Customer Reviews

Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos

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There is a huge amount of science-fiction-like books dealing with aspects of Humankind's future. What is certainly difficult, greatly difficult in some cases, is to describe what the future may look like based on knowledge of the past and awareness of the present. The authors of "Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos" are two scientists and one artist, well recognized internationally, who committed themselves to popularizing very, very important aspects of our future: not the future many centuries ahead, which is quite unpredictable on a true scientific basis, but the future that appears reasonable, and desirable, starting from the present and imitating - very probably - what happened along the history of Humankind. Another key feature of the book is represented by the "fusion" of Science, Technology, and Art. Many authors of reliable books describing the future are used to make a considerable harvest from many different scientific areas, but neglect the artistic aspect of the human thought.
This book has a very good logical sequence of the chapters, which includes virtually the most important items at the time of the manuscript completion. Who is really interested in reading a book regarding the evergreen human desire for space exploration and space expansion - the final frontier - not based on fantasy, but on solid cultural basis, can find an excellent overview in this 250-page book.

Rome - Italy, May 20, 2008

Vulpetti Giovanni, PhD.
International Academy of Astronautics, Paris - France

This is a good book for those interested in the behinds the scenes of space exploration. This book gave enough technical information for background. The authors brought in their experience and first hand knowledge of this on going effort as well as the path forward. This has some of the stuff sci-fi books are based on.

Despite the claims of the title and sub title, this book does not cover how we can explore space using in situ resources, nor what "green roads" to space would actually mean. In contrast, this book is broad ranging catalog of spacecraft propulsion technologies, fairly lightly drawn, with some comments on space colonies, mining and starflight thrown in.

This was a very light read. If you want more depth in any particular technology, another book specializing in that technology would probably be better.

I am quite disappointed. The treatment and writing level as well as quality of research is what I call juvenile. While I am only a lay person regarding these areas I know more about them than the authors deign to share in this book.

Living off the Land in Space. It conjures biodomes, algae-growing, 'clean' fuels, and a 1970s Original Star Trek view of the infinately hospitable worlds out in the black yonder for us to exploit - er, I meant explore...

Really, how often did you see Kirk in an enviro-suit and oxygen mask whilst cannodling on the surface of Virgos V?

Now, back to the book -

To my slight disappointment, however, there is much more technological discussion, and much less fantastical futuristic musings. Oh well.

Strangely, despite my lack of techie impulses, once I resigned myself to a bit of a slog through the 'hard' side, I did find myself intrigued by the reasoned discussion of various propulsion systems (chem-fuel, ramjets, magnetic-electric tethers, solar sails, ion! drives and more), an explication of the really really really unimaginably vast distances of SPACE (as in roughly 7,000 years - years! worth of travel (at our best modern rates) to reach Alpha Centauri - our nearest stellar neighbor), and a strange little inserted list explaining the levels that ideas, theories, and prototypes all go through before floating off towards our planetary neighbors, handily illustrated by even more interesting types of hardware that most people don't know we're developing.

The book (freely admitted both at beginning and end) is a bit dated, which is both good and bad. Good, because that means that our current levels of space interest are high enough to make this book outdated by the time it hits the presses; bad in that even the casual reader can smile sadly when he comments on the Japanese mission probe "which will return with asteroid samples in June of 2007" ... or not.

Lastly, the neo-hippy vibe of the title does not carry through the book. The exact idea - utilizing resources from space or from our various destinations - is the focus of the book. But - the reason for that focus seems more economic than environmental. There are myriad explanations throughout on the relative efficiency of newer (or less explored) travel options, but not many comments on the lessened environmental impact. And, in a staggering sense of cross-purpose, please note the many casual suggestions about mining the moon and Mars - although not, he does allow, if there is native life.

This juxtaposition was the only real sour note in the book, which was ultimately an entertaining romp through the technologies and theories which will get us into space.