PACKED WITH IMAGES
pioneer of astronautic theory, and John P Allen, the designer of the two-year Biosphere 2 mission, as well as billionaire space oligarchs such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Robert Bigelow.
What is particularly appealing about this latest work from the award-winning writer Kardis is his ability to share well-documented, existing chronicles of space from a new perspective: the human perspective. Whether it’s Wernher Von Braun, Bigelow, Musk or Lowell, he capably places these central figures at the core of each chapter, recounting the facts through the lens of the individual and the world they inhabit. This reveals enemies and allies, obsession, tenacity and determination – as well as the personal cost of following a dream.
While the prose meanders a little at times, it is a well-written, well-researched and entertaining read and certainly adds a glimpse of the cultural cauldron in which the history of spaceflight continues to bubble.
★★★★★
Put together by five seasoned photographers and prefaced by Voyager Imaging Team member Garry Hunt, this large-format volume will blow the socks off any interested coffee-table reader. Its scope becomes readily apparent in its inspirational quotes, from Carl Sagan’s “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known”, to Carolyn Porco’s assertion that exploration is about human longing to know ourselves and why we are here.
The authors tell the history of Voyager, our first foray to all four giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – which revealed their multitude of moons and rings, their atmospheres and magnetospheres, and the clues they may reveal about our origins. We meet the mathematical, engineering and scientific geniuses who identified the once-inthree-lifetimes fluke that permitted us to visit these previously unseen worlds through a clever mix of celestial mechanics and good fortune.
The authors juxtapose the minutiae of building the spacecraft, operating the deep-space communications equipment and guiding the Voyagers across billions of miles of uncharted emptiness with captivating tales of our ancestors’ understanding (and misunderstanding) of these tiny points of light in the night sky, which they dubbed ‘planets’.
But the real beauty of this book is its gorgeous assemblage of remastered photographs. There are pictures here that I have never seen before. And those I had seen were brought so wondrously and vividly to life that they left me openmouthed in awe. Voyager is like a trip to a never-before-seen land, where each turn in the road reveals a new panorama. In this book, each turn of the page does nothing less.
★★★★★