| BEYOND EARTH Our Path to a New Home in the Planets Charles Wohlforth Amanda R. Hendrix, Ph.D. New York: Pantheon Books, November 2016 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-8041-9797-7 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-8041-9797-0 | 321pp. | HC/BWI | $27.95 | |
| Page 20: | "An oversized tail fin and wing assembly feathers into a position perpendicular to flight to create stability and break speed. |
| Wrong word: S/B "brake". |
| Page 70: | "The International Commission on Planetary Prioritization (ICPP) had worked in secret." |
| I see what you did there. Good one! |
| Page 79: | "The move was quite positive except for one big disadvantage—that it put her on the outside of a security fortress from her colleagues remaining at JPL. She realized how much soon after her switch... |
| Missing word: S/B "realized how much outside". |
| Page 85: | "At the SpaceX plant, Jamie Huffman relished the idea of landing a rocket. She said, 'Hopefully we get it, because that would be sick' ." |
| Wrong word: S/B "slick". |
| Page 108: | "A little bit of the radiation fom these galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) includes heavier elements formed deep inside the stars, called HZE particles, mainly carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron. |
| I found no definition for "HZE" in the book. I surmise it stands for "high zero energy", meaning atomic nuclei — particles with much more mass than protons. Then again, it might have something to do with "Z", or atomic weight. (Wikipedia says the term derives from High-Z and Energy, and includes nuclei of all elements heavier than helium (Z=2.) |
| Page 134: | "SunSprial and Agogino called the concept Super Ball Bot... |
| Spelling: S/B "SunSpiral". |
| Page 137: | "On Titan, the Sun is much weaker, with its distance and the thick atmosphere, solving both the UV and temperature issues. |
| Wording, punctuation: S/B "Titan's thick atmosphere solving". |
| Page 144: | "Machine learning is doing amazing things, some of it weird. |
| Number error: S/B "them". |
| Page 158: | "The CEO of Titan Corp. . . . was immensely relieved when she received a successful demonstration of a functioning Q-drive. |
| Something I never heard of. But the authors explain it well enough: an electrical field accelerates virtual particles, producing a small but constant thrust. However, I remain dubious of its success. |
| Page 158: | "As the work progressed, full-sized Q-drive thrusters came together, with huge rings like detached butterfly wings to accelerate quantum particles. |
| I just don't see this simile. A butterfly wing looks nothing like a ring. Perhaps the authors mean the thrusters are fragile, but still provide propulsion. |
| Page 167: | "No followup studies have been conducted, but male and females astronauts have had healthy children after traveling in space. |
| Spelling: S/B "male and female astronauts". |
| Page 187: | "The other performed electrolysis, exposing the water to an electrical field and splitting oxygen and water out of it. |
| Terminology: S/B "an electrical current". This is more a matter of convention than accuracy, for the field drives the current. However, electrolysis takes quite a bit of power, and the authors don't say how that power will be supplied initially. |
| Page 202: | "Genetic markers would disqualify applicants with increased chances of elevated eye or brain pressure in low gravity, depression in low light or confined conditions, experience of cold extremities, or an aggressive temperament. |
| It's unclear what this means. Is it a tendency toward poor circulation in arms and legs? |
| Page 202: | "...while simultaneously keeping the gender balance and being certain to cover varied races, cultures, religions, and political outlooks, and including straight, gay, bi, transgender, and a variety of newer sexual identities. |
| There's more than straight, gay, bi, and transgender? |
| Page 216: | "The vehicle most like a spaceliner that exists today is a U.S. Navy fast attack submarine. |
| From the remaining text on this page, I think the authors confuse the fast-attack type of submarine with the "boomer". |
| Page 223: | "...the pictures that Viking took, published in a morning newspaper, helped inspire this book's co-author, Amanda, to become a scientist, and probably many others. |
| Missing word: S/B "and probably inspired many others". |
| Page 227: | "Occupational exposure to space radiation for each worker had to be limited to a few years per lifetime, so assembly tasks requiring highly skilled and experienced technical workers had to stay on the ground. |
| This does not follow. Given reliable transport to LEO, those workers could rotate to space and back. Also, the in-space assembly operations would presumably take place in LEO — where the workers, like the crews aboard the ISS, are protected by Earth's magnetosphere. |
| Page 234: | "The World Food Programme estimates that one in nine people on Earth don't have enough food to lead a healthy life... |
| Number error: S/B "doesn't". |
| Page 239: | "Where camps of starving had stood, people began working... |
| Missing word: S/B "camps of the starving" or "camps full of starving people". |
| Page 243: | "Artificial light makes it harder. |
| Missing words: S/B "Having to use artificial light makes it harder." |
| Page 243: | "There's plenty of energy in the sunlight hitting the Earth to power all our cars and airplanes and to feed us, but only if we can find a way to more efficiently gather it and convert it to liquid or solid form. |
| This conflates different sorts of energy needs. Electric vehicles don't need liquid or solid fuel, just a way to recharge batteries. Airplanes need liquid fuel (at present) but that can be synthesized from plant waste or produced by gene-tailored algae, in processes running on electrical power. The power can come from solar arrays or another renewable source — even from nuclear plants. The authors should have confined this discussion to food. |
| Page 247: | "The body of a human being with a 2,700 calorie daily diet burns about 130 Watts an hour." |
| Mixing power and energy: S/B "130 Watts". |
| Page 258: | "The next private spaceliner to depart for the colony was the ExxonMobil Titan. Its captain drank heavily at the company's lavish good-bye party and drove the ship into a well-charted space rock. The vessel spilled a debris field from its ruptured reactor and cargo modules, damaging many satellites and space stations owned by other companies and government entities. |
| I appreciate the displeasure over the oil spilled into Prince William Sound, but this is a ludicrous scenario. The ship would leave from Earth orbit. There are no "space rocks", well-charted or otherwise, in Earth orbit. The captain might drive his spaceship into an asteroid, but this would happen far from Earth and would not cause damage to facilities in LEO. |
| Page 260: | "When we spoke, the robotics engineers were adding an arm that could place the pavers. Producing the pavers remained a manual job for intern labor. |
| Wrong word: S/B "place the pavings. Producing the pavings". |
| Page 260: | "For example, automating the process of making bricks would require finding a way to move Moon dust in a weightless environment. |
| Not weightless; low-weight — specifically, one-sixth Earth gravity. |
| Page 260: | "...or, for metal, they could travel back to Earth or to an asteroid in Earth's neighborhood. |
| They would be wasting time and fuel if they did this. The main belt has plenty of metallic asteroids, and robotic probes could pick out some good ones. |
| Page 273: | "The ability to learn gender before birth led to sex selection through abortion... |
| Missing words: S/B "learn the gender of a child before its birth". |
| Page 284: | "Planets outside our solar system, called expoplanets... |
| Typo: S/B "exoplanets". |
| Page 288: | "SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, is still in business... |
| This acronym S/B "SETII". Better yet, just define "SETI" and refer to the organization as "the SETI Institute." |
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