How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Personal Space Travel

by Piers Bizony

Overview

Ladies and gentlemen, start your spaceships with this book that explores an exciting new era of space travel—the perfect science gift!

Personal space travel is no longer the stuff of science fiction. The future is here: Civilians are launching into orbit. How to Build Your Own Spaceship takes readers on a fun and quirky trip to the forefront of commercial space travel-the latest technology, the major business players, and the personal and financial benefits that are ripe for the picking. Science-writer Piers Bizony's breadth of knowledge, quick wit, and no-nonsense explanations of the hard science in this emerging arena will satisfy even the most dedicated space fanatics. With practical advice (from picking the best jet fuel to funding your own fleet of space crafts), unbelievable space facts, and fascinating photos, Bizony's user-friendly guide to blasting off is a must-have ticket to the final frontier.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452295339
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/28/2009
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

PIERS BIZONY is an established author, documentary film maker and media producer based in the UK.

Table of Contents

How to Build Your Own SpaceshipPreface
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: When's the Space Age Coming for the Rest of Us?

Chapter 2: That's Why They Call It "Rocket Science"

Chapter 3: Runners and Riders, Ways and Means

Chapter 4: "No Bucks, No Buck Rogers"

Chapter 5: Islands in the Sky

Chapter 6: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Chapter 7: The Red Planet—and Beyond

Epilogue
Selected Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"[Bizony] writes with the easy tone you'd want to hear from your space pilot... Strap yourselves down, and boldly go on a joyride out of this world."
-The Times (UK)

Editorial Reviews

"[Bizony] writes with the easy tone you'd want to hear from your space pilot... Strap yourselves down, and boldly go on a joyride out of this world."
-The Times (UK)

From the Publisher

Even though the unwashed masses with bank accounts under nine figures may not become aeronautical big boys in the way Bizony envisions, they can at least read about the final frontier in a book that sparkles with unquenchable enthusiasm.
—The Washington Post

Justin Moyer

Hotel magnate Robert Bigelow is developing an inflatable space station called the TransHab, where, for a mere $12 million, vacationers will be able to spend four weeks. All he needs is a space buggy to get his vacationers there. In this snappy survey of present-day rocket technology and schemes, science writer Bizony (The Rivers of Mars) tells readers where the action is. Internet entrepreneurs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Paypal founder Elon Musk are enviously regarding outer space with cool intellect and drawing up plans for spaceships. Musk's Falcon rocket reached space successfully, and his company plans to take satellites and other payloads into space for commercial and government customers. But not only billionaires can participate in the space race: both Bigelow and NASA are dangling prizes worth tens of millions of dollars in front of aspiring space moguls to spur creation of new technologies. Bizony's book is not a how-to manual with instructions for launching a rocket from the backyard. Rather, his descriptions of fuel systems and spaceship design in accessible language could inspire science buffs to take up the challenge. Illus. (July 28)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Despite the playful title, this book is really about the emerging space tourism industry and the civilian use of outer space. Bizony (One Giant Leap: Apollo 11 Remembered) details everything a space tourism company must do to be successful. To qualify officially as an astronaut, a traveler needs to fly above 100 km (62 miles). This can be achieved through a suborbital flight, one that goes up to that level and then returns to Earth, a trip that normally takes only a few hours. Orbital spaceflight is more difficult to achieve, for it requires a craft to reach Earth's escape velocity, which is 17,500 mph. The Russians now profit from space tourism, and private industry will probably offer suborbital hops within a decade. Bizony shows which spaceship designs are best suited to space tourism; for the industry to succeed, craft and systems must be as reliable and safe as commercial aviation. VERDICT Bizony clearly explains spaceflight science for a popular audience. Taking a more optimistic outlook than Neil Comins's The Hazards of Space Travel: A Tourist's Guide, this is a good choice for armchair space buffs wanting to explore vicariously our final frontier.—Jeffrey Beall, Univ. of Colorado, Denver

—Jeffrey Beall

Library Journal