Satellite Books

This book has some beautiful images of every place on earth. I was specifically drawn to the images of the earth taken once a month. The difference in the seasons is dramatic and stunning. It would be a lovely centerpiece and a wonderful learning tool.

The sheer size of this centerpiece drew me to open and view it. Once inside, I was inspired to take a new look at our "blue marble." The book has great satellite imagery of every piece of landmass in the world. It points out some specific pieces of terrain and discusses its evolution over the ages. Learn a little geology and history while enjoying great 2D and 3D visuals.

Kudos to Palmer and his crew for this work.

Sun Tzu, war strategist, taught the importance of understanding terrain and its effects on friend and foe. This book definitely fits within this realm of understanding.

This is not the cheapest book you'll find on DBS satellite technology, but I have found no other books to date that go to the depths of detail that this one does, especially on MPEG2 encoding for satellite broadcast. Mr. Mead was there at the beginnings of DirecTV in 1990, and his years of experience show through in the vast amount of technical detail included in this book. From the discussions on modern satellite RF design, to error-correction schemes and conditional access encryption of transmissions, through the uplink facilities designs and subscriber decoding equipment, it's ALL THERE! Even the last two chapters of the book are devoted to "future" DBS technologies like MPEG4 and Global Broadcast Service.

This book will be on my reference shelf for some time to come!

For those who want to understand the main principles of the satellite communications system construction. The author provides a comprehensive explanation of error correction, MPEG compression and even RF issues important in a context of the modern DBS system. The book is very easy to read and is NOT intended for the developers!

My father passed away in 1998. Do NOT purchase any of the books "Faraday's Lost Aether" by any seller. They have been stolen. The publisher is NOT "Topple" as stated and I have NOT put this book on the market since his death. Not one. They are in storage or have been stolen from my home awaiting his Foundation. I contacted this seller and Amazon. I have not heard a word. If this seller had a brain, they would know who the publisher is. Located inside the book!

Wayanne Mae Kruger

I Love this book more than any book becuase its wrote by the smartest careing man my grandfather and i think this book is going to help many people

Ryan

This book about GSM is a very clearly written and yet concisely written. Its true that this book of such a small size cannot substitute for reading the standards. However for the purposes of getting a system point of view ,understanding the Access side protocol stack this book is very good.

Especially the chapter on Physical Layer is so concise and yet covers almost everything you might want to know about Physical Layer.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book to enable me to "Hit the ground running" when starting a new assignment. Thanks to this book, I can beat Carl Lewis!!!

This text is very readable, and in my oppinion is the definitive introduction to GSM.

This is a two-volume work with one ISBN. How confusing!
Both volumes are beautiful, but make sure you know which one you are getting.
VOLUME 1 has a white cover.
VOLUME 2 has a black cover.

Buy this to get a feel of the land, not to reference quick information about an area. There are no specific boundaries, just regional approximations, and mimimal information about each area.

There are two kinds of maps, topography and layer-tint. I didn't find the topography map useful, but the layer -tint ones are great. They've used color to represent depth/height to a very precise level. Most maps are represented three times - Layer tint for 2 periods (different names) and topography combined.

Its all based on two maps, Holy Land South and Holy Land North and uses the same key of 20-odd place names throughout. The next section is a decreased scale of the same map, so of course its divided into an increasing quantity. Etc. The HL S and HL N maps are 1:650,000, then you go down to 1:275,000 & 1:150,000/100,000, all based on NASA information.

There are 8 panoramic photos in most sections. There's virtually no text. (Apparently thats in volume 2.) Both are very difficult to find. Sunday Software sells the first one. [...]
A cd comes with Volume 1 that you can 'fly over' the land. I wouldn't buy it separately for the topography flying. The layer tint flying is great. It also has six or eight great photos of each region (e.g. Judean Shephelah) and many of places. You can measure area, length, etc. and fly at different altitudes. There is text describing each place which is nice, since the atlas has none.

I really like this book and I found it to be an easy read. The author made everything facinating, even the "waste management system" (toilet). I did have a problem though some pages were missing in the middle of my book (I don't know if it was my copy or if it was a publishing error)overall an excellant read that I would recommend to people @ NASA today so they could see what we could do as todays culture seems to have forgotten.

-Wilfred A. Roberge

This is the official NASA history of the Skylab orbital workshop program. Long the dream of spaceflight enthusiasts, space stations became the core mission of both the American and Soviet space programs during the 1970s. From virtually the beginning of the twentieth century, those interested in the human exploration of space have viewed as central to that endeavor the building of a massive Earth-orbital space station that would serve as the jumping off point to the Moon and the planets. Always, space exploration enthusiasts believed, a permanently-occupied space station was a necessary outpost in the new frontier of space. In 1903 Russian schoolteacher Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy studied this possibility and argued for the creation of a dramatic wheeled space station that rotated slowly to approximate gravity with centrifugal force. During the 1920s Romanian-German space flight theorist Hermann Oberth and Austrian engineer Hermann Noordung both elaborated on the concept of the orbital space station as a base for voyages into space. In the 1950s, Wernher von Braun also emphasized the role of an orbital space station as a laboratory, observatory, industrial plant, launching platform, dry-dock, and military facility.

Although it did not pursue a space station during the Apollo era, as the program was reaching completion in the 1960s NASA began to forge ahead with a plan to use Apollo technology to realize at least partially the longstanding dream of a space station. What NASA built was a relatively small orbital space platform, called Skylab, in 1973-1974. After initial problems with the workshop, NASA sent three crews to Skylab. During the three missions, a total of nine astronauts occupied the Skylab workshop for a total of 171 days and 13 hours. In Skylab, both the total hours in space and the total hours spent in performance of EVA under microgravity conditions exceeded the combined totals of all of the world's previous space flights up to that time.

Following the final occupied phase of the Skylab mission, ground controllers performed some engineering tests of certain Skylab systems (tests that ground personnel were reluctant to do while astronauts were aboard), positioned the orbital workshop into a stable attitude, and shut down its systems. Unfortunately, on 11 July 1979, Skylab reentered the Earth's atmosphere. The debris scattered from the southeastern Indian Ocean across a sparsely populated section of western Australia. It was an inauspicious ending to the first American space station.

This story is well told in this very fine historical study. The book was published through the Government Printing Office by NASA in 1983. It is now out of print, but available on the second-hand market. For those who do not need a physical copy of it on their shelves, it is also available for downloading free of charge by NASA at http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4208/sp4208.htm courtesy of the NASA History Division.

This is a very unusual book!! How often can you read a technologically informative book with a wry grin on your face? (and perhaps an occasional hoot of laughter, right out loud...) In addition to the insider's story on small satellite engineering, the reader gets treated to Rick Fleeter's philosophy of life, engineering, and the universe, always shared with a liberal dose of humor.

The book is largely written for engineers outside the satellite world, and is readable for just about anyone with a reasonable understanding of electronics, but covers all aspects of satellite design at all levels from the ground up. Although much of the information is pretty basic, it is always presented with insights that bring it to a higher level.

This is an excellent book for anyone with a curiousity about satellites and/or the businesses and technologies (aerospace, rad-hard components, telecommunications, etc.) connected with them. It also provides a hugely enjoyable peek into the engineering process - and the engineers - that produce those satellites.

After 45 years of dominance by governments and hugh corporations, perhaps the little guy is starting to make inroads into the spacce satellite market. At least that's what Rick Fleeter thinks. In "The Logic of Microspace" Fleeter talks about the revolution in small, low-cost space satellites taking place at the beginning of the 21sy century. He notes that these tiny satellites, and the microspace technology they engender, is transforming the space world in ways not seen since the advent of communications a satellites.

At a basic level this book offers understandable, humorous, fast-paced, and sometimes insightful but always provocative comments on the technical, economic, and philosophical aspects of microsatellites. Toward the end of "The Logic of Microspace" Fleeter presents a manifesto for the "microspace revolution," describing alluring opportunities for benefiting humanity and the space industry via low-cost satellites and space missions.

I would have been much happier with a more in-depth comparison guide. Basically, this book provides the very basic knowledge of satellite radio as well as a list of stations to choose from. If you were interested in real details; such as comparisons of different models of receivers and how they operate, what protocols are used in transmitting, different methods of building a receiving dish, etc, then you need to look elsewhere.

I was unsure about satelite radio, but this guide helped me make my decision and switch to satelite radio with ease. It answered all of my questions. I love it and truly recommend this guide for anyone who is skeptical out there.

I wish I'd had this book a few months ago when I was researching satellite radio equipment, but it's just as useful for troubleshooting and station quick-reference. I just bought another copy for a friend to go along with the satellite radio kit I'm giving him for his birthday. 5 stars!

Leo P. Kelley is truly one of the best sci-fi writers of sci-fi adventures, and this is sci-fi vison of the Harrison Ford classic chase movie "The Fugitive" if he read this right now, Mr Kelley would make another sci-fi fugutive story. The story is about Barry Marks, Who is a officer working for the Futuristic police force, after doing a police buisness with his partner, Barry recives a Emergency call that a Convicted prisoner has broken out from his cell with the help of his convicted brother from a prison sattelight. But the danger of the situation is, that the prisoner whoses called Kirkland, is armed with a atomic machine which will bomb the prison along with the locked up convicts. Barry witness's him escape onboard a spaceship. Barry (In a Tommy Lee Jone's role) with the help of the force and machines go after him, and find out why he has escaped. Prison Sattelight is the 1st adventure in 6 episoed SPACE POLICE series. Followed by 5 other adventures. All i have to say to Leo P. Kelley "Leo. you are a master of space police adventures" and "Will Barry Marks have another fugitive chase?"

Intergalactic officer of the space police Barry Marks receives an emergency, that an very dangerous convicted prisoner has managed to escape from his cell from a prison sattelight. Barry is sent on a Capture and return to his cell Space police job, to stop the criminal from where-ever he is escaping too and return him to his prison cell.

The Rocket Men is a must read, along with the authors' Soyuz and David Harland's Mir, for anyone wanting to know about the Soviet space program. When it happened, all we knew about was what Soviet propaganda told us. Now that records are available, people are available to talk, we have a more complete story of those days. The book also debunks or verifies different myths from those days on disappearing astronauts and astronaut deaths and other aspects of the Soviet program.

Over the past few years Spring-Praxis has begun publishing high quality books about various aspects of space exploration, ranging from robotic missions to human exploration. This book is latest entry in series and continues the tradition of providing high caliber books. This time, the book focuses on the development of the Russian space program and the early flights (both men and women). While the book covers all the usual Russian firsts, like the first man and women crew into space and the first EVA, there are also a lot of other firsts, like the first civilians into space, which are covered as well. This truly an excellent book and presents a lot new information in a relatively non-technical way.

The book is divided into four main sections. The first section deals with the early Russian space pioneers, like Tsiolkovsky, and the development of the ballooning programs. The next section, which is the largest section, focuses on the Korolyov (The Chief Designer) and the development of the early Russian space program. The third section covers the early human space flight missions and the final section examines the unmanned vehicles that followed. Occasionally a few paragraphs about the US program are presented, to allow the reader to better gauge the Russian progress.

The first section of the book examines the early space flight theories of Tsiolkovsky and the early Russian pioneering efforts in stratospheric ballooning with the goal of trying to set a new manned altitude record. Two important benefits that came about due to these efforts were the development of pressurized suits for low altitudes and the understanding of parachuting fundamentals and parachutes clubs, which were ultimately applied, to the Russian space program.

The next section covers the Russian space program after World War II and the use captured German hardware to begin a space program. From these initial test flights, the Russian were able to begin development their ballistic missiles. The books presents the progression of the Russian missile program from the German V-2 through the Russian R-7, and it is easy to see that the Russian launch vehicles are direct descendants of the German launch vehicles.

The main section of the book focuses on the development of the early Russian space program, both manned and unmanned and contains a lot of information about the chief designer, Sergie Korolyov. The section of the books cover the construction of the Baikonur launch facility, the artificial satellite program, the development of the Vostok capsule, crew training, crew selection and loads of other stuff. I found the parts about the selection and construction of the Baikonur launch facility extremely fascinating. While it was in part chosen for its remoteness, it was also chosen that in the event of an abort, the launch vehicle could come down Russia and in relatively unpopulated areas of Russia. The construction crews faced a lot of hardships and death, but eventually after several years of hardships, the facility was completed. Also included in this section are detailed descriptions of the crew selection and training and ultimately their flights into Earth orbit. It is impressive to see than the Russian cosmonaut program paralleled the US effort and in many cases surpassed NASA. Specifically, the choice of women and civilians for spaceflight happened years before NASA even considered doing so. While some of the motivation behind these efforts may have political, these efforts were nevertheless carried on with success.

The final section of the book covers the unmanned flight since the Vostok and Voskhod missions. It was extremely interesting to note that many of the unmanned Earth orbiting Russian satellites even up to the most recent launches are based significantly on these early designs.

This is one of the best books I've read on the early Russian space effort with the only possible exception being Jim Oberg's Red Star in Orbit. It covers all the aspects of the development of the Russian space program and present a lot new information. Highly recommended!!!!!