Could You Ever Fly to the Stars?

Describes present-day rockets and spacecraft, explaining the limits on their speed and uses in space exploration, proposed interstellar spacecraft, and which stars would be likely destinations of future travel

Grade 3-6-- Darling clearly lays out in nonmetric terms why no spacecraft built today could carry people across the enormous distances between stars within one, or even several, lifetimes. He then describes the British Interplanetary Society's proposal to send a probe on a 50-year journey to Barnard's Star, 5.9 light-years away, starting around 100 years from now. He points out that the probe would not be able to stop once it arrived, but ignores such mundane questions as where the money will come from and whether controllable fusion to power the probe will ever be developed. From there he goes on to relativistic time dilation and power sources even farther from current reality. His facts clearly indicate that any star travel is a long time in the future, so the biggest surprise of the book comes when he concludes that the answer to the title question is "definitely yes." Still, this is a far more complete discussion of the problems and possibilities of star travel than can be found in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction, Science Fact (Gareth Stevens, 1989), James Trefil's Living in Space (Scribners, 1981), or Kenneth Gatland and David Jeffries's Star Travel (Usborne, 1979). And the full-color photos and paintings combined with the title may entice children to read this book and set their imaginations to work on the breakthrough that will make Darling's prediction come true. --Margaret Chatham, formerly at Smithtown Library, NY
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.