Fly Me to the Moon
An Insider's Guide to the New Science of Space Travel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Descripción editorial
When a leaf falls on a windy day, it drifts and tumbles, tossed every which way on the breeze. This is chaos in action. In Fly Me to the Moon, Edward Belbruno shows how to harness the same principle for low-fuel space travel--or, as he puts it, "surfing the gravitational field."
Belbruno devised one of the most exciting concepts now being used in space flight, that of swinging through the cosmos on the subtle fluctuations of the planets' gravitational pulls. His idea was met with skepticism until 1991, when he used it to get a stray Japanese satellite back on course to the Moon. The successful rescue represented the first application of chaos to space travel and ushered in an emerging new field.
Part memoir, part scientific adventure story, Fly Me to the Moon gives a gripping insider's account of that mission and of Belbruno's personal struggles with the science establishment. Along the way, Belbruno introduces readers to recent breathtaking advances in American space exploration. He discusses ways to capture and redirect asteroids; presents new research on the origin of the Moon; weighs in on discoveries like 2003 UB313 (now named Eris), a dwarf planet detected in the far outer reaches of our solar system--and much more.
Grounded in Belbruno's own rigorous theoretical research but written for a general audience, Fly Me to the Moon is for anybody who has ever felt moved by the spirit of discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As astrophysicist and NASA consultant Belbruno explains in this short book, one of the reasons for the exorbitant cost of space flight is the need for huge amounts of fuel. In addition to the cost of the fuel itself, is its weight: "it is very expensive to bring one pound of anything to the Moon about a quarter million dollars." By solving what are known as three-body equations (the three bodies, for example, being Earth, the Moon and a spacecraft), Belbruno has discovered trajectories between celestial bodies that make use of both chaos theory and gravitational forces, and enable space travel with a fraction of the fuel normally used. The downside is the greater time needed for travel. A trip to the Moon using Belbruno's method, might take three months rather than three days. But this difference poses no trouble for sending supplies and could dramatically lower the cost of building a permanent base on the Moon. Although Belbruno's main ideas are expressed simply enough for the average reader to appreciate, his account of his efforts is disjointed and not as rewarding as the underlying science. Illus.
