The Rocket Company (Library of Flight Series) [Paperback]

Patrick J. G. Stiennon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1563476967 | ISBN-13: 978-1563476969 | Publication Date: July 15, 2005 | Edition: First Edition

• Seven Billionaires and One Big Problem
• Big Telescopes, Hot Rodders, and Librarians
• Gateses, Jobses, and the Laureates' Lemma
• Build Big, Build Many, or Use it Again
• Small Market, Small Payload, but not a toy
• Myths, Mistrust, and Trust
• The Pitch
• The Business Plan
• Mazes, Stop Cords, and Skunk Workers
• Fuel Tanks, Heat Shields, and Fire Walls
• Balloon Tanks, Fracture Mechanics, and Friction Stir Welding
• Enthusiasm Bubbles, Ejections, and Expander Cycles
• Gasoline, Alcohol, Kerosene, or Liquid Methane
• Design Reviews, Prototypes, and Parawings
• Guidance, Navigation, and Control
• Webb Suit, Hard Suit, Space Suit
• Markets, Philosophy, Techniques, and Approaches Rockets, Jets, and Soft Landings Pilots, Payloads, and Passengers Mooncars, Monks, and Monasteries Aliens, Cheetahs, and Archea Halfway to Everywhere, First Stage, First Flight Stop the Production Line! Earth Below Us Money, Manufacturing, and Marketing Always Room for Improvement Epilogue I: Space is Finally a PlaceEpilogue II: Mars for the Many.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Patrick J. G. Stiennon is an experienced aerospace engineer and patent attorney at Stiennon & Stiennon, Madison, Wisconsin. He is a Senior Member of AIAA David M. Hoerr is an aerospace consultant and a lecturer in Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He is a Senior Member of AIAA. Doug Birkholz is an award-winning industrial designer and principal at Inspire Design Group LLC, a product design firm based in Middleton, Wisconsin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 263 pages
• Publisher: AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics & Ast); First Edition edition (July 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563476967
• ISBN-13: 978-1563476969
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting case study, October 29, 2005

By 

Juan Suros "jsuros" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rocket Company (Library of Flight Series) (Paperback)

This book is a case study for launching the exploitation of space through private means. It has a thin framing story in which the writer claims to be writing a history of a company that is developing a reusable launch vehicle for sale on the open market.

As a fictional business case study, it makes for very interesting reading. The author knows his rocket science and celestial mechanics and lays out his ideas very well. I saw an earlier reviewer's complaint over the use of imperial rather than metric units, but it does not distract from the reasoning.

For a book on space travel, this book is unique in my experience in the detail to which it analyses the business requirements needed to make the ideas work. The idea that the rocket company intends only to manufacture and sell the launch vehicle described in the book is a big departure from the sort of space advocacy books that have been published since the great retreat from the moon.

There are various technical decisions made in the design process described in the book that I have a problem with, but I'd guess that every reader will feel this way and that every reader's quibbles will be different. That's what happens whenever a truly interesting idea is discussed.

I wish more of the ideas presented in the proposed design had been summarized in graphs. Hopefully future printings of the book will expand the one graph at the end into a series of appendices for the technically inclined.

Highly recommended.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My take on The Rocket Company, August 31, 2005

By 

Janet Dietz "for Bob Dietz" (San Luis Obispo, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rocket Company (Library of Flight Series) (Paperback)

This book is promoted as a novel. It's much more than a novel -- it really is a primer of "rocket science." I'd rate it at least a 4 and 1/2 stars. I am a missile engineer with 27 years experience in the design and development of rockets and missiles. While most of my experience is with solid propellant missiles, I have a working knowledge of liquid rockets. Patrick tells it how it truly is. The book leads the reader through the classical trade-offs involved in designing a liquid-fueled payload-to-orbit rocket system. Not until the chapter suggesting the existence of a monestary on the moon did I come to appreciate that this is really fiction. I should acknowledge that I knew Patrick and worked with him on a single-stage-to-orbit system some 20 years ago. I have not had contact with him since then until I was alerted to the existence of this book by a friend we share in common.
[...]

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From a Retired "Rocket Scientist"--This Is How It Really Is, September 25, 2009

By 

Terry Sunday (El Paso, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rocket Company (Library of Flight Series) (Paperback)

"The Rocket Company" is a really neat book. You'd never confuse it with great literature, though. After all, engineers, such as authors Patrick J. G. Stiennon and David M. Hoerr, are generally not known for writing scintillating prose. It's sort of a hybrid--a novel that reads like a technical report. This is not a bad thing in itself, but it definitely lacks a fast-paced narrative style to draw you into the story. What little dialogue there is reads like highly polished scripts rather than real conversations. However, if you make the effort to work your way through "The Rocket Company," you will receive, at no additional cost, an excellent, comprehensive introductory education in the fields of spacecraft engineering, production, test and operations. The authors lead you through the technical, management and financial processes involved in developing a (fictional) new, low-cost space launch system. You can't avoid learning a lot from them along the way.

Debates about the cheapest ways to put payloads into orbit go back to the beginning of the Space Age. The expendable launch vehicles that continue to dominate the field today clearly are not the answer--they are the equivalent of an airline flying a brand-new 747 on one transcontinental trip and then cutting up the airplane for scrap when it gets to its destination. The bill of goods that initially sold the Space Shuttle promised much cheaper access to space--that didn't happen. The men and women of "The Rocket Company" take the next step beyond the Space Shuttle. They develop a fully reusable launch vehicle that slashes the cost per pound to put payloads into orbit, and even makes money on the deal.

The authors are obviously devout space enthusiasts, as well as being exceptionally experienced and knowledgeable about all the topics they write about. Their enthusiasm and expertise shine through on every page. Unlike nearly all spaceflight books on the market today, "The Rocket Company" is remarkably free of technical errors (I only found one--Alexei Leonov's ship was a "Voskhod" [really just a modified "Vostok"], not a "Soyuz"). This really is how "rocket science" works. Judging from my own career in the aerospace industry, they get it right in every detail. By the way, the black-and-white pencil sketches in each chapter, by industrial designer Doug Birkholz, are also excellent. They remind me a bit of Syd Mead's work, which is high praise indeed.

Although I personally doubt that there's enough potential demand to justify a vehicle like the one Messrs. Stiennon and Hoerr postulate (and thus I doubt the central premise of the book), I still enjoyed "The Rocket Company" enormously. Sure, it's a little geeky, but it's packed from cover to cover with more accurate, reliable spaceflight information per page than you're likely to find in any other readily available source. If your eyes glaze over at such terms as "parametric analysis," "mass ratio" or "specific impulse," it may not be your cup of tea. But if you have the slightest interest in finding out how space technology really works, buy it, read it and learn from it--you won't regret it.