Customer Reviews

Project Constellation Pocket Space Guide (Pocket Space Guides)

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

 

 

The best book I've seen so far on the Ares / post space shuttle rockets. This is a serious rocket designed to go primarily back into deep space, as opposed to the space shuttle which is just a trolley bus to space stations. The biggest version is as big as the old Saturn V .... anyone who's stood next to that thing knows this is one serious rocket...
Its a compact book but as these types of books date quite quickly, its ideal.

Tim McElyea has done a great job at revealing the opening shots of Project Constellation and the Orion program. This book is a must for people that are just coming aboard the project and for those that want to know where the governments money is going on the Space Shuttle's replacement. It highly utilizes computer illustrations to show the next step in America's long road to the Moon and Mars.
Let there be no mistake here- this is THE first book on the subject, and it will be changed and modified over the next few years as this program shapes up.

Writer McElyea even goes over the possible changes to the program like the use of Ares IV booster instead. His illustrations show the breakdowns of the launchers and spacecraft. He has done a wonderful job at showing how the Orion Spacecraft, lunar lander, Ares I and V rockets will work. Not too technical, not too simplistic.

I heartily recommend this book for all ages. It will be the book in the back pocket for those who are in school now but will someday be riding these mighty vehicles to the Moon and Mars.

This book is as clear a guide to the plans to return to the Moon as can be published at such an early date. It gives a broad overview of the craft that will be built to undertake the journey .
The sections on the Ares vehicles is interesting, and shows the Shuttle heritage of the Orion program. The Orion section is a little indistinct, as the Spacecraft is still undergoing design changes, and the section on the Altair Lander is sketchier still, as at the time, they were still referring to it by the acronym LSAM or Lunar Surface Access Module.
This book is great for current readers who are following the current build -up to a Lunar return as well as providing future readers with a historical context to the earlier days of the Second Lunar explorations

This book tells of the hopes and plans to put people living on the moon and mars. The planet is already overpopulated, so this ought to be done right away. Going to settle somewhere else will give people on earth and up there, some breathing room - the world needs it!

wonderful book. Would recommend this book to anyone great for the price

Project Constellation was laid out to be more than just a single "project", in fact it was developing into a manned/highlift Space Transportation System, reaching from Low Earth Orbit to the Moon and, ultimately, to the planet Mars. Of course such a politically concieved system stood the risk of losing most of its backing in the next Presidential Election, but, assuming - as the Authors in this presentation - that it wouldsucceed in gathering financial and politcal momentum, it could eventually have become what NASA was supposed to be aiming for.
What, then, was all that all about? Well, you get the answer in this booklet, most of an answer anyway, as conceived in the year 2006-07. Today it is a veritable Little Giant of information and explanation of a Plan that was... A couple of years from it's publicizing it became, of course, dated. Still some more years in the future, we here have a historical reference of what was visualized after the first NASA perusal of the George W Bush clarion call for Manned Space Exploration in the 2000:ies. I hope I will live long enough to compare the vision of 2006 with the reality of 2020.
Why only four stars? Again the bane of conflicting systems of weights and measures: ancient foot-pounds in the US, metric in the civilized world. One could use either, or, or both in parallell, in this booklet there is no clear line of preference. Please note, that NASA did decide that the lunar part of the program was to be planned and executed in metric. All honour to the NASA of old, which was able to land 12 men on the Moon using the old imperial measurements in conjunction with the computer technology of the 1960-ies. The new NASA hasn't got them off the ground yet, even with metrics.