Saturn Books

My search for my own life's lesson began when my marriage to the man i adored (and sadly took for granted) ended bitterly beyond belief. I knew from before the key to this life's lesson was in the position of Saturn. I started reading Saturn books. This one I can recommend. I had a chart made for myself, my ex hubby and for my son. And I was amazed at what i discovered..and all that happened made perfect sense.. Hopefully i can do as much as is in my power to ease the life's lesson on my son.

grea

although not all of clark ashton smith's weird tales are classics, almost all of them are worth reading. his best stories are terrific. this volume contains two of his very best; "THE CITY OF THE SINGING FLAME" and "THE TESTAMENT OF ATHAMMAUS". both stories rank with (smith's good friend) h.p. lovecraft's finest. "THE CITY OF THE SINGING FLAME" in particular is one of the most devastating short stories i've ever read. it will knock you out. many such stories (in volumes like this) promise weirdness, this one really delivers. it may also say something (by implication) about the source of weird tales in general. "THE TESTAMENT OF ATHAMMAUS" on the other hand, is a hilarious account of an executed criminal who won't stay dead. many of the other tales in this volume are quite good as well. CLARK ASHTON SMITH at his best is one of the greatest writers of weird tales that ever lived. this volume contains some of his very best. don't miss it.

Editors Connors and Hilger have succeeded once again in producing more of the ultimate Clark Ashton Smith collection of fantastic prose. As in volume one, they have corrected the tales using Smith's original manuscripts, published here in chronological order according to when they were written, not by subject or date of publication. At times the changes are minor, but in some instances the publisher forced Smith to butcher his own work or, even worse, altered the text without Smith's permission. Now they are restored to original form, the way the author meant them to be!

The editors have also provided histories of the writing and publishing of all of the stories, a Smith bibliography and an alternate ending to "The Return of the Sorcerer."

I eagerly await the next installment in this 5-part collection, as this is the definitive Smith, in many cases unseen since the author first wrote the tales herein!

I discovered this book while writing my own "Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads" (Wiley) and so I came to it having already drawn many conclusions from my own research and interviews. Still, I found myself reading this and going "yes!!" at almost every point Reis makes, often hearing in her words an elegant echo of what women had been telling me in my own interviews. As a woman who had a conflicted relationship with her father -- and as an author who has interviewed many women -- I recommend this book. It's smart, it's insightful, and it's also well written.

In Daughters of Saturn Patricia Reis explores various aspects of the father daughter relationship with a particular focus on the father's effect on a woman's creative life. Beginning with the charter myth of Saturn, the archetypal devouring and melancholic father, she explores the many ways tha Daughters of Saturn have come to name their experience and have used language to tell their stories. Through myth, dreams, and women's experiences, Reis creates a map marking a journey from life in the Belly of the Father through the First Gate of Awakening. She documents women's resistances and rebellions against the dominant culture of patriarchy, the treacherous Battlezone of Culture, and records the lives of four women writers -- Emily Dickinson, H.D., Sylvia Plath, and Anais Nin -- outlingin their struggles and strategies to live creative lives. Reis marks the trails into what she calls "The Wildzone," a place that has existence outside the law of the fathers: a woman-centered ground of being and knowing.

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 book was great and took many strokes off my game thank you Dr. Lampert ! This book was excellent

This book has changed my game. I've tried everything, bought all the gadgets. Nothing helped. Your book was simple to follow and I especially liked the eye dominancy test. I can understand why the pro's line up at your door.

My, almost 7 year old, was having trouble reading this summer. Basically, he wanted nothing to do with it. Then, someone recommended this series of Ricky Ricotta's books and he finished 2 books in one week!

I highly recommend for any student who would rather be on the computer in or front of the t.v. The pictures keep them engaged, as well as the short chapters and funny titles.

This was the first chapter book that I read to my kids ages 6.5 and 4. The name alone is funny. The kids wondered how a robot was invented by Ricky Ricotta. This was probably explained in one of the earlier ones.

It is truly a funny book as Dav Pilkey books are absolutely hysterical. All of his books seem to provide adult humor and loads of play on words.

The trouble starts when Ricky Ricotta is forced by his parents to go to his cousin Lucy's house. Her parents are overly loving to him. His uncle hurts Ricky with very strong handshakes. His aunt attacks with a million kisses. EEKK! Typical boy, to think of this as a real annoyance. His cousin only wants to play Princess and other girly games. She has 3 Jurassic pets. I am not sure about how they are alive. I guess this was in one of the earlier books too.

The stinkbugs live on Saturn a really dirty and polluted planet. It is ruled by a Stinkbug leader who cannot even live on such a disgusting planet. He decides that he will rule over the Planet Earth.

His cousin yells about her Rubies. This is when the stinkbugs want to capture her for the Rubies. They decide that she must be the ruler of Earth and they must have her.

Ricky Ricotta tries to come to the rescue with his friendly robot. This does not work and Ricky himself is captured. They feel doomed. Yet, Ricky turns out to be the hero and it is a happy ending for the readers.

My kids loved the short chapters. I thought that they would not like the books because of the black and white photos but it was simple like coloring pages without the colorings. The words in the story were easy enough for my kids to understand. It was a great adventure. I thought that my daughter, age 4, would be lost and not care about a main character that was a male mouse. She loved it. It was something different. They love Dav Pilkey books but this was an adventure book.

I must incompetent but this book comes with a section called Flip-O-Rama. I could not make it work. I think a kid can do a better job! My son loved the way the Stinkbug lost the battle.

I enjoyed the book and plan on reading the first books as this is the sixth. I am sure that it does not matter if we go to the first one after reading this one. Each book can be read separately without needing the previous books. Kids can relate to playing pretend, aunts and uncles who love too much, and who have bad guys and good guys. One more point, Ricky Ricotta wears glasses. So many books do not show glasses especially for the main character.

This is a must read and a great way to introduce chapter books. Enjoy!

Christiaan Huygens (1629-95) discovered Titan on March 25, 1655, the first planetary satellite to be discovered since 1610, when Galileo had found four moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. For 200 years, Titan was called "Luna Saturni." By 1848 so many moons had been found that Sir John Herschel proposed giving moons individual names based on Greek mythology, including "Titan" for "Luna Saturni".

Titan dwarfs the rest of Saturn's satellites, and is similar to Jupiter's four largest moons. It is 5,150 km across, nearly 50 percent bigger than our own Moon and 6 percent larger than Mercury. Titan has a significant atmosphere, discovered in 1944 by Gerard Kuiper who found methane in Titan's spectra. In 1980, Voyager 1 passed Titan at a distance of 4,394 km. but was unable to penetrate the thick cloud cover with its instruments.

On July 1, 2004, Cassini arrived at Saturn after a seven year journey. (The orbiter was named for Giovanni Domenico Cassini, the French-Italian astronomer who discovered four of Saturn's moons and the gap separating the two main rings.) It was designed to return images and data from Saturn, its rings and its moons, especially Titan. It carried a detachable package of instruments (the "Huygens Probe") that parachuted through Titan's atmosphere to observe its surface.

"This book tells the story of how Cassini and Huygens have finally begun to lift the veil of mystery surrounding Titan, beginning with advancements in our understanding of Titan that took place in the decade preceding Cassini's arrival. Some predictions have proved gratifyingly accurate; others have turned out to be misconceived, however plausible they may have seemed initially. Though many questions can now be answered --- even some that no one thought to ask --- they have quickly been replaced by a torrent of new and deeper puzzles." (Taken from the Princeton Press reprint of the first chapter of this book; see press.princeton.edu/chapters .)

The photographs are superb, and the authors have produced a wonderful description of this fascinating moon. Anyone with the least interest in science, astronomy or the history of our own earth will find this book well worth reading and enjoying.


Robert C. Ross 2008

Do you want to know what it's like to be on the front lines of a planetary mission? If you do, then this book is for you! Authors Ralph Lorenz and Jacqueline Mitton, have written an outstanding book that describes the most recent episodes in the unfolding story of the exploration of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Lorenz and Mitton, begin by describing the dropping in of the Huygens probe on the surface of Titan. Then, they examine the state of knowledge about Titan at the time when Cassini and Huygens arrived in the Saturn system. Next, the authors discuss the arrival of Cassini in the Saturn system on July 1, 2004 after a very long trek from earth. They continue by focusing on the last speculations the science teams had about Titan, getting to work on the first results from Cassini's initial approach and the Titan flyby. In addition, the authors also discuss the probe's decent onto Titan on January 14, 2005.
They also describe the Cassini flyby events in chronological order. Finally, the authors discuss the 16th flyby of Titan that took place on July 22, 2006; as well as, present and future mission objectives.

The authors of this most excellent book give prominence to two investigations: First, the surface of Titan and its interaction with the atmosphere have been the most mysterious; and second, the Huygens probe and the RADAR instrument on the Cassini orbiter. More importantly, the authors believe that the atmosphere and the surface of Titan in particular, will interest general readers the most.

...I havent read it yet but at least I know who belongs where for starters...I always get the team players confused !!!

If you own a later-model Saturn (1995 or newer), this is the manual you want to buy. The Haynes guide is only good through 1994, and it's not as detailed as the Chilton's manual. No offense to the good folks at Haynes, but as far as Saturn manuals goes, these guys have you beat. With all the things that go wrong with Saturns (yes, I'm one of the few Saturn owners who thinks the car is a typical GM piece of junk), a shop manual like this is a must have.

DISTANT ENCOUNTERS is a fascinating, very readable account of the unfolding drama of the Voyager spacecraft travels to Jupiter and Saturn in the late 1970's. Some coverage of the preceding Pioneer flybys is also provided. You can almost feel the emotions of the JPL engineers as they simultaneously battle frustrating technical problems with the spacecraft and experience the triumphs of some of the greatest scientific returns in the history of planetary exploration. Nontechnical, sometimes humorous, and quite informative regarding the status of space exploration during this time in history, this book proves that an engaging account of unmanned space technology and exploration can be written for the general reader.