The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel: Amazon.ca: Eugene F. Mallove, Gregory L. Matloff: Books

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Book Description

The Starflight Handbook A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel "The Starflight Handbook is an indispensable compendium of the many and varied methods for traversing the vast interstellar gulf--don't leave the Solar System without it!" --Robert Forward "Very sensible, very complete and useful. Its good use of references and technical 'sidebars' adds to the book and allows the nontechnical text to be used by ordinary readers in an easy fashion. I certainly would recommend this book to anyone doing any thinking at all about interstellar flight or the notion of possibilities of contacts between hypothetical civilizations in different stat systems." --Louis Friedman Executive Director, The Planetary Society The Starflight Handbook is the first and only compendium on planet Earth of the radical new technologies now on the drawing boards of some of our smartest and most imaginative space scientists and engineers. Scientists and engineers as well as general readers will be captivated by its:
* In-depth discussions of everything from nuclear pulse propulsion engines to in-flight navigation, in flowing, non-technical language
* Sidebars and appendices cover technical and mathematical concepts in detail
* Seventy-five elegant and enlightening illustrations depicting starships and their hardware

From the Publisher

The first popular compilation, in book form, of scientific and engineering knowledge about interstellar travel. A working guide for the would-be star traveler, this book concentrates on current and proposed propulsion systems that might be applied to starflight. Provides a compendium of interstellar concepts, formulas, and reference material, including discussions of interstellar navigation, communication systems for sending data, relativistic effects in starflight, and effects of the interstellar medium. Mathematical and other detailed technical developments are separated from the main text, relegating them to accessible ^boxes that can be glanced over.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
Starflight comes in many flavors, but its two major genres are instrumented or automated missions and journeys by people. Read the first page

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Concordance

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.6 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview of Interstellar Spaceflight Concepts, Jan 7 2002

By

Matthew S. Schweitzer "zohoe" (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel (Paperback)

This is an excellent book for anyone intersted in the engineering possibilities of interplanetary and interstellar spaceflight. I read this book years ago as an aerospace engineering undergrad and it helped inspire me in my dream to help make starflight a reality. As can be found here, the technologies for limited interstellar flight have already been investigated, and in some cases, could be implemented today with sufficient funds. The books provides background on all types of rocket based propulsion, covering chemical, nuclear, anti-matter, electric (ion), solar sail, and solar thermal propulsion systems. It also provides an introduction to astrodynamics, space power systems, and the inherent problems encountered by long duration spaceflight over vast distances. As wonderful as this book is, it is badly in need of an update. It barely touches on more recent ideas like long range laser power transmission, as well as more "out-of-the-box" concepts like propellant-less propulsion. Granted there is alot of controversy surrounding notions of artificial wormholes and warp drives, but I'd like to see such ideas at least included as possibilities. As mentioned before, this book is not exceptionally mathematically rigorous, but that could be beneficial to those interested in these concepts without having to possess a background in differential calculus. These ideas stir the imagination and perhaps, someday, we may see these dreams become reality as mankind reaches out to the stars.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Reference Guide, July 18 2004

By

J A W (Norman, OK United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel (Paperback)

This book covers the strengths and weaknesses of various types of spacecraft, and often adds visuals and drawings to help explain the ways these crafts might work. Electromag-ramjets, light-sails, Nuke powered, they're all here. It's 15 years old, however, but it is nonetheless a good starting point to understand the possibilities of interstellar travel. This book also covers the basic physics behind space propulsion. The book is obviously a good resource for science fiction writers, futurists, and people who want to wow their friends w/ insightful comments on space colonization. W/ the new Mars initiative by NASA, designed to be fulfilled w/in 50 years, maybe NASA might fulfill some of the theories outlined in this book. Be ahead of the curve.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Interstellar Space Travel lost on way to moon, May 28 2003

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Mr. Donald Fraser "diginomics" (Yorkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel (Paperback)

This subject is too important to bring up in a review. Like a game of Risk the post-MAD political order has limited pre-thought in respect to Western economic development. Whence the website Astronautix brought me to review this book, so too am I in accordance with their Orion project summary and conclusion : we lost our way with a journey to the moon. In so far as the only the human species exists with a consciousness to express religion and hence evolution, any planet "anywhere" is surely at a disadvantage in a post-MAD structure to have rejected flight to the stars in favour of cold war moon bravado. Indeed the excess military products of this cold war rather than point to our preparation to travel to the stars as hypothesized by Orion project devotees, only threatens our imminent vaporisation at the end of interstellar fuel pellets misunderstood or at least not even recognised by their "any planet - anywhere" evolutionary poise. Of course the fundamental problem with Orion is the failure to counterbalance the goal of physical containment with the true size of explosion. Hence the continual attempts of academic studies to reduce the reaction size considerably or to place it outside any necessary direct containment pressures e.g. somewhere behind the craft. Most telling in this whole sorry evolutionary period of this plant is the repetition by the leading nation America of China when it encountered gunpowder. Not only did the Chinese fail to develop "physical containment" in the form of the cannon but they masked secret of the reaction in a science of alchemy. Hence any reader of this who did not actually participate in The Manhattan project is a product of this deliberate obscurity of fact and likely to misunderstand even the basic applications in space and interstellar travel. The safest education strategy is to remain within the historical limits of the application of the project's fruit, the surrender of Japan and not to go further along the development timeline. At least in my opinion! Draw your own historical analogy, but China in failing to physically contain gunpowder failed to initiate the longest technical development path in history: cannon - musket - rifle - machine gun. Interstellar space travel starts and finishes with physical containment.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not the best
This is a very, very good book. It covers the basics of space flight, and covers specifics such as different types of propulsion methods and possible interstellar... Read more

Published on Aug 8 2001 by cmpst52

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not the best
This is a very, very good book. It covers the basics of space flight, and covers specifics such as different types of propulsion methods and possible interstellar... Read more

Published on Aug 8 2001 by cmpst52