Category: Book Reviews

In Greg’s view NASA, the premiere space institute, is a government bureaucracy that is more concerned with preserving itself than in extending the space frontier. He alludes to conspiracies and to too close a relationship between NASA and their predominant suppliers Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Much of the source of this problem is the perceived current purpose of NASA which is to garner as many votes as possible for the party in power. One need only consider NASA’s inception. Here, when President Kennedy was looking for a means of countering the Soviets he considered space but he argued, “We shouldn’t be spending this kind of money because I’m not that interested in space”. Nonetheless soon after saying this he gave NASA the mandate to go to the moon. NASA then achieved this goal while at the same time ensuring contracts were provided to constituents in each of the 51 states. Ever since then NASA has not had the necessary political backing for a large scale enterprise or even the maintenance of the status quo. Sadly, without the political necessity nor an immediate economic benefit the dreamers are getting drenched with the reality of too high a cost to extend the frontier for too low an economic return.

The deciding factor for all this dreaming is the cost of accessing space. Usually quoted as a cost per pound (or kilogram), the current value is one or two orders of magnitude too high for establishing an industry. Further, according to Greg, established big business and government garner greater benefits from maintaining their control over all elements and they therefore don’t want to reduce the cost nor see anyone else reduce the cost. This doesn’t mean it won’t happen. There is the X-Prize and its front runner, Rutan’s White Knight aircraft that will launch the rocket ship SpaceShipOne into sub-orbital flight. Robert Zubrin has his Mars Society. The Mars Habitat analogue on Devon Island is conditioning people for an eventual presence on Mars. MirCorp was an endeavour to privatize the Mir space station thus annulling governments’ current monopoly on housing humans in space. Almost all the well known alternative access to space advocates have a reference. Yet, with all their brilliant engineering constructs and all their courtship of politicians somehow the feeling from reading the book is that there is just not enough of a reward to ever overcome the cost.

This book is about a dream not some academic juxtaposing of facts and issues for dissemination of automatons sitting around a boardroom table. It is an anguished cry as this dream is foundering, not because of inability, but in the belief of the short sightedness or incomprehension of bureaucracy. You can’t sit on the fence after reading this book, either you want things changed for the better or you want to give up altogether. If you are interested in advancing humans in space you will read of many other like minded people and their successes. You will also find many routes for pursuing your own preference for advocating space development most of which don’t involve a boardroom table.

As a view in the alternative access to space movement, this book is excellent. However as a view into the contributions of NASA and the space industry, this book is very one-sided. NASA the institute is given a very negative persona; a self interested, overpowering bore. Yet the individuals within NASA all seem to be exceptionally fine. Then in considering the people working on alternative accesses to space, this book seems to say that they can do no wrong. All their ideas are eminently favourable and worthy of public support and funding. A more balanced view would have been fairer, but likely less passionate.

In summary, if you want to know where NASA has gone wrong or of the many ideas that individuals have been and are expounding for space access, Lost in Space is the book. Perhaps unexpectedly it also contains an interesting view of the power of individuals within a large democracy. Just be ready for passion about a dream as this book has lots of it.

Review by Mark Mortimer

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Sojourner was one of the first of NASA’s and JPL’s mandated faster, better, and cheaper projects. Before this mandate, a mission’s reliability was paramount and costs were correspondingly high. Sojourner’s predecessor, the Cassini mission, costed close to $1 billion. On the other hand, the Mars Pathfinder (Sojourner and the lander) mission had a total budget of $171 million. The Sojourner rover itself was capped at $25 million for design, parts, development, assembly, tests, and all operations during the mission. In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, there is a lot of evidence of solid managerial support, coupled with the workers’ nearly desperate attempts to scrounge resources and time. The book is a compendium of the problem definitions, the trial solutions, and the convergence to a workable solution that Mr. Mishkin and his colleagues faced for more than 10 years. Nevertheless, the skill, belief, and perseverance of many people made Sojourner faster, better, cheaper, and most importantly successful.

Sojourner’s design roots extended to the Lunar Surveyor Vehicle prototype that was planned for the moon but never used. This robot, nearly trashed, was resurrected by a JPL tinkerer with an interest in locomotion, vehicle suspension, and autonomous direction finding. From this beginning, serendipity plays its part as fortuitous events led to this rover, or one of its offspring, being demonstrated at the right time and before the right people to ensure that funding continued. Earth itself is a daunting realm for autonomous rovers, but Mars was a totally new territory. The temperature range was large, 110F over the duration of a day. The terrain was rough and unpredictable, sand could capture a wheel, or a ledge may roll the rover. Most of all, the 20 minute communications made direct control impossible. The first part of the book largely deals with tackling and overcoming this. It describes getting a solution to accommodate an acceptable body size, an optimal number of wheels, a forgiving suspension, and a safe guidance system. The later part of the book largely deals with the challenges of integrating the many prototypes, their unit testing, and the ensuing system testing.

In addition to designing a robotic rover, the book provides a glimpse of the challenges that face anyone taking on the role of a systems engineer. This role is to balance the needs, requirements, and expectations of all the players of a project so that there is a working solution. The solution is not necessarily optimal for anyone as everyone’s needs often directly conflict with others. The result is that no one is totally satisfied or completely happy. Mr. Mishkin displays a lot of the personality of his colleagues and himself as trade-offs are made, deals are done, and the rover comes together. This lends a wonderful human touch to what otherwise might be a somewhat dry and technical book. In accomplishing his goal Mr. Mishkin received some of the best words of praise for a systems engineer which are, “When you work on a job, things happen. Things get done”.

Though this book is enjoyable to read, it is difficult to classify. There is a lot of discussion on the technical aspects of resolving issues that arose in designing Sojourner, but there is too little to recommend it as a design reference. The challenges of being a systems engineer in a large project comes out loud and clear, but there is little to offer a new systems engineer on lessons learned. There is a lot of detail on the bugs, errors, and complications that needed correcting, but it is not really a comprehensive story of Sojourner. Further, there is no presentation of the scientific results. In the end, this book is exactly what it was meant to be, the personal memoirs of a technical expert from an exciting and challenging project.

I enjoyed seeing the historical thread that the Sojourner project wove amongst people and events. I particularly liked how it connected the lunar rover project of the 1950’s up to the start of the Spirit and Opportunity projects. As well, I could easily grasp the intangible value of team spirit, mutual support, and a work ethic that goes beyond a pay cheque. This is a book for engineers, especially those with an interest in robotics or space exploration. A person contemplating being a systems engineer would also enjoy reading this book to see the amazingly good things to which serendipity can lead.

Review by Mark Mortimer

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Michael Benson, author of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (read Universe Today’s review) took some time from his busy schedule, and nasty cold, to answer some of our questions about his book and interest in astronomy and space exploration. Benson was interviewed by Mark Mortimer.

Universe Today: You say this book is the cumulation of sifting through tens of thousands of image files on computers. What was your selection criteria for the few that made it into the book?

Michael Benson: Well, to start off with, the jaw-drop factor, of course. Stuff that was incredible, I tried my best to get in. After that, though, of course you have the inevitable limitations of the book medium, with its fixed number of pages, plus then I had to divide the solar system up into chapters and try to give each one at least its due if not more, pretty soon I realized I had to winnow the available images down to not as many as I would have liked. And then there was the color versus B&W question — I wanted to get in as many good color shots as I could, though I have a real weakness for black and white photography. Essentially, though, whatever really made me gaze in amazement got in. I have to say, though, that I have a lot of really first-rate processed pictures on my hard drive that I’d love to use elsewhere sometime. Some of it has never been seen before, except for by a small cadre of planetary scientists, and then usually in black and white.

UT: As an artist did you feel like an outsider when discussing these images or did you feel like a member of the group of technicians?

MB: Neither. I always approached them as an aesthetic challenge — how to get them to “pop” — to reveal that they weren’t shot through a digitized grid but through optically pure glass, as it were. And much of the work behind getting them to the right place was technical — using photoshop or other programs — but this is also the tool of a photographer, or ‘artist’ if you will. And even when working with Dr. Paul Geissler, who is an eminent planetary scientist and remote imaging expert, I didn’t feel like an outsider — we had a good collaboration — nor like I belonged to some group of techies either. (I don’t think he feels like the latter either, come to think of it, though he recently took a job at the US Geological Survey — which makes highly accurate maps of all the planets based on space imaging! Which is about as technical as it gets.)

UT: How would you compare the artistic qualities and values of colour to black and white in this medium?

MB: I like both for different reasons. It also depends on the planetary body being represented, to an extent. Black and white pictures of Jupiter’s implacably volcanic, sulphurously yellow-orange moon Io, for example, practically don’t make any sense in a book of this type. They make perfect sense when it comes to conducting science, but would’ve been a bit hard to justify having them in my book, given that Io is by far the most lurid object in the Solar System. And by the same token Europa, Io’s closest neighboring moon, which is a spherical iceberg of fissured, chaotic ice, doesn’t really need to be in color — though it also looks awesome in color. But you get the essence of its story in black and white, if I can put it that way. (Though part of that essence is in fact its mystery — what’s going on under that global ice-cap?)

UT: Do you have a favourite/most photogenic planet? For example Venus seems to be heavily weighed in the book.

MB: Actually, Venus gets fewer pages than either Mars or Jupiter. Jupiter may be the most complex and compelling, though Saturn is a close second, because of its perfect rings. Saturn could scarcely be _more_ photogenic — we’re very lucky to have it in the solar system, because it shows what cosmic perfection really is. And as for Jupiter, as I said in my book, it’s a solar system in miniature — it’s endlessly fascinating and kinetic. The last quality is hard to show with stills, but not impossible.

UT: How were you able to convince a publisher to go for a book of images freely available on the web?

MB: Many of the images were available in raw form at specialized planetary science sites, not “freely available,” in the sense that they required substantial processing and mosacking, rendering into color or what have you. Plus even the images that are more readily available — for example, at NASA’s outreach site A Planetary Photojournal — still required substantial processing, most of them, to get them to work at the resolution quality we have available on the page, as opposed to the screen, where lower resolutions still work.

But the premise of the question is a bit flawed. Publishers are delighted if they can base a book on public domain images, because then they don’t have to pay for it!

UT: Considering the forward, do you think a living carbon based life form will explore our solar system? Other star systems? Do you think humans will do this?

MB: I do. We suffer a bit of temporal tunnel vision as a species. Even if we don’t do it for a hundred or two hundred years in the case of the solar system — and much later for the stars — I still think we’ll do it. Our current hesitation about it has to do with the sluggish pace of crewed exploration after Apollo and also the sense that the environments are so hostile that it might not be desirable to do it. But technology will march onwards and make these such things easier. And then, as soon as it is possible for tourists to actually go to, for example, Jupiter, there will be a huge rush to go there. Or Mars, of course. Or the Moon…

UT: Considering the afterward, where do you think people fit into the universal schema of things?

MB: Oh, I tend to agree with Ren — Lawrence Weschler — that for now at least we seem to be the only creatures that can experience that sense of awe that is ultimately one of the roots of our sentience. My discussion with him had to do with whether machines could ever experience this. I believe one day they will, he’s not so sure. Wasn’t it Asimov who, when asked if he really believed machines would one day think, said “well, I’m a machine, and I think”?

But in the end I think Ren’s daughter Sara is right in saying that the universe in a sense needs us, because we are capable of appreciating its beauty. Another way of putting it, I suppose, is that we are one of the ways in which the universe can appreciate its own splendor. And of course we are pieces of work ourselves, just to coin a phrase!

UT: No 3D images are in the book though we are presently getting some from Mars. What is your opinion of the artistic value of 3D images for this subject and media?

MB: Well, as someone who has barely pried my 3-D glasses of my nose for the last couple weeks, as I peer in fascination at the images from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, I don’t know how objective I can be on the question. I really like it — though more for that “you are there” sensation than for aesthetic reasons I suppose. But there is no reason why 3-D images can’t be savored for their aesthetic qualities as well. I’ll be able to answer with more conviction on the question after this whole rover experiment is over, because there will really be many thousands of 3-D pictures to go through by then, and no doubt some of them will work on the multiple levels required to be considered art. So the jury — not that I consider myself a jury — is out on the question, but not for too long. Personally, I’d love to see a purple-orange cactus appear on the lip of a crater one of these days — though the artistic qualities of the shot will be the last thing on anyone’s mind if that happens!

People usually associate squads of bespectacled engineers and scientists as being the sole guardians of space. Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes by Michael Benson is the type of book that rationalizes and moreover encourages the inclusion of other specialists, especially those in the arts. Containing 295 photographs chosen both for their artistic, awe inspiring impact as well as their voluminous scientific content, the reader will want to quickly put aside numerical calculations about orbital mechanics and let their eyes float across the vistas of other planets. It is easy to imagine that only a thin visor of a helmet separates them from the visions in the book. Michael Benson’s collection of breathtakingly clear images gives credit to the machines that took the pictures and the will of all the bespectacled and clear sighted individuals who worked so hard to get the machines to their complete their mission.

This book is all about its photographs. These come as both true colour and black and white. They range from compact portraits to large expanses. In keeping true to the sources, collages of contiguous single frames give fantastic perspectives including a 110cm x 26cm full colour image of a dust cloud as it storms across a broad swathe of the Martian surface. Each image is silhouetted against a matte black background that enhances the reader’s feeling of ‘being there’. My personal favourites are views of satellites with their host planet behind them and the satellite’s shadow etched on the host’s surface. The details evident in black and white shots of crater rims softened by dunes are better than most tour guides of earthly locales. These photographs are like beauty contest entrants each vying to allure the judge to vote for them.

The photographs are grouped into chapters or collections for each planet, except Pluto, for which no clear images exist. Chapters are introduced with a brief passage discussing the imaging history, the relevant probes and some of the provocative visual features. Often a planet’s chapter includes its satellites though there is a separate chapter for Earth’s moon as well as a chapter for asteroids within the Asteroid Belt. Either adjoining or nearby each photograph is a caption identifying the probe that acquired the image, the date this occurred and a description. As a bonus, there are black and white block drawings of the probes themselves. Leading this beauty contest is a provocative essay where Arthur C. Clarke muses about future explorers. After showing off all the contestants, Benson delivers a short essay on the selection process and the image processing. The book concludes in an afterward by Lawrence Weschler where he contemplates the relative importance of humankind in the context of so much other-world beauty.

I liked the black background and paper type of the book though black, as is its nature, shows up printing artifacts (not many) and fingerprints (becoming more frequent). In addition, sometimes description on the captions do not identify the significance of a picture. Perhaps this may be because there are no features to remark on and only the emotive force caused a picture to be selected.

The clarity of the photographs is so great that I can easily forget myself and try to touch the textures and shapes to gain a tactile sense. It seems I need more than one sense to fully absorb the grandiose scale of the subjects themselves and the specialised effort that made them come into being. I have been perhaps a little bit too guilty of self importance, but after viewing this book my self estimation of where I stand in the scale of things has changed, for the better.

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Review by Mark Mortimer

Our solar system is our neighbourhood. It is what supports our life, sets us apart from other regions of space and even protects us from extra-solar visitors. Yet our knowledge of this region is frustratingly incomplete. Not only is the physical space dauntingly large but the time scale of its existence is equally vast. Giovanni Caprara in his book “The Solar System” provides us with an up to date account of what we have observed in our solar system and demonstrates some of the physical processes taking place both now and at earlier times.

Caprara starts by presenting the most accepted methods for solar system formation and he continually returns to this when considering the formation of each of the planets. As interstellar dust and gas are the core building blocks there is a lot of room for variety. Perhaps what is more surprising is the quantity of similarities and patterns that result.

With an extensive chapter for the sun and each planet the reader can both learn specific details as well as make comparative studies. There are descriptions of these bodies’ physical characteristics such as the size, the distance from the Sun and the mass. Where appropriate Caprara discusses the atmosphere and climate. Also he presents distinctive surface features and their causes such as asteroid impacts or plate tectonics. He guesses at the body’s internal structure though except for the Earth and Moon there is no data to provide corroboration. If the planets have their own satellites he describes each individually in much the same manner. What these details readily show is that we really do live in a system with all components inherently linked to one another.

Pleasantly interposed within the text are vignettes that tell the reader how the information was obtained. Usually each vignette has an accompanying pictorial representation whether a drawing by 17’th century astronomers, plates from ground-based observatories or images from space probes. As most of the images are of recent photographs from space probes they add a current feel to the book. What becomes readily apparent is that only with advances to our observational ability will we get advances in our understanding.

There is also a purposeful tie-in with this information to our own benefit on Earth. The process of global warming is evident on Venus. Tidal effects between Io and Jupiter are equally present between the Earth and Moon. Asteroids are present in large numbers and obviously continually strike as seen when Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter. And, as seen with other stars, our Sun will eventually change and make life on Earth untenable. Knowing about our neighbourhood isn’t just for cursory interest it can also help with our survival

This book is a good source of information though a more robust list of references would aid those looking for greater detail. Also, there seems to be a few errors either from the original text or the translation. However none of these detract from the text. Further, as this book originates in Italy I was hoping that there would be a distinct European view. Unfortunately none was apparent.

The results of Caprara’s work is a thorough description of our solar system. The reader can easily feel they are travelling with the author as they discover each planet and satellite. They will also quickly become supporters of the scientists who work so hard to add even more to what we know about our neighbourhood. The next big space probe is the United States’ New Horizons mission to Pluto. This is to add to the limited fuzzy pictures which is all we have now. Let’s hope it succeeds.

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Review by Mark Mortimer

In his newest book, Rocket Man, David Clary took on the challenge of describing the person that was Robert Goddard the father of the rocket program in the United States. Through an excellent chronological depiction of the events and people of Goddard’s life, Mr. Clary presents significant moments and actions in an effort to give a sense of his personality. Mr. Clary acknowledges that he was quite hampered by the efforts of Goddard’s retinue who had filtered and moulded material so as to fit only their desired image. Without giving his own conclusions, Mr. Clary presents a very readable passage on Goddard’s life.

The image that Mr Clary portrays is of a very bright and capable man who accomplished amazing feats yet whose personality might have been as much a hindrance to achieving space travel as it was in driving it forward. Paramount in this was Goddard’s belief that rocketry was his and only his domain. Parties showing any interest in helping technically were considered interlopers or trespassers and dealt with disparagingly. The advantage of this was that there was one focal point for rocketry in the United States. The detriment to this was that Goddard had to become a specialist in many related fields such as chemistry (e.g. obtaining liquid oxygen) and metallurgy (e.g. constructing nozzles and chambers) and also disparate fields such as publicity and marketing. It seems that by spreading himself across all this activities and protecting his fiefdom meant Goddard was unable to progress on those tasks which his natural abilities favoured.

There were two other consequences to being this type of generalist. One is that Goddard treated the activities as a hobbyist. For example, Mr Clary describes Goddard as wanting his office by his men in the machinist’s shop where Goddard would build mock ups by hand soldering tin cans and metal pieces. The other consequence is that Goddard seemed incapable of setting an achievable goal and then preparing a path to reach this goal. Much can be argued that this is typical whenever a person is at the forefront of a new field and is trying to advance it. However getting support for his project without clearly showing either plans or progress appears to have alienated potential supporters. Nevertheless, Mr. Clary does note that “Goddard had received more money for his research than any other civilian scientist for a single project before World War II ” And considering much of this was granted during the worldwide depression of the 1920’s, this is no small feat.

This book does give a glimpse of the person that was Robert Goddard. By listing many of the significant events of his life the reader can draw an impression of who this man was. However, as Clary clearly acknowledges, so much of the available information regarding Goddard has been purposely manipulated that Goddard the man is difficult to pinpoint. In consequence, Mr. Clary’s writing reads like a list of events woven together with text. Further, this joining text drifts and can seem a bit superfluous at times. Yet, the reader does get a flavour of who the rocket man was and especially of the challenges they faced.

Note that this book describes the man. There is little information on Goddard’s technical activities however it does have many references to publication with this information.

Rocket Man is an enjoyable read and will tell you something of Goddard and much of his trials and tribulations he faced as he pushed forward the new field of rocketry. Upon finishing the book, I couldn’t help but see a similarity between Goddard, his rocket Nell and his supporters the Guggenheims with today’s Burt Rutan, his vehicle SpaceShipOne and his supporter Paul Allen. I hope their visions come to fruition in a more auspicious manner than that of Goddard’s.

Review by Mark Mortimer

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For more than three years, the Mars Society has maintained two research stations to test out what would be involved to send a human mission to Mars. In his latest book, Mars on Earth, Robert Zubrin reveals his journey to get the stations built (in the Canadian Arctic and the Utah desert), diary entries from living and working in the stations, and the experience he’s gained about what Martian explorers will go through when they first step foot on the Red Planet.

For more than three years, the Mars Society has maintained two research stations to test out what would be involved to send a human mission to Mars. In his latest book, Mars on Earth, Robert Zubrin reveals his journey to get the stations built (in the Canadian Arctic and the Utah desert), diary entries from living and working in the stations, and the experience he’s gained about what Martian explorers will go through when they first step foot on the Red Planet.

Robert Zubrin is best known for his earlier book, Case for Mars, where he laid out a revolutionary, and controversial, plan to send human explorers to Mars at a fraction of the cost proposed by NASA. I’ll make an admission right now; The Case for Mars was one of the most influential space exploration books I’ve ever read. Honestly, it rocked my world, so I was eager to catch up with Zubrin and see how the exploration of Mars was going. Another Zubrin book, Entering Space, is more future-looking and speculative, but equally entertaining.

After writing The Case for Mars, and learning of the tremendous amount of support for the concept of human exploration of Mars, Zubrin and some like-minded colleagues went on to found the Mars Society. Since they didn’t have a $50 billion to send a human mission to the Red Planet, the Mars Society has been bootstrapping their way there through a series of simulated Martian missions in two locations: remote Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, which is one of the best analogs to Mars you can find on Earth; and a location in Utah which is less Mars-like, but offers nearly year-round accessibility. Mars on Earth is a chronicle of Zubrin’s journey from concept to completion of the two Mars research stations and the challenges faced on these first few steps on the way to exploration of the Red Planet.

The first, and largest, part of the book covers the events that led to the final construction of the research stations, and the majority of this is centered around the Flashline Arctic Mars Research Station on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. The theme to this part of the book is determination, ingenuity and thriftiness. The Society doesn’t have a lot of money, so they had to come up with clever solutions to overcome the inevitable challenges. Zubrin is a skilled writer, and very opinionated, so this part of the book was quite entertaining to read. During the construction of the station, some relationships were strained beyond their breaking point. Since it’s his book, Zubrin presents his point of view, but there are always two sides to every story. It would have interesting to hear the point of view from the other side of the conflicts. Maybe I’m being a little unrealistic.

The second part of the book consists of a series of status reports that Zubrin filed for the Mars Society and MSNBC while he was working at the two stations over several seasons of research and exploration. These are essentially diary entries covering daily activities on the station and various accomplishments. Since these are already available on the Internet, some readers will have already seen them. It’s nice to have them in one location, and Zubrin connects the reports together with additional information, but some people who followed the Society’s exploits on the Internet might feel a little cheated for content.

The final part of the book is the shortest, and it deals with the lessons he’s learned from his time in the research stations. When you consider the complexity of a human mission to Mars, where the explorers could be on the surface of the Red Planet for more than a year, there’s a mind boggling number of details to consider. If found it really interesting to see Zubrin’s conclusions after having tested some of this stuff out for real. What kind of rovers worked best; communications systems; how stuff broke down; the right role for robots; crew personalities? oh yeah, and bring a bread maker. This stuff is gold. If I had any complaint, it’s that it was too short. Either Zubrin doesn’t have the data gathered yet, or he didn’t want to bore people on which kind of canned meat people like better, but I find these kinds of “lessons learned” very entertaining. It can and should be a book all on its own – maybe a revised edition of The Case for Mars would do the trick.

All in all, I enjoyed Mars on Earth. Zubrin’s enthusiasm for the subject is infectious, and it was very entertaining to read the trials and tribulations he and his team had to overcome to build a little piece of Mars here on Earth.

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Over the last few hundred years, humans have been exploring the planet Mars – first through telescopes, and more recently from orbit and on the ground. During this time we’ve gone from complete ignorance to a fairly deep understanding of the Red Planet. William K. Hartmann has been a scientist on several missions to Mars, and in his latest book, “A Traveler’s Guide to Mars,” he details our current understanding of the geologic process that have shaped the planet.

Over the last few hundred years, humans have been exploring the planet Mars – first through telescopes, and more recently from orbit and on the ground. During this time we’ve gone from complete ignorance to a fairly deep understanding of the Red Planet. William K. Hartmann has been a scientist on several missions to Mars, and in his latest book, “A Traveler’s Guide to Mars,” he details our current understanding of the geologic process that have shaped the planet.

First, a little history about William Hartmann. He cut his Martian teeth as a scientist on the Mariner 9 mission, which was the first spacecraft to map Mars in detail. He was part of the team that discovered craters, ancient riverbeds and volcanoes. He was an early contributor to the widely accepted theory that the Moon formed when a Mars-sized planet crashed into the Earth. And he’s currently studying the data retrieved by the Mars Global Surveyor.

This guy knows his Mars.

“A Traveler’s Guide to Mars” traces our understanding of Mars, starting with the early sketches by Huygens and Percival Lowell (who incorrectly thought that Martians had built a complex system of canals to conserve the planet’s water). When Mariner 9 arrived at Mars in the early 1970s, it complete revised our understanding of the planet, showing that it was dry and pummeled with ancient asteroid impact craters. The history section of the book is pretty short.

The bulk of the book explores the planet, feature by feature, and describes how planetary scientists arrived at their current understanding about what’s going on. Scientists believe certain areas of Mars are unchanged for 4.5 billion years, while others have been under constant change until recently. Hartmann presents the evidence and shows you how to spot the clues and think like a planetary scientist.

I think this is one of my favorite aspects of the book. Time after time Hartmann presents the challenge: what caused this formation? what’s going on in this crater? how long was this river flowing? And then he presents the evidence and the decision-making process that planetary scientists followed to arrive at their current conclusions. And if nobody has a clue, he admits that too. There are plenty of mysteries left on Mars – hopefully new spacecraft and missions to Mars will help fill in pieces of the puzzle.

The book is broken up with one/two-page sections called “My Martian Chronicles”, which detail Hartmann’s personal experiences exploring Mars through the eyes of Mariner 9 and Mars Global Surveyor. I really enjoyed this personal touch. Since Hartmann is an experienced fiction writer, his style is very casual and accessible. Easy reading for the amateur space enthusiast.

I was really impressed with “A Traveler’s Guide to Mars”. It’s given me a new understanding of the planet. Definitely a handy book to have on hand as a new fleet of spacecraft are about to arrive at the Red Planet.

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Entanglement is the unusual behavior of elementary particles where they become linked so that when something happens to one, something happens to the other; no matter what the distance. Two entangled particles could be separated by the entire distance of the Universe and yet they can still communicate instantly with each other. Confused? Well, you’re in good company – this stuff is hard, and weird, and it defies common sense. In his latest book, “Entanglement”, Amir D. Aczel hopes to shed some light on this puzzling behavior.

With Entanglement, Aczel covers a pretty tough topic – the bizarre behavior of particles that become inextricably linked together; what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” In order to set the groundwork, the book begins with a series of one-chapter biographies, covering each of the major players in the research to uncover the nature of quantum entanglement, from Thomas Young (1773 – 1829) to physicists who only did their experiments in the last couple of years.

The book then moves into a detailed description of the major experiments that physicists have done to push the field of quantum theory forward. Some of these experiments will blow your mind when you consider the amazing stuff that’s going on in the world of the very small. Each time we encounter the concepts of entanglement, Aczel tries to present them differently hoping something will eventually stick in the reader’s mind.

The test of a good science writer is the ability of walk the line when including difficult concepts, and it’s here that Aczel really excels – he can explain complex scientific and mathematic concepts without baffling you; but also without dumbing it down too much. My eyes glazed over some of the formulae, but most of the time I could follow the points that Aczel was trying to get across.

I’ve got a special place in my heart for quantum theory; I really feel that it encapsulates what’s great about science. Here’s a field of study that defies common sense at every turn. Every advancement was made through experimentation, studying the results, and then working out the math to help describe what’s going on. The human mind can’t really conceive of what’s going on, and yet the science keeps uncovering more and more details about how the universe seems to work on the smallest scale. I wish other disciplines could leave their preconceived notions at the door like the quantum scientists. Nature seems to give up her secrets more willingly when we don’t try to force them one way or the other. (That’s a quantum pun there… )

I’ll warn you in advance, I’ve got some university math under my belt and I’ve read my share of quantum theory books, so the concepts were a little more accessible to me. This isn’t an introduction to quantum theory, but it’s not overly complex either; a nice compromise in my opinion. If this kind of thing interests you, then I recommend you give “Entanglement” a read – you won’t be disappointed.

Here’s more information from Amazon.com – Amazon.co.uk

“Hubble: The Mirror on the Universe” by Robin Kerrod is the newest coffee table book filled with beautiful pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. The 192-page hardcover contains hundreds of pictures, of objects as near as our solar system to the very edges of the Universe.

The book is categorized into different kinds of astronomical objects, so the chapters go like: Stars in the Firmament, Stellar Death and Destruction, etc. Each chapter is broken up into a collection of images from Hubble that relate to the topic, and then a nice description of what’s going on in the picture. Robin Kerrod is an accomplished astronomy writer (The Sky at Night, History of NASA, more) and it really helps to have a knowledgeable guide take you through the pictures. There are also plenty of full page, and even two-page spreads dedicated to some of the best pictures from Hubble.

The book was only published in September 2003, so its big advantage to all the other Hubble coffee table books is that it’s got the newest photos. I noticed some pictures that were only released a few months ago.

What surprised me when I read the book is that it’s really an overview of astronomy, using pictures from Hubble as a background to the descriptions. Instead of ignoring things that Hubble hasn’t taken pictures of, Kerrod included pictures from other sources other than Hubble – I think this was a wise move because it makes the book a more complete view of space and astronomy than a narrow view through the Hubble mirror.

The pictures are beautiful, no argument here – you’ll recognize many of them. And the text is comprehensive and well-written. There’s really good background information on the observatory itself; how it was built, launched, repaired and upgraded.

Although it was great to see additional text and pictures to make the book a more complete view of astronomy, the non-Hubble pictures aren’t clearly marked. Sometimes there’s a mention in the image caption, and there are image credits at the back of the book, but it would have been helpful if they stated it clearly beside the images. So, you can’t assume that every picture you’re looking at was actually taken by Hubble.

Here’s a link to more information from Amazon.com – Amazon.ca – Amazon.co.uk