HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) (01/25/89)
In response to the request by Tony Goodloe
(ingr!b11!xenon!goodloe@uunet.uu.net) for books on the history of
planetary probes, Larry Klaes posted a pretty good bibliography. But,
naturally, he left out some that I would've recommended.
I think *Far Travelers*, by Oran Nicks, is just the book Tony is
looking for. Nicks was a NASA Headquarters project manager in the
glorious Sixties, and reminisces about Ranger, Surveyor, various
Mariners, and Viking. It's available from Government Printing Office
bookstores in big cities, which take credit card orders over the
phone, and which don't charge you for postage! Ask for NASA SP-480.
The Chicago bookstore's phone number is (312)353-5133.
The GPO bookstores also carry the mission-specific, semitechnical
guides Larry and Stuart Warmink recommmended, such as *Pioneer: First
to Jupiter, Saturn and Beyond* (SP-446) and *Pioneer Venus* (SP-461).
Ask them for a catalog. (I haven't read these particular books, but I
happened to have their SP numbers lying around.)
Also don't forget the magic of Interlibrary Loan! If your library
doesn't have the book you want, they will usually be happy to order it
for you from somebody else's library. I am always astonished by
this; it seems a godlike power...
Larry, I was surprised that none of Henry S. F. Cooper's books made
it onto your list. He has covered many NASA space programs for the
*New Yorker* over the decades. Tony could look in his card catalog
under Cooper's name and find out a lot about space probes. *Imaging
Saturn* and *The Search for Life on Mars* spring to mind. On the
other hand, his writing is a trifle bland (like so much *NY* writing),
and his books seldom have photographs or indexes. I wonder if
objections like these made you leave him off the list. (His latest
book, *Before Liftoff*, was written for NASA's history program, not
for the magazine, and has considerable verve AND photos AND an index.
It's about Shuttle crew training.)
I'd be interested in hearing what Larry or anybody else here thinks of
Cooper. For that matter, how do you feel about other space writers?
Whose books do you rush out and buy when you see a new one? Whose
books do you avoid like the plague?
______meson Bill Higgins
_-~ (no relation to Andrew Higgins)
____________-~______neutrino Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
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