coming soon..., books to be published soon Options

[monitorlizard]

I thought there might be some merit in UMSF members alerting each other to forthcoming books that seem especially interesting. This book complements Phil Stooke's new book quite well, and looks like a lot of fun:

Robert Godwin -- The Lunar Exploration Scrapbook (Apogee Books) coming Dec. 1, 2007 (224 pages) $18.48 at Amazon.com (US site)

Description: From single-seat landers to rocket backpacks and lunar bulldozers, this study takes readers into the imagination of the world's top aerospace engineers by presenting NASA's lunar spacecraft research. A unique blend of history and imagination, this resource covers not only the actual exploration of the moon conducted during the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, but also includes a presentation of dozens of spacecraft that were never built. Vivid, colorful renderings of the conceptual crafts--many of which are not available anywhere else--are also included, providing a visual progression of NASA's technological advancements.

(At least I hope this isn't redundant of Phil Stooke's forthcoming reference standard.)

[Mariner9]

Completely by chance I ran across a new Europa book, "Unmasking EUROPA".

It is published by Copernicus Books, whom I had never heard of. A quick look inside the cover informs us that they are "An imprint of Springer Science-Business Media", and associated with Praxis Publishing Ltd. So, not a new player after all.


It is written by Richard Greenberg, the same author as "Europa: The Ocean Moon" I loved that book, but as previously discussed here on UMSF the author does have a political ax to grind with the scientific powers-that-be on the Galileo project. His arguments that the thick ice interpretation on Europa is flawed sound convincing, but when you are hearing only one side of a story it always does.


The new book is stripped of much of the mathematical and geologic terminology used in the original in order to reach a wider audience. I would prefer not to say it is "dumbed down", the best analogy I could think of is comparing a special issue of SCIENCE dealing with Europa, vs. the same information delivered in a long article in Scientific American.


I've only read the first few chapters. If anything this one feels even more political than the first, possibly because the author is spending more time describing the process of discovery of Europa's secrets. But I get the sense that the politics takes a mostly back seat for most of the rest of the book, and pops back up again towards the end.


Europa: The Ocean Moon was a pricey book, I think I paid $90 for it. "Unmasking EUROPA" is only $27.50, so it's a lot cheaper.
The first book had a lot more images in it, including a lot of context images and mosaics I had never seen elsewhere. If you only buy one of the two I would go with the first one. But being an outer planets junkie, I bought both without hesitation.