The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel

by Eugene F. Mallove and Gregory L. Matloff

Book Overview

The Starflight Handbook A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel"The Starflight Handbook is an indispensable compendium of the manyand varied methods for traversing the vast interstellar gulf--don'tleave the Solar System without it!" --Robert Forward "Verysensible, very complete and useful. Its good use of references andtechnical 'sidebars' adds to the book and allows the nontechnicaltext to be used by ordinary readers in an easy fashion. I certainlywould...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471619124
• ISBN13: 9780471619123
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent!

One of the most readable, interesting, and "gentle" space science books for the general reader I've ever come across. More, more, more!

Techies buy me!

This book is intended for the more technically-oriented reader. it covers the more technical aspects of interstealler spaceflight, even going so far as to provide formulae for alot of the problems generated by such flights. However, the writers are obvious devotees of Einsteinian physics because they immediately discount any type of faster-than-light travel as impossible and tend to pshaw the subject and hope it will just go away.

Great overall summary of Space Flight

I have read this book over and over about 20 times and absolutely love it. There are many other books out there that also delve into the subject in great detail, but were not written to come down to the every day person level. It is not meant for the person that has aspirations of flying around the universe in a "USS Enterprise" vessel within the next 100 years, but looks at all of the possible means by which we may reach our nearest stars within the next 500-1000 years. Besides being great leisure reading it is also a great starting point for those people who wish to get more involved in the study of the theory around star flight. It left me with the impression that many many meathods have been devised and although many of them will probably never be realized, none should be discounted, because it will probably be some dreamer that actually stumbles on the loop hole in all of the "Laws" that enables us to blink out of existence here and re-appear many light years from our home.

Fasinating review of possible methods of interstellar flight

This book takes the nuts and fits the bolts together. How could we hope to make it to the stars with real technology? Can we really answer this now? Mallove and Matloff have done just that. How to make a starship, based on what we really know today. What are the options? What needs to be done? Anyone who has looked up as a child to the stars, and who loves technical detail, will enjoy this book.

Excellent. Informative, educational, and thought-provoking.

This book turns the "what if" of interstellar travel into "why not."