PDF-(DOWNLOAD)-Rocketing Into the Future: The History and Technology of Rocket Planes (Springer

This book describes the history technology and future of rocket planes Michel van Pelt takes us on a journey into this fascinating world examining the unusual concepts and actual flying machines that have been devised over the last hundred years He recounts stories from the early pioneers who attached simple rockets to their wooden glider airplanes as well as tales of modern hightech research craft The author visits museums where rare examples of early rocket planes are kept and modern laboratories where future spaceplanes are being developed He explains the technology in an easily understandable way describing the various types of rocket airplanes including the most important specificationsBefore coming to conclusions in the final chapter Michel van Pelt evaluates the designs of future spaceplanes reviewing various concepts and where they are in their development He describes the cutting edge research via demonstrator vehicles and operational use of these vehicles He also discusses the replacement of the Space Shuttle with a seemingly oldfashioned capsule system the parallel developments in suborbital spaceplanes such as SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo the issue of piloted versus automatic flight and related developments in the airline industry and military aircraft. Cassini-Huygens was the most ambitious and successful space journey ever launched to the outer Solar System. This book examines all aspects of the journey: its conception and planning the lengthy political processes needed to make it a reality the engineering and development required to build the spacecraft its 2.2-billion milejourney from Earth to the Ringed Planet and the amazing discoveriesfrom the mission.The author traces how the visions of a few brilliant scientists matured, gained popularity and eventually became a reality.Innovative technical leaps were necessary to assemble such a multifaceted spacecraft and reliably operate it while it orbited a planet so far from our own. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft design evolved from other deep space efforts, most notably the Galileo mission to Jupiter, enabling the voluminous, paradigm-shifting scientific data collected by the spacecraft.Some of these discoveries are absolute gems. A small satellite that scientists once thought of as a dead piece of rock turned out to contain a warm underground sea that could conceivably harbor life. And we now know that hiding under the mist of Saturn s largest moon, Titan, is a world with lakes, fluvial channels, and dunes hauntingly reminiscent of those on our own planet, except that on Titan, it s not water that fills those lakes but hydrocarbons. These and other breakthroughs illustrate why the Cassini-Huygens mission will be remembered as one of greatest voyages ofdiscovery ever made. The Moon - Challenge and Benefits of Settlement tells the story of the feasible transformation of the Moon into an inhabited sister planet of the Earth in the coming century. This latest edition draws on the latest satellite data to emphasize the power potential and communications advantages of Malapert Mountain in the South Polar region of the Moon, being the optimum location for the establishment of the first lunar base. A colour section depicting graphic images is added in the 2nd edition and the number of appendices are reduced. The book presents a realistic vision of human development and settlement of the Moon over the next one hundred years, and the author explains how global living standards for the Earth can be enhanced through the use of lunar-based generated solar power. From that beginning, the people of the Earth would evolve into a spacefaring civilisation. The book focuses on the design, testing and manufacture of the F-1 engine, but also covers its incorporation into the first stage of the Saturn V and in-flight record. It concludes with an examination of what might have been, if the F-1 had not been discarded, together with the Saturn V, at the conclusion of the Apollo program. The account draws on original documents and interviews with engineers and managers, and is illustrated by many never-before-published photographs, both colour and monochrome. The intention is for this to be the definitive account of the development of this most powerful of rocket engines. As NASA is developing an evolved version of the hydrogen-burning J-2 engine for use in the forthcoming Ares launch vehicles, the author includes development of the J-2 engine within the context of the Saturn V development, thus bringing rocket engine development up to the present and thus provide this book with a long shelf life. David Harland opens with a review of the robotic probes, namely the Rangers which returned television before crashing into the Moon, the Surveyors which \'soft landed\' in order to investigate the nature of the surface, and the Lunar Orbiters which mapped prospective Apollo landing sites. He then outlines the historic landing by Apollo 11 in terms of what was discovered. He concludes with a review of the robotic spacecraft that made remote-sensing observations of the Moon. The book develops the scientific theme of lunar geology, and therefore will be of use as background reading for undergraduate students of planetary sciences. Highlighted as a Commemorative Edition on the cover, this second edition has a new Foreword by one of the original astronauts and a short extra section at the end previewing the prospect of a renewal of human exploration of the Moon. It includes new extra high quality graphics which are only now available and 32 pages of color illustrations. Lunar Outpost provides a detailed account of the various technologies, mission architectures, medical requirements and training needed to return humans to the Moon within the next decade. It focuses on the means by which a lunar outpost will be constructed and also addresses major topics such as the cost of the enterprise and the roles played by private companies and individual countries. The return of humans to the surface of the Moon will be critical to the exploration of the solar system. The various missions are not only in pursuit of scientific knowledge, but also looking to extend human civilization, economic expansion, and public engagement beyond Earth. As well as NASA, China\'s Project 921, Japan\'s Aerospace Exploration Agency, Russia, and the European Space Agency are all planning manned missions to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars. The Ares-I and Ares-V are the biggest rockets since the Saturn V and there is much state-of-the-art technology incorporated into the design of Orion, the spacecraft that will carry a crew of four astronauts to the Moon. Lunar Outpost also describes the human factors, communications, exploration activities, and life support constraints of the missions. There have been many remarkable achievements, such as the Galileo probe which parachuted into Jupiter\'s atmosphere, to the joy of the engineers who built it. But there have also been many humiliating failures. Sometimes the cause is a silly procedural error, such as a minus sign instead of a plus sign in a computer program, or a mix up between Imperial and Metric units. The Russian craft Phobos 1 was lost en route to Mars after being sent an incorrect command, because the spacecraft\'s computer was insufficiently robust to reject it. More recently, NASA has suffered the loss of several missions to Mars, including one due to a simple computer programming error. In Space Systems Failures, David Harland (here working with co-author Ralph Lorenz) describes the many quite fascinating tales of woe involving failures of rockets, satellites and deep space missions in his inimitable style, providing a unique insight into the trials and tribulations of exploration at the high frontier. The Moon - Challenge and Benefits of Settlement tells the story of the feasible transformation of the Moon into an inhabited sister planet of the Earth in the coming century. This latest edition draws on the latest satellite data to emphasize the power potential and communications advantages of Malapert Mountain in the South Polar region of the Moon, being the optimum location for the establishment of the first lunar base. A colour section depicting graphic images is added in the 2nd edition and the number of appendices are reduced. The book presents a realistic vision of human development and settlement of the Moon over the next one hundred years, and the author explains how global living standards for the Earth can be enhanced through the use of lunar-based generated solar power. From that beginning, the people of the Earth would evolve into a spacefaring civilisation. The book focuses on the design, testing and manufacture of the F-1 engine, but also covers its incorporation into the first stage of the Saturn V and in-flight record. It concludes with an examination of what might have been, if the F-1 had not been discarded, together with the Saturn V, at the conclusion of the Apollo program. The account draws on original documents and interviews with engineers and managers, and is illustrated by many never-before-published photographs, both colour and monochrome. The intention is for this to be the definitive account of the development of this most powerful of rocket engines. As NASA is developing an evolved version of the hydrogen-burning J-2 engine for use in the forthcoming Ares launch vehicles, the author includes development of the J-2 engine within the context of the Saturn V development, thus bringing rocket engine development up to the present and thus provide this book with a long shelf life. Mars, like planet Earth, is a complex and vast world with a long history. The authors of this book give a new insight of Mars by adopting an original outline based on history rather than on subtopic (atmosphere, surface, interior). They focus on the past and present evolution of Mars and also incorporate all the recent results from the space missions of Mars Express, Spirit and Opportunity.This book goes to the heart of current planetological research, and illustrates it with many beautiful images. The authors describe the magnificent scenery on Mars including Olympus Mons, more than 20,000 metres high and the solar system’s biggest volcano. At Mars’ poles, glaciers, formed from thousands of fine strata, are evidence of past climatic fluctuations. Drs Forget and Costard and Professor Lognonné introduce a new world and reveal the workings of the planet Mars. They answer the questions: How was Mars formed? Why has its evolution followed a different path to that of Earth? What do its river beds, volcanoes and glaciers tell us about its past? Could life have existed there? Does it exist there now? What processes ‘drive’ Mars today?The five parts of the book trace the history of Mars. Part 1 examines its formation from the ashes of dead stars, more than 4·5 billion years ago. Part 2 travels through its early and turbulent youth and gradual, 3·5-billion-year long metamorphosis. Part 3 traces the creation of great planetary structures while Part 4 explores this active planet as it is today, with its dust storms, water features and atmosphere, and shows that Mars is subject to continual climatic change. Finally in Part 5, the story of the recent exploration of Mars and current research in laboratories and space agencies in preparation for the missions of the next twenty years is recounted. The second edition of Electronic Imaging in Astronomy: Detectors and Instrumentation describes the remarkable developments that have taken place in astronomical detectors and instrumentation in recent years -- from the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD) in 1970 to the current era of very large telescopes, such as the Keck 10-meter telescopes in Hawaii with their laser guide-star adaptive optics which rival the image quality of the Hubble Space Telescope.Authored by one of the world s foremost experts on the design and development of electronic imaging systems for astronomy, this book has been written on several levels to appeal to a broad readership. Mathematical expositions are controlled to encourage a wider audience, especially among the growing community of amateur astronomers who own small telescopes with CCD cameras. The book can be used at the college level for a one semester introductory course on modern astronomical detectors and instruments, and as a supplement for a practical or laboratory class. But it also provides the core of a one semester course on astronomical instrumentation for new graduate (PhD) students who may very soon be faced with using, or even building, electronic imaging systems.The book contains worked examples, problems & solutions, end-of-chapter references and a glossary. In Energiya-Buran: the Soviet Space Shuttle, the authors describe the long development path of the Soviet space shuttle system, consisting of the Energiya rocket and the Buran orbiter. The program eventually saw just one unmanned flight in November 1988 before the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union sealed its fate.After a Foreword provided by lead Buran test pilot Igor Volk, the authors look at the experience gradually accumulated in high-speed aeronautics with the development of various Soviet rocket planes and intercontinental cruise missiles between the 1930s to 1950s and the study of several small spaceplanes in the 1960s. Next the authors explain how the perceived military threat of the US Space Shuttle led to the decision in February 1976 to build a Soviet equivalent, and explore the evolution of the design until it was frozen in 1979. Following this is a detailed technical description of both Energiya and Buran and a look at nominal flight scenarios and emergency situations, highlighting similarities and differences with the US Space Shuttle.The authors then expand on the managerial aspects of the Energiya-Buran program, sum up the main design bureaus and production facilities involved in the project and describe the infrastructure needed to transport the hardware and prepare it for launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome. They go on to detail the selection and training of teams of civilian and military test pilots for Buran, crew assignments for the first manned missions and preparatory flights aboard Soyuz spacecraft.Next the focus turns to the extensive test program that preceded the first flight of Buran, notably the often trouble-plagued test firings of rocket engines, the first flight of Energiya with the enigmatic Polyus payload, test flights of subscale models and atmospheric approach and landing tests. After an analysis of Western speculation on the Soviet space shuttle effort in the pre-glasnost era, a detailed account is given of final preparations for the maiden flight of Buran and the mission itself.In the final chapters the authors look at the gradual demise of the project in the early 1990s, the fate of the Soviet orbiters and their cosmodrome infrastructure, cancelled missions, and the many planned derivatives of the Energiya rocket. Attention is also paid to technological spin-offs such as the Zenit and Sea Launch projects and the RD-180 and RD-191 rocket engines. Finally, an overview is given of alternative spaceplane proposals during and after the Buran era, including the MAKS air-launched spaceplane, the Kliper spacecraft and various single-stage-to-orbit systems.The book closes off with key specifications of the Energiya-Buran system, short biographies of the Buran pilots, an extensive list of Russian acronyms, a short bibliographical essay and a detailed index. Based largely on Russian sources, it is richly illustrated with some 250 pictures and diagrams.Although Energiya-Buran was primarily a program of unfulfilled promises and shattered dreams, it represented a major technological breakthrough for the Soviet Union and its story deserves to be told. The book focuses on the design, testing and manufacture of the F-1 engine, but also covers its incorporation into the first stage of the Saturn V and in-flight record. It concludes with an examination of what might have been, if the F-1 had not been discarded, together with the Saturn V, at the conclusion of the Apollo program. The account draws on original documents and interviews with engineers and managers, and is illustrated by many never-before-published photographs, both colour and monochrome. The intention is for this to be the definitive account of the development of this most powerful of rocket engines. As NASA is developing an evolved version of the hydrogen-burning J-2 engine for use in the forthcoming Ares launch vehicles, the author includes development of the J-2 engine within the context of the Saturn V development, thus bringing rocket engine development up to the present and thus provide this book with a long shelf life. In Energiya-Buran: the Soviet Space Shuttle, the authors describe the long development path of the Soviet space shuttle system, consisting of the Energiya rocket and the Buran orbiter. The program eventually saw just one unmanned flight in November 1988 before the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union sealed its fate.After a Foreword provided by lead Buran test pilot Igor Volk, the authors look at the experience gradually accumulated in high-speed aeronautics with the development of various Soviet rocket planes and intercontinental cruise missiles between the 1930s to 1950s and the study of several small spaceplanes in the 1960s. Next the authors explain how the perceived military threat of the US Space Shuttle led to the decision in February 1976 to build a Soviet equivalent, and explore the evolution of the design until it was frozen in 1979. Following this is a detailed technical description of both Energiya and Buran and a look at nominal flight scenarios and emergency situations, highlighting similarities and differences with the US Space Shuttle.The authors then expand on the managerial aspects of the Energiya-Buran program, sum up the main design bureaus and production facilities involved in the project and describe the infrastructure needed to transport the hardware and prepare it for launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome. They go on to detail the selection and training of teams of civilian and military test pilots for Buran, crew assignments for the first manned missions and preparatory flights aboard Soyuz spacecraft.Next the focus turns to the extensive test program that preceded the first flight of Buran, notably the often trouble-plagued test firings of rocket engines, the first flight of Energiya with the enigmatic Polyus payload, test flights of subscale models and atmospheric approach and landing tests. After an analysis of Western speculation on the Soviet space shuttle effort in the pre-glasnost era, a detailed account is given of final preparations for the maiden flight of Buran and the mission itself.In the final chapters the authors look at the gradual demise of the project in the early 1990s, the fate of the Soviet orbiters and their cosmodrome infrastructure, cancelled missions, and the many planned derivatives of the Energiya rocket. Attention is also paid to technological spin-offs such as the Zenit and Sea Launch projects and the RD-180 and RD-191 rocket engines. Finally, an overview is given of alternative spaceplane proposals during and after the Buran era, including the MAKS air-launched spaceplane, the Kliper spacecraft and various single-stage-to-orbit systems.The book closes off with key specifications of the Energiya-Buran system, short biographies of the Buran pilots, an extensive list of Russian acronyms, a short bibliographical essay and a detailed index. Based largely on Russian sources, it is richly illustrated with some 250 pictures and diagrams.Although Energiya-Buran was primarily a program of unfulfilled promises and shattered dreams, it represented a major technological breakthrough for the Soviet Union and its story deserves to be told. Soviet Robots in the Solar Systemprovides a history of the Soviet robotic lunar and planetary exploration program from its inception, with the attempted launch of a lunar impactor on September 23, 1958, to the last launch in the Russian national scientific space program in the 20th Century, Mars 96, on November 16, 1996. This title makes a unique contribution to understanding the scientific and engineering accomplishments of the Soviet Union s robotic space exploration enterprise from its infancy to its demise with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Theauthors provide a comprehensive account of Soviet robotic exploration of the Solar System for both popular space enthusiasts and professionals in the field. Technical details and science results are provided and put into an historical and political perspective in a single volume for the first time. The book is divided into two parts. Part I describes the key players and the key institutions that build and operate the hardware, the rockets that provide access to space, and the spacecraft that carry out the enterprise. Part II is about putting these pieces together to enable space flight and mission campaigns. Part II is written in chronological order beginning with the first launches to the Moon. Each chapter covers a particular period when specific mission campaigns were undertaken during celestially-determined launch windows. Each chapter begins with a short overview of the flight missions that occurred during the time period and the political and historical context for the flight mission campaigns, including what the Americans were doing at the time. The bulk of each chapter is devoted to the scientific and engineering details of that flight campaign. The spacecraft and payloads are examined with as much technical detail as is available today, the progress is described, and a synopsis of the scientific result is given.