Customer Reviews

The Giant Leap: Mankind Heads for the Stars

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

 

 

An enjoyable light read which can be achieved at near light speed! This is journalism close to its best, addressing a complex subject from multiple angles. Where it succeeds is in the subject matter. How many of us have wondered what the step beyond exploring our solar system will mean? It's pretty much all here, though there are a few caveats needed. This is not reference material and is almost totally derivative of previously published books and papers.
The coverage is also rather wide and some may feel short-changed by Mr Berry not following through on some of the topics covered.
Some may find the topic of politics not addressed to their satisfaction - in chapters 'Starships and Politicians' and 'Twilight of the State'.

Elsewhere, the detail is reminiscent of a newspaper article: when it comes to detail within ones area of expertise there are real howlers. This may be to some the weakest part of the book, challenging the authority that Mr Berry assumes by writing this book. Another reviewer has spotted the error in the timeline for 1965, which has Ed White being the first spacewalker instead of Alexei Leonov. A minor slip, but not solitary. The author fails to flag that civilisations are unlikely from first generation stars (no heavy elements from which life can appear) (ref p61 etc). The discussion of navigational errors getting the crew 'lost' is unlikely as we have 3-D info on every star within 100 light years of the Sun and computers even today can create star maps from anywhere in the vicinity of the Sun.

There are some throw-away lines that need that - to be thrown away. The author occasionally uses too wide a paint-brush for his canvas, notably p182, "the modern electronics industry" is supposedly based on the Apollo lunar module descent computer. An almighty howler is (p29 and p258) that the Managing Director in JVC invented videorecorders in 1975. The first practical video recorder was first demonstrated in 1956. Even John Logie Baird made video recordings in 1927! Of course he means domestic videos, but even then 'invention' is too much.

But these are simply where technical proof-reading has been inadequate. The book remains enjoyable despite the above comments.
(page numbers refer to UK edition which may differ)

What a great book! I learned a good deal on subjects ranging from the internet, Polynesian colonization and economics. The author's idea for investors using their money while on long interstellar voyages I think is ingenious. At last someone has come up with a good use for the planet Mercury and why we should go there. Some people might take issue with some of the things listed in Appendix I, like who invinted gunpowder and who made the first spacewalk. All in all a very good read.

Berry addresses the beguiling prospect of interstellar society. He considers it from the perspectives of technology, economics, and sociology.

He starts by explaining the age-old "migratory imperative" of humans that began some 50,000 years ago when they first streamed out of Africa (there actually were earlier waves of proto-humans migration). In fact, this is not strictly peculiar to humans alone, but to all mammals. It is an evolutionary advantage to seek out new ecological niches to exploit. This is the origin of curiosity, a trait that humans exhibit most of all.

A major theme is the "twilight of the state" due to the government's growing inability to collect tax revenues. This will be because e-commerce over the internet cannot be monitored by the tax authorities. It is true that the volume of trade being conducted electronically is ever-growing, but considering the size of the non-information economy, this conclusion of Berry's seems somewhat iffy to this reviewer.

As a result of the erosion of state power, Berry further concludes that development of human society in space will depend absolutely on the efforts of private organizations. This contrasts quite nicely with the conclusion of Robert Zubrin Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization, who explains that private companies will have no financial incentive to establish orbital operations, and that Government will have to take the first steps. This is perhaps a weak contrast because Berry is considering the possibility of interstellar expansion and Zubrin is considering solar system expansion. However, the solar system would necessarily have to come first.

Berry's rationale for interstellar commerce rests on the fact of relativistic time dilation. He forsees investors accumulating huge returns while they bodily travel near lightspeed and age slowly. Their portfolios await their return hugely swollen by this form of "time travel". The possibility of this means of gaining wealth will spur the development of ultrafast space travel.

Berry devotes one chapter to the technical possibilities of supralight velocities. Here we have the usual suspects: warp drive, wormholes, the Einstein-Rosen bridge, etc. In other places, he also discusses more mundane propulsion technologies: beamed propulsion, ramjets, and antimatter rockets. In fact, one chapter is devoted to what later became the Valkyrie spacecraft developed by Charles Pellegrino and Jim Powell (it has an entry in Wikipedia).

It's an interesting book with more than a few useful ideas.

One of the best I have read that shows the way to the future of space exploration, and technology of the future.