Author: Mark Mortimer

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Take a layer off a Matryoshka doll and you find more of the same. Try to answer questions about a mysterious satellite of Saturn and more questions come bubbling up to the surface. Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton in their book “Titan Unveiled – Saturn’s Mysterious Moon Explored” treat the reader to this common scientific dilemma. In it, we see that the recent Cassini-Huygens mission gave us many answers to many questions but leaves a whole lot more just awaiting.

The tiny moon Titan orbits its giant mother planet Saturn. Our distant Sun shines so dimly at its distance that it can have no appreciable effect. But, some unidentified source of energy effects Titan’s surface. We know this because of the spectacular terrain that’s eerily evocative of Earth. Coastlines, volcanic mounts and great sand dunes appear to grace every view. This apparently dynamic surface may lead to other terrestrial similarities and may point to terrestrial analogues. This potential gave rise to the mission to Saturn and, in its own way, to this book.

This book has three intermingling tracts: Titan and its physical details, the Cassini-Huygens mission, and an author’s personal travails with the mission and space exploration. The Titan tract includes a review of the growth of knowledge regarding this moon. Particularly, there’s concepts drawn from the Voyageur probes as well as space based and land based telescopes. These include the magnetosphere, atmosphere and surface reflectivity. The accumulated knowledge is shown to be a necessary precursor to the mission and in particular to the Huygens lander.

The second tract looks at the Cassin-Huygens mission, its history, funding, scientific payload and initial arrival at the Saturn system. The writing is current to about July 2006, or Cassini orbit T16. Though the book has some well-known detail, such as the scientific payload, for the most part it looks at the processes, whether the need for continual political support, constant adaptation to modifications and the need for patience during the long flight out. These are interesting but don’t really pertain to the unveiling of Titan.

Sections that have sub-titles such as “Ralph’s Log, August 1994” easily identify the third tract. These also seem out of place as they exhibit a more personal interest rather than a exposition of Titan. In the logs are descriptions of breaking into rooms, threading wires through instruments and traveling to conferences. While adding a distraction, they may or may not be to the reader’s liking.

These three tracts constitute the majority of the book and also exhibit the book’s main weakness. That is, rather than unveiling Titan to the average reader, it is a personal narrative regarding a personal interest. Further, by finishing the writing before the end of the Cassini-Huygens mission, the reader should wonder, “why now, what’s the rush, what’s been left out?” Also diminishing the book are the many but small images. Though some have fantastic shapes, such as one of the cat’s claws at the feature Shikoku, they’re usually quite small and don’t do justice to the concept of unveiling. Thus, though entertaining, the book never really unveils Titan in a succinct manner.

This book does excel as a personal narrative of a scientist’s involvement in one of our grandest research endeavours. Equally, it will well satisfy someone who’s interested in the background of the Cassini-Huygen mission and especially the early results from its view of Titan. But, I expect that those who want a greater amount of detail of Titan will need other, more academic sources to obtain a better reference.

We are only beginning to appreciate the many interdependent physical properties that exist on Earth. Yet, we see similarities wherever we look. The book “Titan Unveiled – Saturn’s Mysterious Moon Explored” by Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton shows how advancing our knowledge of a distant satellite that orbits a distant planet has provided a special benefit to us on Earth.

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The National Geographic Society publishes popular accounts of a vast quantity of information related to the natural sciences. The society has a new space themed book by Howard Schneider entitled ‘Backyard Guide to the Night Sky‘. And, true to form, in it is a large quantity of information just ready for consumption by the average reader.

This smaller format soft cover book touches on just about everything above the Earth’s surface. Within it are details from the Earth’s troposphere to its exosphere, the planet Mercury to the Ort clouds and the constellations Andromeda to Virgo. With each description, the reader can understand a bit more of the subject and often view an excellently chosen, vibrant, adjoining illustration. The book’s closing pages discuss the big bang and deep sky astronomy to complete this book’s exposé on the night sky.

With a simple yet effective table of contents and a useful index, this well entitled guide serves as a handy reference to the amateur enthusiast. It’s perfect for an evening’s entertainment at a cottage, some reflective pondering while sitting in a back yard or even for daytime studying to broadening one’s knowledge of our existence.

The downside to trying to be such an exhaustive reference is that the book’s content lacks any sort of depth. For example, it mentions that analysts use spectroscopy to determine the chemical composition of stars. And, that is the complete notation of spectroscopy. Or, it mentions that the eye has rods and cones that effect visibility but not how. As well, the book targets the readers living in the northern hemisphere, as some southern constellations are not included. But, shortcomings are expected when a book aims to satisfy a large audience by choosing breadth over depth.

Yet, true to form with other National Geographic Society publications, this book has a rich presentation. Diagrams, photographs and tables vividly embellish the paragraphs. Four somewhat small sky charts show the position of some of the brightest stars. As well, star tables introduce the reader to each constellation’s main components. With this book, there’s no need to go searching elsewhere for many of the facts and figures regarding our night sky.

For some light entertainment, Howard Schneider’s book ‘Backyard Guide to Night Sky‘ provides the reader with a pleasant, enjoyable and fact-filled reference. It will be a useful guide that may even point the direction to a long, fun-filled and rewarding past time.

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Passion drives us to do things beyond mere instinctive survival. Varied and distinct, these pastimes can absorb hours and days. The night sky beckons many even though, or perhaps, because they will never be able to visit. Stephen James O’Meara’s book “Exploring the Solar System with Binoculars, A Beginner’s Guide to the Sun, Moon, and Planets” is testament to one man’s affliction with the shapes and colours that continually transcend the velvet backdrop of space. Through his passion, the book draws the reader into an ever changing, lively night time display.

The book’s title and subtitle succinctly frame the book’s contents. Between the covers, the reader will learn of methods to accurately and safely see features of our solar system. Whether sunspots on the Sun, mares on the Moon or fireballs from nowhere, there are subjects galore to entice the beginner to spend just another five minutes looking upwards. In addition, the book details both methods and tricks to get the most out of the time spent viewing. In particular though, it lists distinguishing characteristics of the subject whether colour, shape or sound. A diamond ring from an eclipse, a crescent of Venus or a sword slicing as from a comet are just some of the many vibrant distinctions brought to the reader’s attention throughout this book.

While the descriptions and facts should ably answer the many questions of the beginner, the book’s anecdotal passages make this publication shine. The author shares his passion through selections describing his emotions such as ‘I saw the spirit of the fireball dancing on its grave’ when describing an aerial explosion. The mood is continually heightened such a Tolstoy character who in ‘rapture and his eyes wet with tears, contemplated the radiant stare’ for the comet of 1812 or Agesinax’s ‘all round about environed with fire she is illumined’ to describe the Moon. These historical connections and the many references to ongoing research tells the reader that they share the wonder of the grandeur and complexity of Earth’s immediate neighbourhood.

A passion to explore the night sky burns in the hearts of many. Not knowing where to start or how to share this longing is no impediment. With bare eye or inexpensive binoculars, Stephen James O’Meara’s book “Exploring the Solar System with Binoculars” will guide you to satisfy your feelings.

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Written by Mark Mortimer

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The English language continually evolves. Just see Ambrose Bierce’s definition of dictionary. New concepts call for new words that often evolve from a new dictum. Astronomy has made its fair share of contributions to this cause. But, Daniel Hudon’s book “The Bluffer’s Guide to: The Cosmos” belies such augmentations. Within, the language is as common and everyday as what you used around the gas pump or barber shop. Yet, the science and information is as exact and appropriate as needed to communicate an idea.

The idea of a bluffer’s guide is, presumably, to allow a reader without formal training to wax eruditely about a particular topic. The Cosmos is, of course, pretty big. In fact it’s about as big as things get from our perspective. Yet, the book’s undaunted brashness allows a reader to become familiar with the heady concepts of cosmology. Its material is current, as noted by the reference to eight planets in our solar system. It’s humorous, as noted by fun sounding words like Zubenelgenubi. And it’s short and sweet, as noted by its small format and brief 86 pages. However, the few pages allow for the book to entertain the reader rather than drown them in details.

The focus on providing for the reader’s entertainment remains a fixture throughout the book. Thus, true to the title’s promise, a reader might be able to bluff their way through a conversation about the Cosmos after having read it. But, this book would better serve those readers who simply want to relate an unknown, difficult sounding subject to their own everyday perceptions. For instance, if the Earth is the size of an apple, then Uranus is the size of a honey dew melon. Or, consider the Big Bang to be like a cosmic burp happening 13.7 billion years ago. With this technique, the book should keep the naïve reader interested and also keep them reading to the end.

With cosmologists continually adding to society’s knowledge base, the everyday person could easily get overwhelmed with new phrases like ‘mysterious energy’. Yet, Daniel Hudon’s book “The Bluffer’s Guide to: The Cosmos” can come to the rescue. It succinctly delivers these ideas into simple, common verbiage and should keep the reader smiling at the same time.

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When is the best answer not the right answer? Assuredly many historical events epitomize this dilemma. Randall Whitcomb digs into Canada’s Avro Arrow story and delivers up such an event in his book, “Cold War Tech War – The Politics of America’s Air Defense“. In it, he shows how a plane, successfully designed and built for winning tomorrow’s war, ended up not being chosen as the perfect answer.

The Avro Arrow jet fighter resulted from post war collaboration between Canadian and British scientists and engineers. This futuristic fighter, with broad delta wings and an innovative power plant, should have been able to compete favourably in air to air combat. Though design and preproduction builds occurred in the late 1950’s, some people believe that it would have been able to match or better today’s F-22 Raptor. But, the Canadian government abruptly and completely ceased support of the program and demanded that its existence be stricken. Hence, in one day, the Arrow program ended and a company was laid waste.

Given the Arrow program’s abrupt and politically charged ending, much has been written about it. Whitcomb’s book aims to reconsider this event and add new light by looking at ‘the larger geo-political and economic issues’. To do so, the book looks at the company, A.V. Roe Canada Ltd, as the principle character. Providing its history and the actions of some of its employees and products allows the reader to accept the claim that the company was a global leader in the aerospace world. Describing the design of the Avro Jetliner, the Avro Supersonic Transport and the Avro Space Threshold Vehicle shows the reader just how innovative and advanced were the company’s designers. And, with all this, the book also shows what went wrong.

Whitcomb’s claim is that international machinations were to blame. Here, the book bears more resemblance to a John le Carre novel than a work of non-fiction. However, the references and reprinted (declassified secret) documents indicate otherwise. In looking at the broader global picture, the book expands its scope to include the Bilderberg Group, banana republics and the Panama canal. Its main theme is that international conglomerates used their power and influence to ensure a maximum return over the short-term future. Thus with A.V. Roe being a Canadian company and most conglomerates being from the United States, the Arrow was considered expendable and even threatening. Hence it became a victim of its own success, at least according to the book.

Though an intriguing and fascinating book in its own right, the prose has some problems. The root of these is possibly due to the author unfortunately passing away before finishing the manuscript. Perhaps in consequence, there are many short, sometimes disconnected chapters, including some that seem unrelated to the main theme. As well, the depth of detail for the aircraft (e.g. explaining airfoil shapes) don’t relate to the geo-political or economic issues. But, the enthusiasm, knowledge and ability of the author’s writing quickly put such trivialities aside.

So, why would today’s aerospace community be interested in this book? Well, there’s no plan to resurrect the Arrow, so engineers probably aren’t interested. But, international conglomerates remain today. Therefore, any reader who is interested in turning a grandiose dream into reality would benefit from the reality spread throughout this book. Those vast new telescopes on nearly inaccessible mountain tops or spaceships carrying humans to Mars all will rely upon the support of international conglomerates. Thus, as this book readily shows, champions need pick and choose their friends and allies carefully.

Politics makes for vociferous discussions as well as strange bedfellows. Mix in some state of the art technical theory and the recipient may never again be able to differ fact from fiction. In Randall Whitcomb’s book, “Cold War Tech War – The Politics of America’s Air Defense” it becomes only too clear that politics held greater sway than reason. And from it, as shown, the right answer was lost.

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We work hard to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. If lucky, we’ve got some time left over for other activities. Patrick McCray’s book “Keep Watching the Skies – The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age” is the story of a program that took advantage of some of those spare hours. During its time, this program had people encouraged, organized, and trained to view the skies and contribute to the nascent space age.

In McCray’s book, the reader gets transported back to the heady days of the mid 1950s when anything seemed possible. Martians could land, asteroids could impact and enemies could lob projectiles across the skies. But, governments had no capability and scientists had no clue as to how to detect any intransigencies. Hence, the call went out for civilian volunteers to watch for transits. With enough volunteers spread across the world, then we’d have the ability to know where, when and perhaps what has briefly streaked across the inky blackness.

As a well written book by an historian, there’s lots of interesting detail within. McCray lays out the basis for the Moonwatch program by including many references to the global politics of the day, whether McCarthyism or socialism. In addition, he gives a cross section of societal attitudes, principally being civic duty and a near adoration of science and technology. Expanding upon this, he goes into the personalities: especially Fred Whipple of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory who set the basis for the program, Len Campbell who acted as the voice of the program, and the many volunteers, such as Vioalle Hefferean who used their time and abilities to scan the skies. Out of this mix comes an entertaining and detailed assessment of everyday talents and the enthusiastic amateurs who were so enthralled with the safety of their nation and contributing to hard science.

This later concept overrides the theme of the book. Though the book is principally a review of a scientific program, it’s also a valuable insight into how amateurs and professionals relate. For instance, some amateurs showed their capabilities to be as good as or better than the professionals. And some professionals wouldn’t support amateurs, no matter how beneficial. As such, this book can provide a reader with some significant insight into the interactions of these elements of society. Also, it shows a fascinating change from almost universal public support for technology toward disregard or disfavour. In it, the reader sees just how flighty public support really is. But, as a history of the little known Operation Moonwatch, this book makes a pleasant, detailed and well referenced story.

The dawn of the space age brought a whole new realm of space science immediately and forcefully into people’s consciousness. Some rebelled at this new perspective, but many were drawn into this wondrous realm. In Patrick McCray’s book “Keep Watching the Skies – The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age“, this scientific field gets shown for the pure delight that could be derived from participating and contributing even without being a scientist.

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With all the probes recently landing on Mars, it’s no wonder we feel that the planet is close enough to vacation there. Robert Zubrin has such a scheme already in place for his book entitled “How to Live on Mars – A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet“. Though vacationers are welcome, he much more expects the arrival of immigrants who are ready and raring to put spade into ground for a homestead of the future.

Even though people have yet to land on Mars, our probes peer down, crawl upon and drill into all parts of the Martian surface. From them, we’ve a good understanding of the atmospheric make-up, the surface composition and likely sub-surface material. And, results indicate that people could exist on that planet, but it would be anything other than a comfortable existence. At least at the beginning.

Though the future’s not certain, Zubrin’s book takes the possibly optimistic view of a wise Martian resident providing glimmers of hope for new immigrants. Using an active, present tense, his book dollops up words and ideas of wisdom, such as selecting an appropriate space suit, deciding on the best location for a space hab, and fine-stepping through bureaucratic shenanigans. A humorous slant on the decision making and a slight bend toward technical details make the reading fun and informative. Occasionally, the reader may forget that the book’s proverbial vantage point occurs sometime about a hundred years in the future.

Were this book only providing a light and possible view of human activities in the future, it would have made for a very enjoyable read. But, Zubrin can’t seem to resist throwing darts and arrows at apparently favourite targets of NASA, big business and government bureaucracy. An occasional jab would have grounded the book into mainstream opinion. But, Zubrin takes every issue in the guide book and glamorizes his decision at the expense of “the charlatans of NASA” and corrupt governments. Thus, even though the perspective is from the future, the book seems a critique of the present.

Yet, Zubrin has a lot of experience in the space field, including living at a Mars analog. This experience comes alive in the book, whether from the viewpoint of people on Mars who soar with flying chickens or who safe habitation modules from marauding goats. And yes, with a lot of people on Mars, there will be need for governments and some corruption will likely exist. After all people aren’t perfect. But, we still have to get there, and reading this book may help place us all a little closer to living upon that not so far away planet.

Once we have the vehicles to carry our bodies to Mars and once a substantial number of people live there, then we will need guidebooks on how the rest of us can join in. Though perhaps jumping the gun a bit, Robert Zubrin’s book “How to Live on Mars – A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet” presents one particular view on people’s needs to living on that little red speck that we see in the night sky. Perhaps with more people imagining our presence there, then we won’t have to wait so long for the eventuality to occur.

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Being part of a series on a “people’s history of spaceflight”, Chris Gainor’s book entitled “To a Distant Day – The Rocket Pioneers” relives the onset of humankind’s age of rocketry. Though starting from a broad, distant vantage point that includes Galileo and Copernicus, this book quickly jumps to Tsiolkovsky and other recent rocket luminaries. Then, it speedily presents the wondrous people and their amazing effort that led to human spaceflight.

In keeping with being a people’s history, this book compliments the individuals involved and maintains a positive attitude to all segments of aerospace development. As well, Gainor has done his homework, as the book includes a broad swath of detail and still branches a little off the normal path. For example, it includes finer details like Kondratyuk’s mysterious name change, the German Raketenflugplatz group and the Manhigh balloon program. Sometimes the book wanders a bit too far, as when it discusses the origination of Murphy’s Law. But, it’s these additions that would keep this book interesting to the casual, non-technical reader.

Were history simply a recitation of the facts, then this book admirably fits the bill. It includes most of the common space lore and a list of sources that reflect its role as popular history. From these, a reader can appreciate the huge effort expanded to make us a space faring species. But, the purpose of an historical analysis is to find relevance to today. The book includes tidbits in support of this, such as billing space as an empty canvas, free of social problems and ready for exploitation. And it pronounces the dramatic shift in the method of advancement, from a lonely creative genius to a broad, team based effort. However, these perspectives are few and have no discussion on their relevance to today. Thus, as entertaining and informative as it is, this book fails to add to the existing broad reviews of the history of the rocket pioneers. However, it does provide a very nice encapsulation of the advancement of rocketry leading up to the first human spaceflight.

For someone who hasn’t much background in rocketry and who has a casual interest, Chris Gainor’s book “To a Distant Day – The Rocket Pioneers” is a great resource. As it aptly states, with the great efforts of many people across a broad range of technical fields, “Poyekhali!” (as Gagarin said, “We’re off!”).