International Space Station: Architecture Beyond Earth

International Space Station: Architecture Beyond Earth - David Nixon ***

There is a danger of discounting this square, chunky book, running to over 400 pages, as a coffee table book, and that would be a great shame. It's true that International Space Station has some wonderful photographs - I particularly love an image of the International Space Station transiting the Moon, which I assumed was a mocked up shot, but according to the caption was taken by someone from Australia with a telescope - it's stunning. However, the photographs are not the be-all and end-all of this book, which contains a very detailed text on the history of the ISS, from its initial planning and construction all the way through to 2011, with an epilogue adding information that takes us up to 2015.

There's a reasonable amount on the build-up to the ISS, with some mentions of its predecessors, and plenty on the design stage. In fact this features more so than might be expected, perhaps because the author is an architect - and proves one of the most interesting sections. Overall, the tone of the book is somewhat reverential, and arguably not questioning enough. David Nixon likens the ISS to the Large Hadron Collider, yet a good number of scientists have pointed out that the American Superconducting Super Collider, which would have been more advanced than the LHC was cancelled in favour of the ISS. And where these colliders are involved in fundamental research, the science done on the ISS is mostly trivial, and often could have been done easier and cheaper without human involvement. Human spaceflight is not primarily about science, and this isn't brought out anywhere near enough in the book.

For me there were a couple of other negatives. This is an expensive book, yet it is not printed on glossy paper, so although the photographs are impressive, they aren't quite as high quality as they could have been. And the main body of the text, although it incorporates assorted human interest stories, is primarily about giving us a huge amount of detail on the step-by-step history of the ISS, where an account that concentrated on narrative high points may have been more readable.

Even so, there is an awful lot to get your teeth into here. If you are a space fan, fascinated by the kind of venture the ISS represents, this book is an absolute must, full of juicy details and intriguing insights into what might have been had NASA taken different decisions. This is a landmark book for the field - it's just a shame that it isn't better at putting the ISS into its scientific context (or lack thereof).

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight ****

Not everyone would class this as popular science, but it concerns an attempt to take a scientific approach to paranormal abilities - notably premonitions (aka clairvoyance) and as such, it fits the category. Writing in the typical dramatic storytelling style of a US magazine, Sam Knight brings to life the remarkable tale of the work of two British figures from the 1960s. The central one is psychiatrist John Barker, with a supporting role given to newspaper and TV science reporter Peter Fairley. Barker had a long interest in extra sensory phenomena - the story takes off when he was inspired by a number of people claiming to have foreseen the Aberfan disaster (which terrible tragedy Knight covers movingly). As a result of the Aberfan premonitions, the pair were responsible for London's Evening Standard newspaper setting up a long-running experiment in the form of 'The Premonitions Bureau.' Aware that the Aberfan predictions were only reported after the event, and hence flawe...

Search This Blog