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

Bizony, Piers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452295335 ISBN 13: 9780452295339

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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

Reviews

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Justin Moyer If 'N Sync singer Lance Bass almost became a space tourist, why can't you? Piers Bizony, a pop-science vet who's written about Mars and the tyrannical 1960s NASA administrator James E. Webb, draws a user-friendly map of the shifting terrain of post-Apollo, post-Challenger space travel in "How to Build Your Own Spaceship." The first chapter of private space travel is already being written, wherein entrepreneurs will launch themselves and others into space. The pioneers are mostly uber-rich, such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (who's building a reusable spaceship) and Budget America hotel magnate Robert Bigelow (who has successfully tested an unmanned, orbiting suite). Bizony believes that you, the uninitiated reader, can "come up with a business scheme that can actually make space profitable," and he takes you deep into what's needed. But his lesson plan soon collapses under the weight of discussions of SSTO spacecraft, LOX vs. hypergolic fuels and, well, rocket science. 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.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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 AmazonÖs Jeff Bezos and Paypal founder Elon Musk are enviously regarding outer space with cool intellect and drawing up plans for spaceships. MuskÖs 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. BizonyÖs 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452295335
• ISBN 13: 9780452295339
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240