Blogging the Moon: The Once & Future Moon Collection by Paul D. Spudis; Apogee Prime; Burlington Ontario Canada; $27.95 (soft cover); 2011.
Moonologist Paul Spudis is a leading and top-notch lunar explorer. This book is testament to his seminal research and passion to make the Moon center stage in U.S. space program planning – and why this now misplaced prospect places America’s direction beyond low Earth orbit in danger.
This fascinating collection of attitude and insight draws largely from Air and Space Magazine blogs that Spudis has written from 2008 into 2010.
Warning: This is a no holds barred book. If you think the space program is on the correct political and managerial trajectory, the provocative prose served up by Spudis will be an eye-opener.
Spudis a frontline space expert and is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. He also serves on the Coalition for Space Exploration’s Board of Advisors.
As the principal investigator of NASA’s Mini-SAR aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1, Spudis is also a team member of the Mini-RF technology demonstration experiment now circling the Moon on the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The reader will find an extraordinary mix of space history, the latest in lunar science, as well as pointed criticism of U.S. space plans and where the new space race is headed.
Essays by Spudis include: “Have We Forgotten What Exploration Means?”; “NASA’s New Mission and the Cult of Management”; “Vision Impaired”; and “Water, Water Everywhere” – underscoring the diverse subject matter the author tackles.
Blogging the Moon is a call for establishing a vibrant and sustainable space program, to enable humankind to truly live and work beyond low Earth orbit.
The book also includes a notable DVD-Video that captures more than three decades of lunar research by Spudis, as well as an in-depth look about the Moon’s valuable resources.
For more information about this book, go to:
http://www.apogeeprime.com/prime/bookpages/9781926837178.html
By Leonard David