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Astronautics & Space Flight books:
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This book might help. (I haven't read it, I just remember seeing it and putting it on my Amazon wish-list for a mythical time when I'm off work for long enough that reading code recreationally seems like a good idea.)
> Easy job for her.
Just finished https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973
Holy shit, NOT an easy job for the first decade+!
Strongly recommend that book by the way. It reads almost like a techno thriller.
The Apollo Guidance Compute: Architecture and Operation is an excellent explanation of how the AGC functioned. Highly recomended. For those of you at university, your institution's library probably has access to the PDFs through Springer Link.
Love these guys. Downloaded.
PS Eric Berger also wrote a book about the early days of SpaceX called Liftoff. I'm in the middle of it and very interesting.
It was Gene Kranz. He also released an amazing memoir called Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the early history of NASA spaceflight. It's incredible.
edit - I meant to reply to /u/VoxVirilis a couple of comments below this one. There was confusion over who coined the term "Failure is not an Option". It was Gene Kranz. My comment showed up here for some damn reason after I typed it and hit Reply.
Actually, this would be the book:
The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation
It's actually really good, but holy COW is it dense and technical.
He can get a used copy of the Fundamentals of Astrodynamics on Amazon for just $16.95
If you want to really do your homework, start with the primary source. The name of these structures comes from Gerald K. O'Neill, and his work The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.
I believe this book has been referenced at least once on the channel. I haven't read it myself, but you could do worse than starting there.
I learned all of this stuff because someone left a copy of the book Skunk Works on a shelf in a storage closet at work. I never was interested in the topic beforehand and didn't expect to be so enthralled but it offers a fascinating insight into the world of US black military programs. I'm not usually one to offer endorsements but legitimately I couldn't put this book down. The matter of fact nature and the first hand account is fascinating.
From Ben Rich's book, SkunkWorks, he would take ball bearings and roll them across desks at the Pentagon "Here's your new plane on radar". Took them a while to prove to many that it was true.
I seem to recall, in Ben Rich's book "Skunk Works", more engine wasn't enough. They had to use the computer to constantly manipulate the control surfaces to keep the thing in the air.
That story (or a variation on it) was in Ben Rich's Skunkworks memoirs, yep.
The radar demonstrator's RCS was considerably smaller than a bird—more on the order of a large bird's eyeball. Birds sitting on the test stand definitely would be noticeable.
Play Kerbal Space Program (seriously). Then pick a book (like this one), it's a much better way to go.
I read this like 20 years ago, and have the audiobook now. I've spent many a commute hour listening to Mr. Rich's memoirs. Here's a linky to Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003
Fun side note, my stepmom's father (step-grandpa?) was a machinist @ Skunk Works. I mentioned this book to her and she said, oh yeah dad gave Kelly Johnson rides home every so often when his car was in the shop. Uhhh, what Mari?
It was in the book "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich: (assuming my memory isn't shot)
https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003/
Shameless plug, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O'Neill. It's available many places, but here it is on Amazon.
The book is sort of a spinoff of O'Neill's proposal to the blue sky research groups in NASA post-Apollo. His focus was how to achieve space colonization with the technology available in the 1970s, and to provide an economic rationalization to keep it going.
The product of such colonies was simple and quite achievable: orbital solar power beamed to earth in diffuse microwave beams (the most anyone walking under one such beam would be a few degrees elevated local temperatures, because the beam would be quite broad. Plus, the transmission efficiency was as good as long-distance power cables, a bit more than 80% efficient.).
The critical unsolved problem with his plan was the cost of spacecraft launches from Earth. He had hoped the Space Shuttle and its potential spin-offs would be cheap enough, but that was impossible. Fortunately, if SpaceX's BFR holds up to expectations, his plan's financial bounds will be met.
edit: fun fact - with 1970's engineering practices and materials, the largest habitat possible at the time had the same habitable internal surface area as the entirety of Switzerland. These days, our materials are at least good enough to create something the size of Texas, with the theoretical limits going up to the land area of Russia (Siberia included).
Failure is not an option is a memoir from the Flight director for the Mercury and Apollo Missions.
Ignition! is a book that talks about the history of Liquid Rocketry.
The story of the development of the Stealth Fighter is absolutely riveting. The book to read is:
(Skunk Works)[https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003] by Ben Rich. Ben Rich was the head of Lockheed Martin's "Skunk Works" division that developed this amazing airplane. The book reads like a Tom Clancy thriller, but it's non-fiction and all true. Deserves the incredible 4.8 average star rating on Amazon, everyone loves this book.
When they were testing the car-sized wooden model of the initial stealth design, the radar operator at first thought the model had fallen off the 12 foot pole it was mounted on. The radar was only 1500 feet away from the model. Then, the radar operator all of a sudden picked up the model. A crow had landed on top of the model and the radar saw the crow. When the bird flew off, the model of the aircraft was invisible again. The stealth design technology was so unexpectedly incredible, they had to spend half a million dollars designing a new stealth pole, because the radar would see the pole.
If I remember correctly, the radar cross section of the final stealth fighter -- the first true stealth aircraft ever built -- was the equivalent of a marble, roughly the size of an eagle's eyeball.
Sure, here is a fantastic presentation of how SkunkWorks was created: https://youtu.be/pL3Yzjk5R4M It talks about U2, A-12/SR-71 and F-117. it's very interesting. Also, you can find a book from Ben Rich itself about SkunkWorks. https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003
I love <em>Fundamentals of Astrodynamics</em> by Bate, Mueller, and White. Usually just referred to as "BMW." It's a really popular intro to orbital mechanics (it's what I learned on), and I think it was originally written for the Air Force Academy. Bonus is that it's on Amazon for like $16, and it's a pretty compact book.
Read Lift Off by Eric Berger and hear the answer coming from SpaceX employees themselves. That book helped me a lot to understand what makes SpaceX an outlier. Spoilers: it's hard to exclude the upper management..
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973
Read Liftoff by Eric Berger. It's the story of the first few years of SpaceX from the point of view of the early SpaceX employees.
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973/
Spoiler: Elon Musk was the main project manager (akin to Von Braun's role) and Tom Mueller the propulsion engineer who designed the engine. If you follow Tom Mueller on Twitter, you'll find him often refuting people saying "Musk was not the mind behind it " like you do.
A bachelor in Physics is enough to say he can read engineering textbooks and figure out what they mean without having to go back to study calculus or whatever.
I believe him that he left the PhD because he thought the opportunity to make money on the early internet was too good to miss. And he did make make building and selling zip2.
The people interviewed for Eric Berger's Liftoff (https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973) were pretty candid.
Tom Mueller, former head of propulsion at SpaceX, father of record setting Merlin and Raptor engines and possibly the best rocket engineering currently working in the world, thinks that people who say that Elon is not technical are hilariously wrong.
There's no real way to ELI2 Quantum Physics without this book, but the closest I can get is that the physics of the super tiniest things is super weird and makes it so that the electrons don't want to hang around that close to a nucleus for any sustained amount of time, just the just zip around close by
If von Braun wasn't a major in the SS, lots of things would have been named after him. He is the person who contributed the most to rocketry. Elon Must has created a miracle of a company in SpaceX. It shattered the myth of "it will costs billions of dollars and you will fail anyway because only people who have worked with the people who worked with von Braun can build a rocket that works, if you try without receiving the wisdom of those who worked on Apollo you will fail". Turns out an organization with good leadership and only $100M can build a working small orbital launcher. Since Falcon 1 it has been done a bunch of times, so it wasn't a fluke. Now space has been democratized. But I think nothing will be named after Must, because he's a shit. I used to think he's just immature, but he's a real shit, and it's a pity. Eric Berger's "Liftoff" interviews a dozen people who were there in the early days and Musk really was deeply involved in all the technical details. He didn't lie when he said he's the chief engineer. But he's also an asshole.
I do not consider myself an Elon fanboy by any stretch but to say he "didn't make the rockets" is actually completely false. Elon is the Chief Engineer at SpaceX and has a TON to do with the actual design and development of their technology. I read the book Liftoff which details his involvement from the beginnings and to say he just leans on his employees is flat out wrong in this case.
There's an interesting book about Skunkworks and how the F-117 nearly bankrupted them, how stealth had no believers, how a model airplane showed up in stores looking eerily similar, etc.
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics is a good one.
Playing Kerbal Space Program will give you a really good grasp of basic orbital mechanics too.
non-fiction.. pretty good up until the part about Roswell.
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Most of it is essentially corroborated by Ben Rich (Skunkworks).. those are the guys who literally built Area 51 (U2, SR71, F117)
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Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base is a book by American journalist Annie Jacobsen about the secret United States military base Area 51.
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Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed
https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003