Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications, Second Edition (Space Technology Library, Volume 12)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a detailed text covering a broad collection of the most relevant topics, primarily aimed at engineers and engineering students practicing astrodynamic theory and orbit determination. It properly emphasizes that modern astrodynamics is now practiced on the computer, combining numerical methods with classical celestial mechanics to provide dozens of algorithms suitable for machine solution. It excels on two fronts: 1) it provides much generic "pseudo-code" (computer recipes) for writing subprograms, and 2) it touches on everything from Keplerian motion to estimation theory to atmospheric modeling for drag perturbations. Because it covers so much in under 1000 pages, the author does not fully derive all the algorithms. However, there is a fifteen page appendix of additional references, and the author's disarming writing style makes the text very approachable to the student. It is well illustrated with excellent diagrams and numerous tables, and much of the notation (equations and symbols) is standardized with other textbooks in this field.

Being a 1st edition, it has a few mistakes. There is a couple of noticeable equation typos and some numerical errors in a few of the many examples (the programmer will quickly discover these). There is probably undue emphasis on some minor topics, and likewise a few important concepts are sometimes briefly mentioned without clarity. Being so broad in scope, the reader is sometimes required to go from chapter to chapter to get the big picture or gather all the details. While this may be distracting at times, most of the needed information is there - few astrodynamics textbooks can claim to be as complete.

An engineer or computer programmer who needs to solve problems in this field will immediately discover that this title serves to fill a large void in the academic literature on non-relativistic astrodynamics. Those wanting a purer treatise of fundamental theory might find a text on analytical celestial mechanics or dynamical astronomy will help supplement this text for self-study.

For my work I needed to get up to speed on astrodynamics calculations very quickly. This book proved invaluable in that respect. I particularly appreciated the algorithms and examples that the author presented in addition to the usual derivations. The algorithms, in particular, proved very helpful in writing computer programs for my modeling and simulation work. I think that the material is readily understandable by upper level undergraduates in engineering, math, or physics. I also found the author's style enjoyable to read. There are numerous references for further study. I would recommed this book quite highly.

This is a book I would definitely recommend for those interested in the practical application of basic Astrodynamics. The only real problem is you have to double check the math since there are a fairly large number of errors in the computations. I especially like the discussions comparing and contrasting different methods and algorithms.

I would not recommend it for the beginner and would recommend Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bate, Muller, and White (often call it "BMW") instead. However, this is an excellent book for practical numerical analysis of orbits and trajectories.

It includes detailed coverage of reference frames, numerical prorogation methods, perturbing forces including spherical-harmonic representations of gravity models, dynamical time, line-of-sight and line-of-light analysis, and other important topics and was extremely helpful when I was designing "frozen" orbits around the moon.

The only thing that I felt that this book lacked was a detailed explanation of the JPL ephemeris, ballistic capture trajectories, and trajectory optimization. Nevertheless, this book "feels" like a classic the ("Valldo" book) is a must-have in any GN&C reference collection.

I find this book to be excellent from the point of view of the practicing engieneer. Vallado gives a lot of details on how to solve practical problems and puts a wealth of information in terms one can use almost directly to write algorithms.

The book is structured so that the chapters flow in logical manner. Once you understand the logic you'll have no problem navigating the book.

It is true it is not a book for beginners. I've tried to teach Orbital Mechanics out of it to junior level aerospace engineering students and most of them didn't like it.

The book has quite a few typos but an errata is available on the publisher's website. Also available on the publisher's website are the algorithms presented in the book - in FORTRAN, C, C++, Ada, and MATLAB.

Overall I believe that Vallado put back "Fun" in "Fundamentals".

Enjoy!

A good book summarizing the field. Quite easy to use for studying, with lots of examples and good pictures to describe the concepts. Included is also a lot of easy to use algorithms, which makes applying the concepts in programming really simple.

I have used this book at a college level and do not recommend it. The book is not clearly written and does not seem to follow a logical order. Unreferenced symbols are used in formulas throughout the book. Often, out of the blue, a statement such as a=xyz is made. In order to find out what a is, the user has to has to turn backward several chapters. All too frequently in derivations, a formula is referenced that is ahead in the text, or in a future chapter. Notation is also confusing in terms of symbol choice. For example, 'r' with a dot on top of it is used to denote the radial component of a position vector change. The reader is admonished to not confuse this with the velocity when a simple subscript could have sufficed.

I think this book is useful as a reference for someone who is already very familiar with the subject and does not need to understand how any of the equations are derived (because he/she already does.) And who perhaps needs algorithms for calculation.

I felt that this book made a very lousy attempt at clearly explaining the subject material. I had previously owned Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and had hoped that this book would provide additional useful information. I have since ended up throwing this book into the pit out back where I accumulate wasteful material for future burning. I would not recommend this book to an engineer or scientist in the field.