Vince Cate's Space Books
Click on links to see pictures of a set of books on a shelf.
For understanding space tech, I can recommend all the books
in #1 and #2, and a couple of the leftmost reentry books.
Some of the history books have some tech too. My interest is
in understanding how a reusable rocket and space tether could
be designed to take tourists into space cheaply.
- Good books for understanding space technology
The one on far left is the Air Force Space Planners Guide, a favorite.
Lunar Base Handbook could be here but I put it in the next category.
It is a very good book.
- Space technology and vision of the future
- Space technology and vision of the future in last 25 years
-
These books explain some new (at the time) technology and have a vision of
the future of humans in space.
These books tend to be educational and interesting.
The ones on the left of High Frontier
are older books, some of them very influential.
The topics for the 4 on the right are far in the future.
So there are 11 recent/near-term tech and vision books.
-
Herman Oberth's "Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen" gets my vote for
most influential space book of all time. The "Across the Space Frontier" is
an expansion of some very influential articles in Collier's magazine.
-
Jules Verne's "From The Earth To The Moon" is science fiction, unlike
everything else here, but some of the science and prediction is impressive
for 1865 and 1870, about 100 years before men went to the Moon.
For example, it has the velocity necessary to reach the moon, rockets
for slowing down once they get to the moon or for returning to Earth,
they take off from Florida, and they splash down in the Pacific.
-
Good space history books and
also these.
Project Orion, Korolev, and Rockets Missiles and Men In Space are some favorites.
- Books on reentry - favorites on the left. I feel we
have yet to demonstrate a really reusable reentry system. So I am
particularly interested in this area.
- Space Tethers - not many books
- Oversized books
- Picture books
Favorites here are Full Moon and The Home Planet.
- Misc or not top tier books
- Misc again
- Older Tech books - can get many for $10 to $20
- Airplane related
- Space Science
- Not space books but related
For used books I have been very happy with
www.abebooks.com.
Almost all of of my used books came from there.
For new books I mostly use
www.amazon.com because
they have free shipping.
A really extensive collection of space books can be found at
www.astrobooks.com,
though only a few of these came from there. They give
discounts if your are ordering several books at once.
Links to other sites:
- Mark Wade's recommendations
extensive collection of space history books - less space tech books
- McGraw Hill Space Technology Series has very good space tech books
If you know of other sites recommending space books
pleas let me know. If you know of particularly good
space tech or recent tech and vision type books please let
me know. My email is vince @ offshore.ai and for
the subject put "Space Books" so it get automatically
sorted into a folder I read and not left with all the spam
where it might get missed.
