Fly me to the Moon

Dave Monroe monropolitan at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 27 10:40:34 CST 2007


Belbruno, Edward.  Fly Me to the Moon:
   An Insider's Guide to the New Science of Space
   Travel.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007.

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.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8375.html

Chapter One: A Moment of Discovery

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8375.html

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8375.pdf


 
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