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Autzoo.1620 net.space utzoo!henry Mon May 3 19:40:13 1982 orbital mechanics I strongly second Jerry Pournelle's recommendation of Max Hunter's "Thrust Into Space" as the best text on orbital mechanics (and an excellent introduction to propulsion systems, too). It is difficult to write a book on the subject which is neither so oversimplified that it insults the intelligence, nor so mathematical that it is accessible only to specialists. Hunter succeeded. "Thrust Into Space" was part of a Holt-Rinehart-Winston series of space books aimed at high schools and the like; Hunter's is the only one worth looking at twice. Using no math beyond simple algebra, he manages to discuss everything from basic rocket principles to the basics of relativistic starflight. When the math would get too hairy, he draws graphs instead. Five stars.

I have one other recommendation if you want something more detailed and have some math background. Archie E. Roy's "The Foundations of Astrodynamics", Macmillan 1965, is good. You will need a good grounding in calculus and some idea of what vectors are about. Given this, the book discusses everything I have ever wanted to know about the subject. For example, about halfway through he gives a fairly detailed discussion of the three-body problem, including the Lagrange points (and such subtle items as why L4 and L5 are unstable unless the masses of the two major bodies involved are very different -- they don't work for binary stars!). This is one of the few nontrivial celestial-mechanics books I have run into that is aware that rockets exist; older books in particular spend lots of time on planets and none on things that can (gasp) *change* orbit.

Unfortunately, *both* of these books are out of print, and have been for quite some time. I've never seen either of them secondhand, despite a lot of looking. I finally found libraries which had them, and took the time, effort, and expense to xerox both of them in their entirety. (Regarding the ethics of xeroxing: I would be happy to pay the authors reasonable royalties for my copies, if I knew how much and where to send the cheques, and could be sure of not being hassled by third parties like publishers.)

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