Book & DVD. NASA has been in the news lately for reasons beyond the exciting discoveries of various and vast quantities of water on the Moon. Unfortunately, the long, drawn out repositioning of our national space program has brought the space community to loggerheads, leaving the future of the U.S. manned space program in jeopardy. The upheaval caused by fights over rocket designs and suppliers, and the "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" formula being used to select our new space direction, has placed the U.S. space program in peril. For over two decades Paul Spudis has had a front row seat to the U.S. national space program and has written extensively about space policy and space science. His opinions and insights recently found a home on the Air and Space Magazine blog, The Once and Future Moon. Beginning with his reporting from India in October of 2008 (as the principal investigator of NASA's Mini-SAR, watching his radar being launched to the Moon aboard Chandrayaan-1), Paul's easy to read essays have followed and reported on the growing upheaval in the space community and the battle being waged for the ideological control of and funding for space exploration, and the resulting chaos. In keeping with his call for a strong U.S. human space program, Paul Spudis outlines and explains the importance of creating a sustainable space program through the use of the Moon's resources to create new capabilities to live and work in space and move humanity off planet. These essays and reader comments are compiled in the book. The bonus DVD includes a slideshow of over 30 years of Dr Spudis' pictures researching our Moon, as well as Dr Spudis' in-depth presentation about the Moon's resources.
Paul D Spudis is Principal Investigator in the Planetary Geology Program of the NASA Office of Space Science, Solar System Exploration Division, specialising in research on the processes of impact and volcanism on the planets. Served on NASA's Lunar and Planetary Sample Team (LAPST), which advises allocations of lunar samples for scientific research, the Lunar Exploration Science Working Group (LEXSWG),that devised scientific strategies of lunar exploration, and the Planetary Geology Working Group, which monitors overall directions in the planetary research community. Served on the Committee for Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX), an advisory committee of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Synthesis Group, a White House panel that in 1990-1991, analyzed a return to the Moon to establish a base and the first human mission to Mars. Member, Presidential Commission on the Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy, 2004. Deputy Leader of the Science Team for the Department of Defense Clementine mission to the Moon in 1994. Principal Investigator, Mini-SAR experiment on Indian Chandrayaan mission to the Moon, 2008. Team member, Mini-RF technology demonstration experiment, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission to the Moon, 2008.
"this book has some great material." - Universe Today, February 2011
"Warning: This is a no holds barred book."
"...fascinating collection of attitude and insight..." - Coalition for Space Exploration, February 2011
