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Frontiers of Space
Book by Bono, Philip; Gatland, Kenneth
- GenresSpace
279 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 31, 2025
Great book detailing the spacecraft of the time and possible spacecraft of the future.
Nearly half the book is beautiful color drawings of space stations, suits, and rockets (both real and speculative). This is a very easy read for the layman, the technical information is thoroughly explained. This book was ahead of its time, having prescient concepts of rocket reusability and propulsion being designed even today, made famous by one of the authors Philip Bono. Copies are pretty hard to find nowadays but it’s worth buying if you have an interest in Apollo-era space or rocket designs.
Nearly half the book is beautiful color drawings of space stations, suits, and rockets (both real and speculative). This is a very easy read for the layman, the technical information is thoroughly explained. This book was ahead of its time, having prescient concepts of rocket reusability and propulsion being designed even today, made famous by one of the authors Philip Bono. Copies are pretty hard to find nowadays but it’s worth buying if you have an interest in Apollo-era space or rocket designs.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 4, 2017
Published in 1969, the same year as the first manned Moon landing, the purpose of this little book was to ask "What next ?". I'd not read it since then, when anything seemed possible, so opening it up again was a little like a journey into the history of the future, which has now become the past...
Although, of course, we all know what happened to the Brave New Universe of planetary exploration (in 1969 the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar missions was still unimagined), this is only part of the story imagined here. The opening chapter concerns the new scientific opportunities afforded by the observation of Earth from orbit, a fact so commonplace now that it's hard to imagine that less than 50 years ago it was still a major new discovery. There is a deal on the development of reusable space vehicles, which NASA had been working on since the very first astronaut flights, and it's salutary to note how poorly the eventual Space Shuttle craft matched the recycling and mission turn-round criteria described here as essential to the specifications of various research projects. Similarly, it was with some surprise that I was reminded that while the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicle was still being used, NASA was examining ways of soft-landing used booster stages for reuse, in a way not actually practically tested before Elon Musk's New Shepard rocket within the last couple of years !
All this is sound stuff, well-explored and practical. However, other parts of the book - particularly those in which Philip Bono is describing future manned spacecraft concepts and applications which he himself designed - are a bit breathless and Boys' Own-ish, for all their technical detail and speculative numbers.
And of course, the future never being what it was, unforeseen circumstances intrude. Whereas it's predictably amusing to read that, owing to telecommunications satellites, one day mail might be transmissible electronically "for as little as $1.000 per hour", and whereas it's now fairly well-established that international travellers will take high-volume, cheap modes of transit over speed, other factors just were not on anybody's horizon in 1969. Nuclear power, for example, which it was assumed would drive interplanetary exploration craft, has faded into oblivion, such would be the hysteria should anyone attempt to launch even a small reactor into orbit.
It's easy to patronise our predecessors for what we imagine we know that they don't, and this is almost always both unwarranted and the offering of high-value hostages to fortune. I found revisiting this short, speculative survey both nostalgic, slightly sad, and also inspiring in the boldness of its ideas. Also, quite prescient in some of its projections, notably the kind of work that might be achieved in an international space station - even though it did assume that this would happen 30 years earlier than it did and - for no conceivable reason other than an extraordinarily archaic view of gender roles - that this would be such an exclusively masculine environment that medical emergencies would be the province of a specifically *male* nurse !
Although, of course, we all know what happened to the Brave New Universe of planetary exploration (in 1969 the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar missions was still unimagined), this is only part of the story imagined here. The opening chapter concerns the new scientific opportunities afforded by the observation of Earth from orbit, a fact so commonplace now that it's hard to imagine that less than 50 years ago it was still a major new discovery. There is a deal on the development of reusable space vehicles, which NASA had been working on since the very first astronaut flights, and it's salutary to note how poorly the eventual Space Shuttle craft matched the recycling and mission turn-round criteria described here as essential to the specifications of various research projects. Similarly, it was with some surprise that I was reminded that while the Apollo/Saturn launch vehicle was still being used, NASA was examining ways of soft-landing used booster stages for reuse, in a way not actually practically tested before Elon Musk's New Shepard rocket within the last couple of years !
All this is sound stuff, well-explored and practical. However, other parts of the book - particularly those in which Philip Bono is describing future manned spacecraft concepts and applications which he himself designed - are a bit breathless and Boys' Own-ish, for all their technical detail and speculative numbers.
And of course, the future never being what it was, unforeseen circumstances intrude. Whereas it's predictably amusing to read that, owing to telecommunications satellites, one day mail might be transmissible electronically "for as little as $1.000 per hour", and whereas it's now fairly well-established that international travellers will take high-volume, cheap modes of transit over speed, other factors just were not on anybody's horizon in 1969. Nuclear power, for example, which it was assumed would drive interplanetary exploration craft, has faded into oblivion, such would be the hysteria should anyone attempt to launch even a small reactor into orbit.
It's easy to patronise our predecessors for what we imagine we know that they don't, and this is almost always both unwarranted and the offering of high-value hostages to fortune. I found revisiting this short, speculative survey both nostalgic, slightly sad, and also inspiring in the boldness of its ideas. Also, quite prescient in some of its projections, notably the kind of work that might be achieved in an international space station - even though it did assume that this would happen 30 years earlier than it did and - for no conceivable reason other than an extraordinarily archaic view of gender roles - that this would be such an exclusively masculine environment that medical emergencies would be the province of a specifically *male* nurse !
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews