Customer Reviews (1)

Beautifully printed collection of images, with one minor flaw
This is a beautiful volume. Well organized, perfectly laid out, and interesting and well-written copy for each plate. Though out of print, it seems to always be available used. The one minor flaw is that on every plate from Andreas Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica, the typesetters mistyped it as "HarmoniCa Macrocosmica". Too bad they didn't have a better proof reader. Despite that, I highly recommend this book if you're a fan of classic depictions of the universe. ... Read more

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The serene beauty of our home plant Earth, floating in the blackness of deep space. The twirling spiral arms of a remote galaxy glittering from the combined light of 50 billion stars. The glowing curtains of the majestic northern lights. Captured by the cameras of both amateur and research astronomers, and by the Hubble Space Telescope, these impressive wonders of the universe are presented in Astronomy 2004 in brilliant high-resolution color. This 12-image collection was compiled by stargazing authority Terence Dickinson, author of NightWatch, who brings a wealth of practical experience to the calendar's daily diary of predicted celestial events, ranging from meteor showers to eclipses.

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This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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These are the proceedings of a workshop held at the EuropeanSouthern Observatory in October 1996, a workshop which concentrated onoptical detectors for astronomy. Representatives from every leadingmanufacturer and all of the major astronomical observatories cametogether to present their work on Charged Coupled Devices (CCDs). Thepapers contained in these proceedings are concerned with thedevelopment, manufacture, testing and implementation of CCDs. Manydiscuss the electronics (hardware and software) that are used tooperate these detectors. Astronomical observatories are the most ambitious and aggressive usersof optical detectors, more so than any other scientific discipline.Since the quantum efficiency and noise of a detector have a directeffect on the quality of science, the makers of astronomical CCDsystems continually push the `envelope' of optical detectortechnology. The papers contained in these proceedings provide thereader with state-of-the-art CCD technology and contain information onresearch and development efforts that will continue for several years. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the text that can both be accessed online and used to create new print copies. This book and thousands of others can be found in the digital collections of the University of Michigan Library. The University Library also understands and values the utility of print, and makes reprints available through its Scholarly Publishing Office. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1808 edition published in London. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1801 edition published in London. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1799 edition published in London. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1799 edition published in London. ... Read more

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Human civilization has evolved to the point at which we can consider tapping space resources and expanding beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The Introduction surveys possible motivations for large-scale human emigration to space. Since our early ancestors began to move out of Africa, humans have constantly expanded their range. Today, the pattern of human settlement extends from pole to pole. Humans regularly visit the upper troposphere and ocean floor and technology has enabled a few to even reside above the atmosphere in space stations.

For the next few millennia at least (barring breakthroughs), the human frontier will include the solar system and the nearest stars. Will it better to settle the Moon, Mars, or a nearby asteroid and what environments can we expect to find in the vicinity of nearby stars are questions that need to be answered if mankind is to migrate into space.

Customer Reviews (4)

Mis-titled and disappointing
Despite the claims of the title and sub title, this book does not cover how we can explore space using in situ resources, nor what "green roads" to space would actually mean. In contrast, this book is broad ranging catalog of spacecraft propulsion technologies, fairly lightly drawn, with some comments on space colonies, mining and starflight thrown in.

This was a very light read.If you want more depth in any particular technology, another book specializing in that technology would probably be better.

The Future in Space
There is a huge amount of science-fiction-like books dealing with aspects of Humankind's future. What is certainly difficult, greatly difficult in some cases, is to describe what the future may look like based on knowledge of the past and awareness of the present. The authors of "Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos" are two scientists and one artist, well recognized internationally, who committed themselves to popularizing very, very important aspects of our future:not the future many centuries ahead, which is quite unpredictable on a true scientific basis, but the future that appears reasonable, and desirable, starting from the present and imitating - very probably - what happened along the history of Humankind. Another key feature of the book is represented by the "fusion" of Science, Technology, and Art. Many authors of reliable books describing the future are used to make a considerable harvest from many different scientific areas, but neglect the artistic aspect of the human thought.
This book has a very good logical sequence of the chapters, which includes virtually the most important items at the time of the manuscript completion. Who is really interested in reading a book regarding the evergreen human desire for space exploration and space expansion - the final frontier - not based on fantasy, but on solid cultural basis, can find an excellent overview in this 250-page book.

Rome - Italy, May 20, 2008

Vulpetti Giovanni, PhD.
International Academy of Astronautics, Paris - France

Living off the land in space
This is a good book for those interested in the behinds the scenes of space exploration. This book gave enough technical information for background. The authors brought in their experience and first hand knowledge of this on going effort as well as the path forward. This has some of the stuff sci-fi books are based on.

Wade through the tech-talk to visit the garden of possibility!
Living off the Land in Space.It conjures biodomes, algae-growing, 'clean' fuels, and a 1970s Original Star Trek view of the infinately hospitable worlds out in the black yonder for us to exploit - er, I meant explore...

Really, how often did you see Kirk in an enviro-suit and oxygen mask whilst cannodling on the surface of Virgos V?

Now, back to the book -

To my slight disappointment, however, there is much more technological discussion, and much less fantastical futuristic musings.Oh well.

Strangely, despite my lack of techie impulses, once I resigned myself to a bit of a slog through the 'hard' side, I did find myself intrigued by the reasoned discussion of various propulsion systems (chem-fuel, ramjets, magnetic-electric tethers, solar sails, ion! drives and more), an explication of the really really really unimaginably vast distances of SPACE (as in roughly 7,000 years - years! worth of travel (at our best modern rates) to reach Alpha Centauri - our nearest stellar neighbor), and a strange little inserted list explaining the levels that ideas, theories, and prototypes all go through before floating off towards our planetary neighbors, handily illustrated by even more interesting types of hardware that most people don't know we're developing.

The book (freely admitted both at beginning and end) is a bit dated, which is both good and bad.Good, because that means that our current levels of space interest are high enough to make this book outdated by the time it hits the presses; bad in that even the casual reader can smile sadly when he comments on the Japanese mission probe "which will return with asteroid samples in June of 2007"... or not.

Lastly, the neo-hippy vibe of the title does not carry through the book.The exact idea - utilizing resources from space or from our various destinations - is the focus of the book.But - the reason for that focus seems more economic than environmental.There are myriad explanations throughout on the relative efficiency of newer (or less explored) travel options, but not many comments on the lessened environmental impact.And, in a staggering sense of cross-purpose, please note the many casual suggestions about mining the moon and Mars - although not, he does allow, if there is native life.

This juxtaposition was the only real sour note in the book, which was ultimately an entertaining romp through the technologies and theories which will get us into space. ... Read more