Fundamentals of Astrodynamics (Dover Books on Aeronautical Engineering) 1st Edition

by Roger R. Bate (Author), Donald D. Mueller (Author), Jerry E. White (Author)

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George P. Sutton
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From the Publisher

Basic Electricity (0486209733)

Fundamentals Of Astrodynamics (0486600610)

Teaching text developed by U.S. Air Force Academy develops the basic two-body and n-body equations of motion; orbit determination; classical orbital elements, coordinate transformations; differential correction; and more.

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Since 1941, Math & Science books have been a major part of Dover Publications overall catalog. With over 1,400 titles spanning the subjects of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Astronomy and more, our catalog contains MANY excellent introductory texts for high school to graduate level study.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

When the United States Air Force Academy began teaching astrodynamics to undergraduates majoring in astronautics or aerospace engineering, it found that the traditional approach to the subject was well over 100 years old. An entirely new text had to be evolved, geared to the use of high speed digital computers and actual current practice in the industry. Over the years the new approach was proven in the classrooms of the Academy; its students entering graduate engineering schools were found to possess a better understanding of astrodynamics than others. So pressing is the need for superior training in the aerospace sciences that the professor-authors of this text decided to publish it for other institutions' use. This Dover edition is the result.

The text is structured for teaching. Central emphasis is on use of the universal variable formulation, although classical methods are discussed. Several original unpublished derivations are included. A foundation for all that follows is the development of the basic two-body and n-body equations of motion; orbit determination is then treated, and the classical orbital elements, coordinate transformations, and differential correction. Orbital transfer maneuvers are developed, followed by time-of-flight with emphasis on the universal variable solution. The Kepler and Gauss problems are treated in detail. Two-body mechanics are applied to the ballistic missile problem, including launch error analysis and targeting on a rotating earth. Some further specialized applications are made to lunar and interplanetary flight, followed by an introduction to perturbation, special perturbations, integration schemes and errors, and analytic formulation of several common perturbations.

Example problems are used frequently, while exercises at the end of each chapter include derivations and quantitative and qualitative problems. The authors suggest how to use the text for a first course in astrodynamics or for a two-course sequence.

This major instructional tool effectively communicates the subject to engineering students in a manner found in no other textbook. Its efficiency has been thoroughly demonstrated. Dover feels privileged in joining with the authors to make its concepts and text matter available to other faculties.
A new work, first published by Dover in 1971.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dover Publications; 1st edition (June 1, 1971)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0486600610
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0486600611
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.07 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #103,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Aeronautical Engineering
- #14 in Aircraft Design & Construction
- #55 in Astronautics & Space Flight

Customer Reviews:
384 ratings

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Roger R. Bate
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Donald D. Mueller
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5 star		81%
4 star		13%
3 star		2%
2 star		1%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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L. Johnson

I used this as a basis for learning Python, re-connected with a prior career.

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2017

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I'm a chip design engineer by trade (BSEE '84), and I was in middle school during the Apollo years. The MSL mission to Mars re-inspired me to self-study how the folks at JPL do their work.

Also, I've used programming languages throughout my engineering career, and recently decided I need to learn Python.

So I decided to read this book as if I'm a student, and use Python to solve the problems. (I'm using Pythonista, an iOS app with useful Python 3.5 packages built in. Version 3.5 allows use of Greek characters in the code, so I can match those in the text.)

I initially researched, then decided to avoid certain astrodynamics packages available for the language; because they basically have all the problems solved.

What I have used though is the NumPy and SymPy packages, that give units and symbolic functions, such as finding the algebraic form of derivative of an algebraic expression.

The best part of this experience has been that the book uses units that I can program in the same fashion. When checking answers, the units print out along with the numbers, so if there's an error, I can see from the wrong units where the bug in my code might be.

The book has a handful of errors, as others have pointed out.

But one other issue has been that the time frame of the book (I was a sophomore in high school when the first edition was published) is such that precision problems encountered and discussed therein just don't exist.

For example, in Section 9.5, page 413, there is a discussion and examples of loss of precision because 'the machine' can only represent 6 significant digits. My Pythonista result for the same example problem shows 16 decimal digits; giving a correct answer where the book predicts a roundoff error in the 5th decimal digit. In all, there are many problems where the answer is different, and I have to just decide that it's a round off problem of the old computer, but not my code.

One intuitive connection pleasure has been due to my having been in a US Air Force radar surveillance career field in the late 70s, and the authors spend a bit of time on tidbits like determination of ICBM trajectory from 2 radar sitings (BMEWS), satellite tracking, other things where now I understand what my old radar computers were doing under the covers while I watched and tracked from my scope. (Side note: it was my exposure to computers during my radar days that influenced me to study and get my Bachelors in EE, focused on computers.)

Overall, it's been a useful book for learning the basic of the subject, as well as learning a new programming language.

48 people found this helpful

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GWT

Great book

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2018

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A nice technical book. It is well written, easy to understand if you have some physics and vector calculus under your belt, and quite informative. I now understand orbital dynamics a lot better.
On the down side, the paper and print could be better. The authors use the convention of placing small dots above the variable for time derivatives, and as my vision is not perfect, this required me to have a magnifier handy. For younger readers, this will be no problem.

8 people found this helpful

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Susan

Textbook full of equations

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2019

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If you are looking for a textbook with equations on every page, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a descriptive "introduction" with a conceptual approach, this is NOT the book for you.

7 people found this helpful

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Joseph Sweat

Great for self-study and an introduction to the subject.

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2014

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A very good introduction to the subject. Many examples are given and several of the questions have answers in the text which makes this ideal for self study.

The primary focus is on geocentric (Earth-centered) orbits. Especially the orbits of satellites and ballistic missiles. There are two chapters which include detailed information on Lunar injection trajectories and interplanetary transfer orbits.

You will need to know basic algebra, matrix multiplication, trigonometry, and vector mechanics in order to answer the questions. Fortunately, if you had a decent precalculus course in high school or college you should have all the math you need. There is also a nice review of vector mechanics in the appendix.

The only flaw I found was that some of the chapters were way too long. The author places all of the questions at the end of the chapter. So when you have a 100 page long chapter that is a lot of information to cover in the questions. If they ever make a second edition I would recommend that they place questions at the end of individual sections rather than have seven or eight sections worth of questions grouped together at the end of a chapter.

Also save yourself the trouble and make a formula chart. There are tons of formulas in this book and rather than having to flip pages constantly it is a lot easier to write every new formula down on a sheet of paper. These formula charts will make the exercises flow faster.

This book would be perfect for someone who wants to know how orbits work. It would also make a great gift for any Kerbal Space Program fans you know.

20 people found this helpful

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Michael K. Fox

Good book

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2012

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I've read a lot of text books in my time. An unfortunate number of them were written by people who, while they may know their subject, are not skilled at teaching. I've learned to be particularly wary of books whose titles begin with "Introduction to" or "Fundamentals of" because they tend to start out with a few pages about the really simple fundamentals, then the rest of the book is completely abstruse. This book is not like that. The authors (Bate, Mueller and White) start from fundamentals and proceed slowly and steadily to build on them in a logical fashion. The book contains exercises that (wonder of wonders) actually added to my understanding of the material. The authors clearly have experience teaching this subject and seemed to have an intuitive grasp of exactly where I would have trouble understanding, whereupon they would offer a little extra extra explanation or some coaching about the math or even (wow) a discussion about the physical implications of a mathematical equation they had derived. This book is exactly what the title claims; "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics." Note that you will need to know trigonometry and some vector math and linear algebra before reading this book.

21 people found this helpful

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Bee Lady

it great to get a book for $16

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2018

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My son's Astrodynamics text book. In a day when college books run $400, it great to get a book for $16. Thank you professor for using such a good book. I even got another one for my husband to read because it is still so applicable in our science world today!

4 people found this helpful

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Tony Tony

This book is awesome. Super useful for learning Astrodynamics and orbital mechanics.

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2018

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This book is super helpful. Just keep in mind that sometimes units need to be converted because it still uses the U.S. stupid measuring units in this book. *sigh* They should just stick to the metric system. Other than that it's awesome.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

A good introduction to astrodynamics, but not perfect

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 9, 2019

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This was my first foray into the field of astrodynamics, and I'm glad I started with this.

It covers the basics of orbital mechanics such as the 2-body and n-body problems, dealing with perturbations and changing orbits. The book isn't just technical information, and includes a significant amount of context for the equations and theory, with the author giving relevant names, dates and history which keeps it from feeling dry.

It refers to itself as a resource for teachers, but I've found using it as a self-learning tool works just fine.
In fact, unless I knew otherwise I would think that it was written specifically for this purpose.
When you eventually get around to the equations each chapter, it feels like you've been building up to it for the last couple of minutes of reading which is quite encouraging considering the difficulty of many of them.

The diagrams are generally high-quality and easy to read but the typesetting for the maths is not perfect, and many variables look weird and distracting.
The book also mostly uses Imperial units as it was initially published in the US in the 70's, which is a real shame as everyone uses SI units nowadays.

Overall, I'd recommend this text because of its low price and reasonable clarity, despite the problems I've outlined.

7 people found this helpful

robert

Useful information but in imperial not SI units

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2015

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Good book, useful information and interesting to read but the imperial units are a bit annoying. It is unusual for scientifici books these days to use imperial units, SI units are used in most places, but as this boook is quite old and by american authors it's not so surprising to find it using imperial units. Fortunately the mathematics is the same in SI, metric or imperial, only the constants change.

6 people found this helpful

Mart Skittlebeck

Typesetting is meh

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2014

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I'm only a chapter into the book, but the authors certainly have a way with words and making the content interesting and understandable -- both highly important qualities in a book. Aesthetically, though, the book leaves a little bit to be desired. This complaint is actually what has caused me to write a (brief) review so early into my reading it.

The big problem is the typesetting of the mathematics. If ever you've seen a modern maths text, or a historic classic, you'll know that the layout of the maths is a huge issue, and that it's usually very well done: they'll use LaTeX mostly, and even if they don't, the typesetting isn't a distracting. In this book, though, for me, it is. There are very misaligned equations, messed up fractions, text that should be on a separate line below the equation actual is before the equation or immediately after it on the same line.

These grievances may be for only a small subset of people that care about the design of a book, but I think they're worth noting.

That said, it's not going to stop me from reading the book, but it will be in the back of my mind that this could've been done much better with only little effort.

5 people found this helpful

Dillon Brookes

A great book, very informative and covers quite a lot

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2018

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A great book, very informative and covers quite a lot. Unfortunately though it uses imperial measurements, which makes the calculations much more awkward to do if you aren't very familiar with the imperial system.

One person found this helpful

HHughes

Wordy but good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2018

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Very wordy but still well written and good explainations and maths !