Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos

by Gregory L. Matloff, Les Johnson, C. Bangs

This book presents a visionary concept for future development of space travel. It describes the enabling technology for future propulsion concepts and demonstrates how mankind will ‘live off the land in space’ in migration from Earth. For the next few millennia at least (barring breakthroughs), the human frontier will include the solar system and the nearest stars. Will it be better to settle the Moon, Mars, or a nearby asteroid and what environments can we expect to find in the vicinity of nearby stars? These are questions that need to be answered if mankind is to migrate into space.

Genres: Science, Space

261 pages, Hardcover

First published June 6, 2007

About the author

Les Johnson is the co-author of three published popular science books, Living Off the Land in Space, Solar Sails, and Paradise Regained: The Regreening of Earth. His first science fiction novel, Back to the Moon, was published in December 2010 by Baen. Les is the Deputy Manager for NASAs Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. He was technical consultant for the movie, Lost in Space. NPR, CNN, Fox News, The Science Channel and The Discovery Channel have all interviewed him. He appeared on the Discovery Science Channel in their Exodus Earth series and the "How to Build A Starship" episode of Michio Kaku's 2010 Discovery Science Channel Series "Physics of the Impossible. He was the Chief Scientist for the ProSEDS space experiment, twice received NASAs Exceptional Achievement Medal, and holds 3 space technology patents. He has numerous peer-reviewed publications and was published in Analog."

Reviews

[Jeff Greason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice but rather introductory treatment of a wide variety of space propulsion systems and missions they might enable. Nothing here that will be any surprise to someone following the literature, but for a younger reader or for someone new to the field, this would be a great first introduction that goes well beyond the usual path of "chemical rockets, orbital mechanics, and lists of things we probably aren't doing any time soon". Tethers, photon sails, gravity assists, in-situ propellant production, electric propulsion, are all at least introduced. The author writes entertainingly and knowledgeably but the technical details here are deliberately and successfully abstracted away.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

while the title was slightly misleading to me; I was expecting a study of Terraforming technologies. It does provide at least a beginners view of technologies examined thus far for expanded space exploration. It does not however, provide technical details on these methods that an advanced space enthusiast might require.

[Neith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The artwork wasn't really my style, but I appreciated the clear explanations of different types of propulsion systems.