Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« Sunday Morning Open Thread | Main | Sunday NFL Thread »
December 04, 2011

Sunday Book Thread

I have a confession to make: when it comes to reading, I have the attention-span of a five year old. Not so much with the reading itself; no, I can sit and read for hours on end. No, where my problem comes in is subject matter -- some other book or writer will catch my eye, and I'll leave the book I'm currently reading to chase some other rabbit down a hole. The end result is that I often have five or sometimes eight or ten books going at the same time.

As I work my way through the enormous expanse of Paul Rahe's Republics Ancient and Modern, I found my attention captured by the launch of NASA/JPL's new Mars probe, the Mars Science Laboratory. I am an inveterate space geek, and stuff like this really excites me. And as so often happens, I found my attention wandering back to previous robotic missions that NASA has launched.

I have done a fair bit of technical writing in my life, and perhaps it's as a result of that I have become fond of well-written technical histories. Too often these works are written by engineers for other engineers (or their bosses), and are dry as dust. But there are several excellent technical histories of certain NASA missions if you know where to look (though I still wouldn't call them "light reading" for people who aren't fairly technically inclined).

The first book I went back to was a history of Ames' Pioneer probes: The Depths of Space by Mark Wolverton. Pioneers 10 and 11* broke the path for the Voyager probes in the 1970's, and became the first human-made instruments to visit the outer planets of the solar system.

This of course led me to a technical history of the Voyager program. Now, the historical popularity of this mission means that there are hundreds of books full of pretty pictures and lofty philosophical pronouncements of What It All Means, but precious little on the technical development and launch of the probes. Luckily, a good technical history was finally published: Voyager's Grand Tour by Henry Dethloff and Ronald Schorn.

A favorite of mine that I've mentioned in the past is Eric Chaisson's The Hubble Wars, which is as good a history of Big Science as it is of the Space Telescope itself.

If you like these, and want to get really in-depth into not just our space missions but also those of Russia/USSR, you can try the following books:

Histories like this are important, and not just to pasty bespectacled nerds who once dreamed of being steely-eyed rocket men. The scientists and engineers who designed those machines and sent them into the void deserve to be remembered as the explorers of our day, just as Coronado, Cortes, de Gama, de Soto, Columbus, and Sir Francis Drake are remembered from times past. Many centuries hence, when much else about our time will be forgotten, it may well be that we are remembered mainly for what we did Out There: sending complicated robots far out into the void just because we were curious about what they'd find.

We may remember this age as the Golden Age of discovery, and that the catastrophes and calamities that fill our daily lives really don't matter all that much over the long term.

*EDIT: MarkS in the comments reminds me that it was Pioneers 10 and 11 that went to Jupiter. Pioneers 6 and 7 went into orbit around the sun. That's what I get for not having the book nearby when I write these things....


digg this
posted by Monty at 10:02 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Thomas Paine: "I expect the retard to pardon Jill and himself by ..."

Ciampino - The Glass Gaza Skating Rink & Parking Lot: "Watched a great podcast (not new) with Douglass Mu ..."

Don Black: "> the captain was an incompetent maniac and the cr ..."

A sea monkey: ""Marxism in science leads to women marrying brine ..."

Commissar Hrothgar (hOUT3) ~ Next year in Corsicana - again! ~ [/i][/b][/u][/s]: "The FBI has been corrupt in one way or another, ev ..."

NR Pax: "[i]37 "Yo course is so fat..."[/i] "The tuition ..."

Sean Hannity, Keeping Old Farts Entertained With Nonsense: "The FBI is staffed with the most patriotic, most h ..."

Anna Puma: "Is the Lincoln MAP Club still relevant? ..."

Common Tater: "It isn’t well known, but Warren’s fath ..."

one hour sober: "During COVID lockdown, Hillsborough County Sheriff ..."

Martini Farmer: "> When J20 rolls around, Trump oughta first pardon ..."

Anna Puma: "Blake The final report will be a fun exercise o ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64