Customer Reviews

Orbital Mechanics: For Engineering Students (Aerospace Engineering)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Good book, but with typos here and there. There is an errata if you search for the book's website and most of the errors you can spot easily. What makes this book especially useful are the MATLAB functions, which allow you to implement the theory without having to debug newly written code (this is more time consuming, than difficult).

This is however a beginner's book into orbital mechanics, but gets the job done if you want to sim a basic interplanetary mission relatively accurately. For a more refined approach with I would suggest "Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics" by Hughes.

The book contains good and applicable content for basic orbital mechanics. However, it is riddled with annoying typos and errors with no errata to be found. As an expensive textbook one would expect more care.

Bought this book right before the second edition came out. Some of my classmates bought the second edition, so the class has a mixture of the two books. The professor is constantly pointing out errors and typos in this edition. There is supposedly an errata available, I have not yet found it. Aside from the practice problem and equation numbering, (and correcting the errors) the two editions are essentially the same.

As a text, the explanations of phenomena and derivations of equations are well laid out and can be followed without too much difficulty if you have a good grounding in vector algebra. An understanding of calculus and ordinary differential equations also aids understanding. The MATLAB code found in the appendices is good and can be used as-is or as a starting point for writing your own. If you can get a .pdf of that appendix, though, it makes cut-and-paste-and-run a whole lot easier.

My only other quibble is that the tables with planetary constants (mass, radius, orbit, mu, etc.) are split into two tables and are buried in an appendix, rather than in one table inside the cover. I've tabbed that page, but it would make more sense to make those much-referenced figures more accessible.

Curtis deserves credit for managing to make the material described easy enough to swallow that you can basically jump into this material even cold turkey. The dialogue and derviations are easily followable, and theres enough of an intro on kinematics and a review of some of the basic geometry and algebra that you wont require a second textbook to translate the first.

The problems arrise in the examples. While I appluad the majority of them, its readily apparent that they were performed by a assistant or a student, as theres just enough errors to radically confuse aynone trying to copy the problem to get an understanding of the process. And while the examples are plentuiful enough to be incredibly useful, they cover only the barest bones. I can understand not wanting to spend 1/3 of the book performing example problems, a few of the more complex subjects would've been greatly assistaed by just a handful of problems that involved more than just perfect universes with circular, coplanar orbits using point masses. And even the homework problems are no respite, as some of the chapters had a grand total of 8 problems, meaning at most 4 had in-book defined answers for personal study.

Overall, for such a dry and complex subject matter, this book is extremely useful, but just 20-30 more pages of problems and exmaples would've been a termendous boon.

I recently read the 2nd edition of this book. Though I am more advanced in my experience and knowledge of much of the material covered, I picked up this book for a great deal and thought it would be interesting to brush up on some basics in a few areas. I also always enjoy seeing the different approaches used by various authors when covering a particular topic within such a subject area. I must say that this is one of the best introductions to orbital mechanics and astrodynamics that I've ever come across.

There are a few minor errors in the 2nd edition and the errata sheet is available at the publisher's website if you look for it. Again, they are few in number and very minor. I have read many very technical books from advanced dynamics to advanced radar theory and I can tell you it is rare to come across a text that has absolutely no errors, regardless of how many peers review the work prior to publication. In writing many technical works of my own in my career, including complex mathematical algorithms, having those works peer reviewed, as well as participating in the peer review of others' works, I have noticed a phenomenon at work that helps to ensure that at least some errors eventually make it through to publication. When you are intimately familiar with a subject, I believe the brain will occassionally read what is supposed to be on the page rather than what actually is. However, the few errors that are present (less than two pages, large type and large line spacing on the errata sheet) are more than overshadowed by the overall quality and content of the book.

I urge you to ignore the personal attacks of one reviewer and consider the content and worthiness of the work. Also note that some of the prior reviews have nothing to do with the book itself or its content (e.g. complaints about delivery problems, getting the wrong version when purchasing the Kindle edition, etc). These affect the overall rating of the book even when they do not critique the work itself.

The explanations provided by the author are very clear and concise. The ideal combination of content. It does expect you to know a little calculus to follow some of the derivations but that shouldn't be an obsticle to applying the knowledge of the end-results of the derivations.

I am particularly pleased by the consistency in use of notation, something that I cannot say for many works on more advanced topics. Standard, widely-accepted vector, matrix and calculus notation is utilized and kept consistent within the text and between the text and the figures. I have authored many technical works in my career (published only within DoD programs) and have a deep understanding of the difficulty in expressing complex concepts in the form of graphical aids to support the discussion in the text. Especially without using color and shading to assist in properly depicting three-dimensional concepts. While the illustrations in this text aren't as complex as many I have had to produce, I was impressed by how well simple black-and-white line drawings and gray-shaded drawings were used in this work.

The topics covered, and the examples presented, provide a rather comprehensive introduction to the subject matter.
I urge you to use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to review the table of contents. I found some of the example problems to be rather unique and interesting compared to typical examples encountered in other works.

I'll admit that I skipped the sections on parabolic and hyperbolic orbits as they did not of particular interest to me.

However, I have no problems recommending this text to anyone (with a little calculus background and a little physics background preferred) who need to obtain a good introduction to orbital mechanics/fundamental astrodynamics. This book will provide you with a solid foundation to continue studying more advanced subjects in space flight dynamics, satellite attitude determination/control, mission planning, tracking, re-entry dynamics, and more.

In summary, a great introduction and worthy of the price.

I have dealt with quite a lot of textbooks over the years here at college and as a senior I feel that this text, Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students, is an excellent, well developed textbook. The explanations are very thorough and the examples are numerous enough so that any student can grasp/master the content. I definitely recommend this for any engineering student (especially Aerospace Engineering).

I go to Curtis' school. The man is a legend...for how poor a professor he is. He basically sucks the life and soul out of you. No one finished his class with a good grade. And as far as his book goes. With the second edition, you notice its printed on none glossy paper. Well, the reason for that is that there are so many errors in the book that the original publisher REFUSED to publish a new edition. So they basically published it through Google, and its printed on copy paper.

I also had Aircraft Structural Analysis textbook written by the same author, which was never updated, unreadable & full of errors. I'd say that Mr. Curtis should stay away from Structure because this textbook is a totally different reading experience compared to the previous book I mentioned before.

First, it is affordable, it only costs me $45 (I bought mine from third party vendor listed on Amazon Marketplace); second, it is readable & actually has examples that the readers could understand. The only thing that annoyed me a bit is the fact that the a lot of the important formulas are not organized or boxed, so readers have to do it manually with pencil. A few chapters, especially chapter 10 needs to contain more example or expanded further in order to enlighten the audience about the material. Going to lecture might improve the readers' overall experience, so don't use the book as self study because the vast amount of mathematical derivations could be discouraging.

This book gives complete, detailed derivations, and illustrates the usage of the formulas derived with clear, detailed examples. This is by far the book's greatest strength. It has very good illustrations, somthing that's necessary to foster three dimensional intuition. For the student meeting the subject for the first time, or for someone ( like myself ) learning the material by self-study, I'm convinced this is the best first book on this subject you could find.

A few reviewers complained about errors in the first edition. It is because of the level of detail that the author presents that it wasn't too hard to spot some of these myself. (I haven't bought the second edition yet, but I will.) Lots of detail means lots of opportunity for some errors to get into print. The book's positive elements far outweigh these relatively minor defects. Because of the book's quality in explaining the subject, I had no doubt whatsoever that a second edition would materialize, and it has.

I heartily recommend this textbook.

Kindle version is the first edition to this book, not the second edition. All the problems are different between the two editions. Useless in my class. Had to return and order the textbook.