential of a wide range of elements critical to a human Mars mission, including life support consumables, radiation effects and shielding, microgravity effects, abort options and mission safety, possible habitats on the Martian surface and aero-assisted orbit entry decent and landing. For any human mission to the Red Planet the possible utilization of any resources indigenous to Mars would be of great value and such possibilities, the use of indigenous resources is discussed at length. He also discusses the relationship of lunar exploratio n to Mars exploration. Detailed appendices describe the availability of solar energy on the Moon and Mars, and the potential for utilizing indigenous water on Mars. The second edition provides extensive updating and additions to the first edition, including many new figures and tables, and more than 70 new references, as of 2015.

This book carries out approximate estimates of the costs of implementing ISRU on the Moon and Mars. It is found that no ISRU process on the Moon has much merit. ISRU on Mars can save a great deal of mass, but there is a significant cost in prospecting for resources and validating ISRU concepts. Mars ISRU might have merit, but not enough data are available to be certain. In addition, this book provides a detailed review of various ISRU technologies. This includes three approaches for Mars ISRU based on processing only the atmosphere: solid oxide electrolysis, reverse water gas shift reaction (RWGS), and absorbing water vapor directly from the atmosphere. It is not clear that any of these technologies are viable although the RWGS seems to have the best chance. An approach for combining hydrogen with the atmospheric resource is chemically very viable, but hydrogen is needed on Mars. This can be approached by bringing hydrogen from Earth or obtaining water from near-surface water deposits in the soil. Bringing hydrogen from Earth is problematic, so mining the regolith to obtain water seems to be the only way to go. This will require a sizable campaign to locate and validate useable water resources. Technologies for lunar ISRU are also reviewed, even though none of them provide significant benefits to near-term lunar missions. These include oxygen from lunar regolith, solar wind volatiles from regolith, and extraction of polar ice from permanently shaded craters.

This book deals at some length with the question: Since there are many more poor than rich, why don't the poor just tax the rich heavily and reduce the inequality? In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the topic of inequality was discussed widely. Ending or reducing inequality was a prime motivating factor in the emergence of communism and socialism. The book discusses why later in the 20th century, inequality has faded out as an issue. Extensive tables and graphs of data are presented showing the extent of inequality in America, as well as globally. It is shown that a combination of low taxes on capital gains contributed to a series of real estate and stock bubbles that provided great wealth to the top tiers, while real income for average workers stagnated. Improved commercial efficiency due to computers, electronics, the Internet and fast transport allowed production and distribution with fewer workers, just as the advent of electrification, mechanization, production lines, vehicles and trains in the 1920s and 1930s produced the same stagnating effect.

This updated and revised new edition of Assessing Climate Change deals with the full gamut of essential questions in relation to global warming and climate change, uniquely providing a balanced and impartial discussion of this controversial subject. It shows that most of what is "known"about the Sun, historical climates and projections for the future lacks foundation and leaves great room for doubt. Assessing Climate Change (3rd Edition) examines the credibility of the global climate models which accuse greenhouse gases of causing the temperature rise of the 20th century, and provides a better understanding of the uncertainties regarding what might lie ahead in the future. Carefully considering the "evidence" brought forward by both alarmists and skeptics, this book: * has been brought completely up to date to end 2013; * examines the measurements of near surface temperatures on Earth and how much we can rely on them; * includes hundreds of graphs showing the data; * compares the current global warming trend with past climate fluctuations; * provides a systematic review of climate change in nearly all of its aspects; * expands the discussion of potential impacts of global warming (from whatever cause); * includes nearly 1000 references specific to the climate literature.

The second edition of this book has been completely updated. It studies the history and gives an analysis of extreme climate change on Earth. In order to provide a long-term perspective, the first chapter briefly reviews some of the wild gyrations that occurred in the Earth's climate hundreds of millions of years ago: snowball Earth and hothouse Earth. Coming closer to modern times, the effects of continental drift, particularly the closing of the Isthmus of Panama are believed to have contributed to the advent of ice ages in the past three million years. This first chapter sets the stage for a discussion of ices ages in the geological recent past (i.e. within the last three million years, with an emphasis on the last few hundred thousand years).

This book studies the history and gives an analysis of extreme climate change on Earth. In order to provide a long-term perspective, the first chapter briefly reviews some of the wild gyrations that occurred in the Earth s climate hundreds of millions of years ago: snowball Earth and hothouse Earth. Coming closer to modern times, the effects of continental drift, particularly the closing of the Isthmus of Panama are believed to have contributed to the advent of ice ages in the past three million years. This first chapter sets the stage for a discussion of ice ages in the geological recent past (i.e. within the last three million years, with an emphasis on the last few hundred thousand years).

The second chapter discusses geological evidence for ice ages how geologists surmised their existence prior to actual subsurface data that proved the theory. The following two chapters look at ice cores (primarily from Greenland and Antarctica). Chapter 3 discusses how ice core data is processed and Chapter 4 summarizes data obtained from ice cores. Chapter 5 discusses the processing of data obtained from ocean sediments, and summarizes the results, while the following chapter discusses data from other sources, such as "Devil s Cave."

Chapter 7 summarizes the experimental results from Chapters 4, 5, and 6. It provides the foundation for comparison with theories in later chapters. In a perfect world, this data would be totally separate and disconnected from theory. Unfortunately, as the author shows, dating of much of the data was accomplished by "tuning" to the astronomical theory, which introduces circular reasoning.

Chapter 8 provides a brief overview of the various theories that have been devised to "explain" the patterns of alternating ice ages and interglacials that have occurred over the past three million years. This serves as an introduction to the following three chapters which presents the astronomical theory in its various manifestations,

compare the astronomical theory with data, and then compare other theories with data. Finally, Chapter 12 summarizes what we think we know about ice ages and, more importantly, what we don t know. "

In Human Missions to Mars Donald Rapp looks at human missions to Mars from an engineering perspective. He begins by describing the pros and cons of robotic exploration versus human exploration and then examines the ideas for sending humans to Mars from the point of view of both the enthusiast and the skeptic. Chapter 2 describes how space missions are planned and how they may be achieved as a sequence of separate steps. Chapter 3 deals with the complex issues relating to the outward journey to Mars and the return leg. The author deals with propulsion systems and with the analysis of the various trajectories which may be utilized for such a mission. He divides mission into a number of stages: Earth s surface to low-Earth orbit (LEO); departing from LEO; Mars orbit insertion and landing; ascent from Mars; trans-Earth injection from Mars orbit and Earth orbit insertion and landing. Chapter 4 discusses a wide range of elements critical to a human Mars mission, including life support consumables, radiation effects and shielding, microgravity effects, abort options and mission safety, possible habitats on the Martian surface and aero assisted orbit insertion and entry decent and landing.

For any human mission to the Red Planet the possible utilization of any resources indigenous to Mars would be of great value and such possibilities are discussed in Chapter 5. The use of indigenous resources on the Moon is described as a precursor to the availability of similar resources on Mars and issues such as fuelling Mars-bound craft from lunar resources, the use of lunar ferries, staging, assembly and refueling in near-Earth space are all discussed. The important applications arising from the transportation of hydrogen to Mars are also described. Chapter 6 deals with a range of previous Mars mission studies and the technologies they employed. Chapter 7 looks as how NASA is planning for its return to the Moon, and the use of the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars. Chapter 8 presents the author s detailed analysis of why, in his opinion, the current NASA approach will fail to send humans to Mars before 2080. The book concludes with three appendices describing the use of solar energy on the Moon and on Mars and the value of indigenous water on Mars."

This book presents a detailed, independent review of essentially all the technical aspects of "in situ resource utilization" (ISRU), offering the first in-depth discussion of the issues of crew size, ascent from Mars, and ISRU processes. It also provides data on lunar ISRU not previously available to the public. This new edition provides a short synopsis of the Mars mission, and discusses various topics, including solid oxide electrolysis, which promises to be an important part of the ISRU picture. In addition, it explores ancillary needs for Mars ISRU and how to obtain water on Mars. It is the go-to resource for professionals involved in planning space missions or working on ISRU processes, as well as students planning careers in space technology.

This updated and revised new edition of Assessing Climate Change deals with the full gamut of essential questions in relation to global warming and climate change, uniquely providing a balanced and impartial discussion of this controversial subject. It shows that most of what is "known"about the Sun, historical climates and projections for the future lacks foundation and leaves great room for doubt. Assessing Climate Change (3rd Edition) examines the credibility of the global climate models which accuse greenhouse gases of causing the temperature rise of the 20th century, and provides a better understanding of the uncertainties regarding what might lie ahead in the future. Carefully considering the "evidence" brought forward by both alarmists and skeptics, this book: * has been brought completely up to date to end 2013; * examines the measurements of near surface temperatures on Earth and how much we can rely on them; * includes hundreds of graphs showing the data; * compares the current global warming trend with past climate fluctuations; * provides a systematic review of climate change in nearly all of its aspects; * expands the discussion of potential impacts of global warming (from whatever cause); * includes nearly 1000 references specific to the climate literature.

. This text begins with a consideration of simple Boltzmann statistics, with particular application to the model of systems with two quantum states, and the Einstein and Debye treatments of the specific heats of a metal. After discussion of the Darwin-Fowler calculation of average distributions, the discussion moves on to the Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics of non-localized particles, and then to the classical limit approached by quantized systems in situations such as gas behavior and distributions of electric dipoles. This initial development occupies about the first third of the book. The text next takes up partition and thermodynamic functions of an ideal gas, with discussions of electronic, vibrational, and rotational (including internal rotation) contributions in atomic, diatomic, and polyatomic gases. A separate chapter is devoted to symmetry effects on wave functions and states, and the use of symmetry numbers in evaluating partition functions. This is a topic often glossed over, and frequently mystifying, to students. Chemical equilibrium is next considered, followed by chapters on the perfect quantum gas and imperfect gases where various intermolecular potentials are compared. The treatment of polyatomic molecules in terms of rigid rotations and small bond vibrations is developed, followed by a consideration of the transition state theory of chemical kinetics. The final chapter considers models of the liquid state and liquid-vapor equilibria. Despite its conciseness, this text covers a great deal of interesting ground.

Most published books are one-sided in the climate debate between alarmists and skeptics. My book on the climate debate presents both sides of the debate with considerable technical detail and weighs the supporting evidence. It is found that in general, the data in climatology are very sparse and noisy. Yet climatologists seem willing to draw a dollar's worth of conclusions from a penny's worth of data. The sad truth is that we don't really have good answers to the questions raised in the climate debate. My book shows why this is so. This new edition includes hundreds of references not included in the original version, and the book is expanded by more than 100 pages.