Customer Reviews

Automated Rendezvous and Docking of Spacecraft (Cambridge Aerospace Series)

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This volume covers a lot of territory and the depth of coverage varies.

The strong points are:

1. The discussion of open-loop rendezvous maneuvers is excellent in general.

2. The discussion of required accuracies for rendezvous is generally quite good.

3. The book contains a lot of information on current and proposed/developing systems which is useful.

4. Appendix A on motion dynamics is good with the errors caveat below.

5. The entire book forms an excellent framework in which to think about rendezvous.

The weak points are:

1. There are a number of errors in the equations throughout the book.

2. Even when the equations are correct, the author is tepid at best in defining things like signs.

3. The guidance, navigation, and control sections and the GPS sections are broadbrush overviews containing mostly information copied from elsewhere such as handbooks. It is still useful from a systems point of view however.

4. The entire book is oriented towards rendezvous in near circular or circular orbits and the entire presentation rely's on the Clohessy-Wiltshire equations. Nothing wrong with that, but those looking for a discussion of coelliptic rendezvous. or the exact solution of Berreen and Crisp, or rendezvous around another planet or the moon without GPS/relative GPS, are going to be disappointed. There is not even a thought in any of those directions. The book is completed dominated by ISS rendezvous culture.

All in all, not a bad effort. Another edition later with updates and more advanced thinking about non-ISS rendezvous would not be out of place.