| LOST IN SPACE The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age Greg Klerkx New York: Pantheon Books, 2004 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
|||
| ISBN 0-375-42150-5 | 392p. | HC/BWI | $27.95 | |
| Page 5: | "As a boy born in 1963, I had space imprinted on my child's mind through the Apollo missions and Neil Armstrong—incredible, impossible Neil Armstrong, leaving us wide-eyed and gasping as we watched a soft powder of gray-white dust lift from the moon's surface as he planted that famous step." |
| That's one small error for an author, one giant miss for meaning. Since Klerkx is referring to a specific moon, Luna, its name should be capitalized: "the Moon's surface". Also, I would have written the second highlighted phrase as "that famous footstep". The sound of sentences is an important factor in how smoothly they read. Alliteration, if not overdone, makes them sound better. |
| Page 34: | "Other deals followed, including Manber's work on innovative space ventures like SeaLaunch, a partnership between Energia, Boeing, and several other companies that envision using a converted deep-sea oil-drilling platform to launch rockets from the middle of the Pacific Ocean." |
| From the context, this should be "that envisioned" since when the book went to press SeaLaunch had been operating for several years. |
| Page 61: | "Nonetheless, the Saturns and the equipment to build them are gone. Even the paper plans for building the Saturns were gathered up and destroyed." |
| It's true that the tooling needed to build the Saturn rocket is long gone, and the remaining Saturns themselves have become giant lawn ornaments. However, the plans, AFAIK, still exist. |
| Pages 66-7: | "Where O'Neill, Sagan, Brower and other seemingly disparate minds came together was through the overarching issue of planetary sustainability, which was itself composed of four primary issues: overpopulation, the depletion of natural resources, the environmental degradation that accompanied that depletion and global conflict." |
| It's arguable, but I think correct, that another comma is needed: S/B "the environmental degradation that accompanied that depletion, and global conflict". |
| Page 71: | "Far from its being a science-fiction proposition, O'Neill claimed that 1970s technology was sufficient to accomplish the Herculean engineering his propositions required—all it would take was willpower, and money." |
| Missing space, extra comma: S/B "will power and money". |
| Page 104: | "With pride, the DC-X team nicknamed their creation the junkyard rocket, since the DC-X didn't use a single piece of new technology, thus putting paid to previous development concepts (and future ones, like the X-33) predicated almost solely on the theory that newer is better." |
| I never heard this expression. Its meaning, however, is clear. |
| Page 129: | "Geostationary orbit is hard to reach, and each satellite launched to such an orbit costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build, launch and maintain. If one of these pricey birds conks out, ends up in the wrong orbit, or gets hit by debris—a real possibility considering that NASA tracks about ten thousand pieces of space junk whirling around the planet—one's investment and possibly one's entire business becomes worthless." |
| These words paint a misleading picture. It is true that there are thousands of trackable pieces of space debris, and probably tens of thousands of smaller fragments that are untrackable at present but still dangerous. However, most are in LEO, not GEO, so the risk to geostationary satellites is minimal. Also, it is NORAD, not NASA, that does the tracking. |
| Page 136: | "Considering that the fate of Columbia, and that Russia's straitened financial circumstances will probably continue to limit production of its Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, finding other means of supplying and boosting ISS looks to be an issue for NASA for some time to come." |
| Extra word: S/B "Considering the fate of Columbia". |
| Page 158: | "...it is also so ungainly and temperamental and of such Brobdingnagian complexity that predictions..." |
| In Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Brobdingnag was the land of giants. Brobdingnagian thus works as a synonym for "enormous". However, I would have picked "labyrinthine" to modify complexity. Too conventional? "Avoid cliches like the plague!" |
| Page 160: | "...and that its very frame was less able to handle any undue stress than the frame of its sister craft." |
| Since "craft" in this case is plural, this is an error of number: S/B "frames". |
| Page 208: | "The hearing's fourth participant was Dr. Edwin Aldrin, better known to the world as 'Buzz' and one of the most famous space travelers in history." |
| Since Dr. Aldrin is so famous, it's puzzling that Klerkx doesn't know he officially changed his given name to Buzz years ago — in 1977, I believe. |
| Page 229: | "There was an effort along these lines in late 2001, when for the first time in its history NASA actually put on paper a comprehensive, agency-wide commercial development plan." |
| Misplaced and missing commas: S/B "in late 2001 when, for the first time in its history, NASA. |
| Page 231: | "To secure a standard research slot on the ISS for a year costs a cool $20.8 million. For this price, a paying customer gets a dedicated niche on the station, 2,900 kilowatts of power, 86 hours of astronaut time, and 2 terabits of data download." |
| 2.9 megawatts of power per user? If only! I thought when I read this, and had it confirmed in the next sentence, that the phrase should read "2,900 kilowatt-hours of power". |
| Page 275: | "Despite being our closest neighbor, anyone with a good backyard telescope could see that Luna didn't amount to much compared with Earth." |
| Dangling participle: S/B "Despite its being our closest neighbor". |
| Page 298: | "As to whether an artificially generated greenhouse effect might improve a planet's livability, the results of such activities on Earth have not exactly caused people to cheer for more of the same." |
| Well, sure. But the context is whether to induce an artificial greenhouse effect on Mars, where the temperature is about 80°C too low to be livable. |
| Page 310: | "On its final approach to Mars in August 1993, NASA lost contact with Mars Observer, never to regain it—another dreadful blow to the Agency's Mars exploration program." |
| Oh, I don't know. If NASA were shifted to Mars, seems to me its Mars exploration program would thrive — at least until the air ran out. But seriously, here's another dangling participle. S/B "Mars Observer lost contact with NASA". (That's the simplest fix, albeit a clumsy one.) |
| Page 328: | "...the team halted abruptly, nearly causing Devon Island's first fender-bender as the media ATVs, following the Marsnauts one another too closely, slammed on their brakes and lurched to a nerve-racking stop." |
| Two mistakes: missing word and spelling error. S/B "following the Marsnauts and one another" and "nerve-wracking". |
| Page 347: | "Properly conceived and managed, such a program could jury-rig a robust entrepreneurial space-launch sector into existence." |
| The term "jury-rig" is bad two ways. First, although it's commonly spoken and written this way, the proper form is "jerry-rig". Second, it's the wrong term; "bootstrap" is a better one. |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.