Sputnik, Lost Moons, And Spacefarers

Martin J. Collins and Sylvia D. Fries, A Spacefaring Nation (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)—Essays on decision-making in space policy. We read Howard E. McCurdy and Robert W. Smith on the Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Smith visited the class last year and spoke about the Hubble repair mission. I assign Pamela E. Mack's and William E. Burrows's essays on earth resources and military reconnaissance satellites, and we always visit Dartmouth's Landsat image-analysis lab run by earth sciences professor Richard Birnie '66. Finally, we read Karl Hufbauer and Joseph Tatarewicz on solar and planetary research programs. The essays are instructive both for their content and as examples of well-written models for students' weekly writing assignments.

William E. Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and NationalSecurity (Random House, 1986)—An excellent analysis of the Cold War background behind the launch of Sputnik.

Jim Love 11 and Jeffrey Kluger, Lost Moon: the Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (Houghton Mifflin, 1994)—0ne of many good books about the Apollo program.

Richard Feynmann, What Do You Care What Other People Think (Bantam Books, 1989)—Nobel Prize winner FeynKann's account of the investigation into the Challenger accident, including how he figuredout the O-ring problem.

Bruce Murray. Journey Into Space (Norton, 1989)—A first-hand account of die U.S. planetary program from Murray's: perspective as director of the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (Harper & Row,1988) arid Disturbing the Universe (Harper & Row, 1979)—When Dyson was a visiting Montgomien Fellow at Dartmouth last year, he sat in on out class regularly.

Hudson