- Paperback: 424 pages
- Publisher: Collector's Guide Publishing Inc; Book and CD-ROM edition (June 2000) edition (2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1896522629
- ISBN-13: 978-1896522623
- Product Dimensions: 25.5 x 18 x 3.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 703 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #357,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Baseball fans have the Sporting News Register for getting their stats fix, and farmer-types can turn to the time-honoured Almanac--so it's only fair that space-exploration junkies should have Robert Godwin's definitive NASA Mission Reports , providing page after page of official data and diagrams not to mention CD-ROMs packed with movies, pictures, and searchable NASA documents.
While most of Godwin's NASA books focus on a particular mission (e.g., Apollo 13 and Gemini 6), the Mars book chronologically surveys every single mission that's been mounted to the red planet, from the 1964 launch of Mariner 4 to the more current Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor encounters. And it's this breadth that makes the book a stand-out even in this excellent series. Not only can you marvel at the 16K flight computer on 1975's Centaur and the much more impressive hardware on the MGS, but you can even see the quality of NASA's press materials evolve. (When's the last time you saw a diagram with a typewritten legend?)
With NASA press kits for all the probes and a choice assortment of the more interesting mission reports, Godwin has assembled an authoritative, blow-by-blow resource for serious space buffs. And good news on the included "Windows" CD-ROM that's included: Since the files are primarily mpegs, jpegs, and html, readers can access the CD and its hour-and-a-half-plus of vintage video from just about any platform. --Paul Hughes
Review
"A mine of useful information and well worth getting..." -- Astronomy Now, September 2001. "A well-conceived book which those interested in planetary exploration cannot afford to miss..." -- Spaceflight, November 2000.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Space history, and a look at what we missed
Oct 30 2001
It's hard to get more technical, but it's exactly what you need if you want to have a look at the technology that was used to conquer that "final frontier", starting about 40 years ago. It was definitly a time where exploration was risky, and NASA was actually willing to risk it.
Those little probes were so rudimentary compared to what we can do now, and yet, they were state-of-the-art machines that were launched one after another to the planets... with equally deceiving and surprising results. When you think that the Viking data is still being used (and the new results are still controversial), it's hard not to be impressed.
Ironically, this book, which may have been a tribute to NASA creativeness, ends up with the Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter reports, three probes that failed. The failure is definitly not the problem, because most of the Mars probes failed. But NASA attitude has dramatically changed since the first Mariner. A failure was merely a plausible outcome, but now, it's a catastrophy that invokes a complete Mars programme reeavaluation...
And to kill it completely, this invaluable little book includes the Werner Von Braun infamous roadmap to Mars... envisionned for the 1980's. Another sad hint that NASA failed to its destiny, and will probably never recover.
This book shoudl definitly be read with some other good space history books, that will help put the technical prowess in perspective. I would recommend the following:
- Failure is Not An Option, by Gene Kranz
- Korolev, by James Harford
- Russia In Space, by Brian Harvey
- Moon Hunters, by Jeffrey Kluger
Mars Exploration Reference
Jun 11 2001
"MARS: THE NASA MISSION REPORTS" is an excellent reference. Robert Godwin has produced yet another gem in his now classic series of historical books on NASA's space missions. The present work encapsulates key technical information on NASA's Mars exploration efforts since the beginning of the space program. The book contains an edited selection of official NASA press kits, press releases and mission reports, along with a profusion of illustrations reproduced as they originally appeared. While the focus of the book is on the sequence of Mars robotic missions NASA has flown to date, a final chapter is dedicated to the historic presentation Wernher Von Braun gave to President Nixon's Space Task Group on August 14, 1969 discussing his plans for a "manned" mission to Mars. According to that plan, humans would have landed on Mars by 1982. The book is very well organized and the information it contains has the great advantage of being reliable in that it was obtained from its very source: NASA's archives. The reader can quickly look up anything from the list of contractors who built the Mariner 4 space probe to the power output of the two RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) on the Viking Landers (2 x 35 watts). The book comes complete with a CD packed with even more information, including full NASA publications on Mars exploration from NASA's "SP" (special publications) series, three NASA videos, and hundreds of NASA Mars mission images. This book is quite simply a "must have" for anyone interested Mars exploration past, present, and future.
Mars Exploration Reference
Jun 11 2001
"MARS: THE NASA MISSION REPORTS" is an excellent reference. Robert Godwin has produced yet another gem in his now classic series of historical books on NASA's space missions. The present work encapsulates key technical information on NASA's Mars exploration efforts since the beginning of the space program. The book contains an edited selection of official NASA press kits, press releases and mission reports, along with a profusion of illustrations reproduced as they originally appeared. While the focus of the book is on the sequence of Mars robotic missions NASA has flown to date, a final chapter is dedicated to the historic presentation Wernher Von Braun gave to President Nixon's Space Task Group on August 14, 1969 discussing his plans for a "manned" mission to Mars. According to that plan, humans would have landed on Mars by 1982. The book is very well organized and the information it contains has the great advantage of being reliable in that it was obtained from its very source: NASA's archives. The reader can quickly look up anything from the list of contractors who built the Mariner 4 space probe to the power output of the two RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) on the Viking Landers (2 x 35 watts). The book comes complete with a CD packed with even more information, including full NASA publications on Mars exploration from NASA's "SP" (special publications) series, three NASA videos, and hundreds of NASA Mars mission images. This book is quite simply a "must have" for anyone interested Mars exploration past, present, and future.
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Most recent customer reviews
Unique resource, fantastic video
For anyone interested in the history of Mars or robotic exporation, this book is a must-have. The originial NASA documentation on thirty years of robotic probes provides critical... Read more
Published on May 30 2001 by John McKnight
A must-have for completists
In a departure from other books in this series, this one focuses on unmanned missions, in this case the missions to Mars. Read more
Published on Feb 15 2001 by Kevin W. Parker
A treasuretrove!
This is an absolutely indespensable compendium of data relating to the US's unmanned Mars missions starting with the Mariner probes and bringing us right up to 1999's troubling... Read more
Published on Aug 28 2000 by Jim Kirk
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