henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (11/21/86)
A friend asked me for the addresses of interesting journals, and it
occurred to me that other people might be interested in the answer.
Here's what I sent her, edited slightly.
L5 Society
1060 East Elm
Tucson, AZ 85719
Much the most effective of the activist space groups. THE group to join
if you want to see action, rather than pretty pictures or descriptions of
dreams. Publications are unimpressive; if you want glossy color pictures,
join the Planetary Society instead. $30/yr basic rate, lower for students.
There is a life-membership rate, which was $200 a few years ago when I paid
it. They take Mastercard, Visa, American Express. JOIN!!
Aviation Week & Space Technology
PO Box 1505
Neptune, NJ 07754 USA
Write for qualification card; you get significantly better rates if you
can convince them that you're a pro in aerospace or something related.
Not cheap, say $75/yr maybe. Space news is only a modest fraction of the
material, the rest is aviation and missile news and the detailed doings of
the Pentagon. Ads for jet fighters and cruise missiles. Weekly.
Flight International
Business Press International Ltd.
Quadrant House
The Quadrant
Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS, UK
The British counterpart of AW&ST. Fewer color photos, less coverage of
Pentagon minutiae. Mostly aviation news, spaceflight coverage modest.
Better coverage of European activities. Generally better in-depth
coverage than AW&ST. Weekly. Expensive -- maybe $100/yr, even more if
you get it airmail.
Science
AAAS
1333 H Street NW
Washington DC 20005
Comes with AAAS membership only. Not bad reading, although a lot of the
stuff is only for specialists in the particular areas. General emphasis
on the biological sciences, but often the place where definitive papers
from planetary missions are published. Membership is $65/yr in US. Weekly.
World Spaceflight News; Planetary Encounter
Box 98
Sewell NJ 08080
Two newsletters for people who want the nitty-gritty data. WSN focuses
on Shuttle and such, and publishes things like complete Shuttle mission
timelines and NASA after-mission final reports. Of late, naturally, 51L
has been the major topic, including things like a complete copy of Joe
Kerwin's medical report on the deaths of the Challenger crew; even
AW&ST only published a summary. Planetary Encounter is the same thing but
for planetary probes, e.g. a whole issue on the ICE encounter with comet
Giacobini-Zinner: drawings of spacecraft, details on experiments, drawings
and descriptions of findings, interview with the top technical man for ICE,
etc. No glossy color pictures (line drawings only, in fact), but a great
place to find all the little details that the glossy media never publish.
WSN and PE are $30/yr each, and are nominally monthly. The same people
also put out a large number of special reports, at extra cost, covering
things like details of Shuttle subsystems or the complete mission plan
for Apollo 11.
British Interplanetary Society
27/29 South Lambeth Road
London SW8 1SZ, UK
Two journals, Spaceflight and JBIS (Journal of the BIS). The BIS is the
only one of the three original rocket societies that has survived as a
group of enthusiasts (the American Rocket Society eventually turned into
a professional group, the AIAA; the German Rocket Society, the VfR, died
out in the 30s after getting people like Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun
interested in rockets and doing the basic engineering development of the
modern liquid-fuelled rocket [Freeman Dyson has pointed to the formation
of the VfR as the specific event that began the Space Age]). The BIS was
unable to do actual rocket experimenting because of strict British laws
on such matters, and so they turned their eyes further ahead. They're
still doing it; JBIS is the single best source of technical information
on interstellar flight, for example. Spaceflight is general-interest,
JBIS is formal and technical (although still largely readable to a
knowledgeable layman). Both monthly. Write for membership rates (the
journals are members-only) (I see the rates only when I renew my own
membership, so I don't have them on hand). Expensive (maybe $100/yr to
get both journals) but worth it.
I would also highly recommend Scientific American
and Astronomy, which any good newsstand should have. Sky & Telescope is a
more technical version of Astronomy, aimed at the real telescope hackers.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry