Space Missions: Books
Spaceplanes: From Airport to Spaceport (Astronomers' Universe)
By Matthew A. Bentley
Buy From Amazon List price: $34.95 Amazon price: $26.56
"Spaceplanes From Airport to Spaceport presents a vision of the near future in which space vehicles can take off from an international airport, refuel in space, and fly regularly between the Earth and the Moon. The book is built on the solid engineering foundation prepared by David Ashford in his book Spaceflight Revolution, but develops the argument.
This is a coherent, lucid, and optimistic picture of the future – aimed directly at the reader as a future space passenger – which explains why the Space Tourist market could easily become the single most important factor in the mid-term future development of space transportation. In a few years it will be possible to board a spaceplane and fly into Earth orbit, and perhaps visit a space station. Later development could include refuelling in orbit to take a tour of cislunar space.
As the latest news has shown, the successful flight of SpaceShipOne and the imminent inauguration of Virgin Galactic’s sub-orbital rides from the New Mexico desert have already begun this process.
This book explains the technical details of precisely how all this can be accomplished within the next few decades."
The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration)
By David Schrunk, Burton Sharpe, Bonnie L. Cooper, and Madhu Thangavelu
Buy From Amazon List price: $34.95 Amazon price: $22.20
“This book is the best up-to-date introduction to lunar development, focusing on the primary technical infrastructure necessary to expand from an initial base via In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) to global development of what the authors term “Planet Moon”. The book makes a clear case first for why we should do this, and then in quite detailed outline, how. While some technical components, such as remote robotic tele-operation, or lunar materials mining and processing, still require research and development work, nothing in this project is far from mundane things we already know how to do." This excerpt from the Amazon.com review by Arthur P. Smith was based on the 2001 edition but the link goes to an updated 2008 version.