November 1982:space book reviews

The Story of the Space Shuttle (2nd Edition),

Tim Furniss, Hodder & Stoughton, 106pp, 1982, £3.95 (soft cover).

Tim Furniss, an Associate Fellow of the Society (as he does us proud by noting on the back cover) has updated his earlier edition, which was published before the Shuttle first flew. The book is in an "easy reading” format, with plenty of photographs and drawings to take us through the history of the Shuttle, the people who fly (or will fly) it, and the many plans for future developments based on its use.

There are several pages of full colour illustrations, and the text is concise and packed with information. This is not a book for the expert, or for those seeking technical details, but as a popular account to "dig into”, it contains much for the layman.

There are chapters devoted to Spacelab, the ground station from which the Shuttle will operate (and to which it will return), the early missions (the book includes STS-2, with STS-3 “due soon”), and “making space work”, a useful look ahead to what is planned (and dreamed of) for the Shuttle's future.

Voyages to Saturn

D,Morrison, NASA SP-451, US Government Printing Office, 227 pp., 1982, $9.50 (Overseas $12).

This book presents the stories of each of the Voyager encounters with Saturn, Voyager 1 in November 1980 and Voyager 2 in August 1981. Both craft were outstanding successes, returning far more new. information than that collected in the preceding 300 years of Earth-based observations. Both probes were risky ventures, involving intricate mechanisms sent to perform delicate measurements after trav¬ersing immense distances through space and surviving unexplored fields of particles of magnetic forces.

The book begins with a brief history of Saturn from ancient times and a discussion of the Pioneer probe at Saturn in 1979. The main text of the book then follows, concerned with the two Voyager missions, and ending with a summary of the knowledge gained which has brought about a virtually new concept of the Saturnian system.

The volume ends with appendixes which detail the members of various Voyager teams and provide pictorial maps of some of Saturn's satellites. It also includes an index and reproduces almost 200 images, a third of which are in colour.