History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)

Product Description

`History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2` is the second volume of the most explosive and astounding tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by rock solid scientific data. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it is well-illustrated, contains hundreds of charts, graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: - That the chronology universally accepted today and taken for granted is simply wrong; - That ALL methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact; - That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the XIth century; The Author refers to the Middle Ages as the Antiquity and proves mutual superimposition of the Second and the Third Roman Empire, both of which become identified as the respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Furthermore, he asserts that the famous reform of the Occidental Church in the XI century by Pope Gregory Hildebrand was the reflection of the XII century reforms of Byzantine emperor Andronicus who in his turn identifies with Jesus Christ. The Trojan war counted by Homer happened only as late as of the XIII century A.D. and the great poet actually lived in XIV century A.D. No stone in history of Antiquity is left unturned. Literally. This book is the beginning of a major correction to the chronology we live with.

Customer Reviews:

Check and see.......2007-06-21

I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.

Suprise! Suprise!.......2007-03-22

Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.

Prescient St Augustine?.......2006-02-05

We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:

a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;

b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;

c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.

Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:

It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.

- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.

- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.

Fomenko goes by the following axioms:

- Chronology is the basis of history;

- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;

- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;

- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;

- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;

- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.

Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?

The Russians:

Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.

The Westerners:

Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.

The Chinese:

Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.

The Arabs:

Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.

The Divinity:

Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.

St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."

Something of a disappointment.......2005-09-09

After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.

However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:

- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.

I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.

The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.

It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?

Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.

Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).

Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy.........2005-07-30

If you agree with Fomenko that Roman chronology is basically the foundation of the entire edifice of global chronology; you would also certainly agree that despite its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, Roman history is the best-documented field of ancient history, and thus a reference scale. But how well is the actual date of the Eternal City's foundation known?

Firstly, Rome is supposed to have been founded by the Trojans who had to flee after the fall of Troy. Some claim Rome to have been founded by Aeneas and Ulysses shortly after Troy had fallen; others are of the opinion that there was an entire dynasty that ruled for 500 years between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.

Well, that's just an innocent 500 years long misunderstanding compared with what heretic Fomenko says, asserts, proves in his second volume: Second Roman Empire, Third Roman Empire, Biblical Kingdom of Israel, Biblical Kingdom of Judah, Holy Roman Empire are stories about basically same events, written from different points of view at different times. The underlying events have actually taken place during xii-xv cy. These histories have been written and perfected by multitude of highly talented humanist and clerical writers of xiii-xvi cy disguised as "ancients" with glorious names like Homer, Pluto, Thucydides etc..Chronology 2.0 beta..

Historians are kindly invited to report the bugs.

Off The Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard The Space Station MIR

Average customer rating:

Honest report on life on Mir
A Fine Astronaut Memoir of the Strife-Filled Shuttle-Mir Program of the Mid-1990s
Great story, but too much ego...
Interesting but horribly written
Better than I expected

Off The Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard The Space Station MIR
Jerry M. Linenger
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 007136112X

Amazon.com

Imagine yourself in a decaying space station far away from the atmosphere you never realized you needed so badly, not knowing if the next malfunction would kill you or merely keep you busy. Dr. Jerry M. Linenger experienced just this and describes his harrowing but ennobling five months aboard Mir in Off the Planet, a memoir that evokes the excitement of living every day as a life-threatening adventure. Linenger's very personal writing style draws the reader into the story quickly, breezing through his childhood, Annapolis training, medical school, and selection as an astronaut, then moving quickly to the Mir assignment and its aftermath.

Linenger isn't shy about sharing his opinions. Chapter titles like "Broken Trust" and "An Attempted Coverup" show his feelings about the bizarre relationship between the crew and mission control that may have kept him and his Russian comrades in constant danger. He also heaps praise on his fellow crew members and family for their strength and perseverance throughout the mission--between communication difficulties, the cloud of doubt surrounding the station's systems, and problems like fires and toxic fumes, it's a wonder anyone survived with their sanity intact. The full-color pictures accompanying the text add further insight into life aboard Mir. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

“An engrossing report.”—Booklist “Vividly captures the challenges and privations [Dr. Linenger] endured both before and during his flight.”—Library Journal Nothing on earth compares to Off the Planet—Dr. Jerry Linenger’s dramatic account of space exploration turned survival mission during his 132 days aboard the decaying and unstable Russian space station Mir. Not since Apollo 13 has an American astronaut faced so many catastrophic malfunctions and life-threatening emergencies in one mission. In his remarkable narrative, Linenger chronicles power outages that left the crew in complete darkness, tumbling out of control; chemical leaks and near collisions that threatened to rupture Mir’s hull; and most terrifying of all—a raging fire that almost destroyed the space station and the lives of its entire crew.

Customer Reviews:

Honest report on life on Mir.......2007-09-30

Unexpectedly, the best book by an astronaut I have ever read. Utterly honest, detailed but not too much, Linenger certainly had "the right stuff". Brilliant, adaptable and a jock, he survived 5 months in an unreliable, uncomfortable Mir space station, and got along very well with two pairs of Russian Cosmonauts, after "learning" Russian in a 5-week crash course. He gives the lowdown on Russian competence in the space program, the political reason for funneling US funds into joint space activity, the excessive control of by Russian ground crew of their cosmonauts. Much is as expected for Russians long living in a repressive, loveless society. True, the poverty of the Russian Republic would make anyone difficult.

Descriptions of ordinary lavatory functions, repair of every imaginable device on the Mir, all of which broke down, and details of docking, undocking, and returning to Earth on a Space Shuttle were more complete than any other I have read. Details of bone density loss, odd effects of Earth gravity and other bits were seen by me for the first time. For me "Off the Planet" was far superior to the classics such as First on the Moon by Armstrong, Collins & Aldrin (too sanitized), "Return to Earth"? by Aldrin (too personally focused, but good), or "Last on the Moon". Only "Apollo 13" compares, but is too sanitized.

My only gripe is that the scientific experiments on which so much time and money were spent do not come in for any description at all, nor any refs. to their publication, or Principal Investigators. Minor gripes were an occasional ambiguous antecedent, pride in contributing to lowering the fat content of Navy diets (on p7; utterly discredited by "The Cholesterol Myths" by Uffe Ravnskow, 2000; "The Modern Nutritional Diseases" by Ottoboni, 2001; "The GReat Cholesterol Con" by Anthony Colpo, 2006; and many others. See http://www.health-heart.org/acceuil.htm). On p9, canned tuna is healthful, but Minute Rice is not for the carb-sensitive among us. Twice, p78 and 189, "hydrolysis" of water is used instead of the correct "electrolysis".

A Fine Astronaut Memoir of the Strife-Filled Shuttle-Mir Program of the Mid-1990s.......2007-03-23

During the middle part of the 1990s NASA and the Russian Space Agency engaged in a set of cooperative missions that resulted in nine Space Shuttle-Mir link ups between 1995 and 1998, including rendezvous, docking, and crew transfers. Jerry Linenger was one of the NASA astronauts sent to fly on Mir, serving there between January 12 and May 15, 1997. This book recounts his experiences training for this mission, including the difficult time he spent at the Cosmonaut training facility at Star City, as well as the mission itself. As he noted about the Russians at Star City, "the goal of helping cosmonauts and astronauts better prepare for a mission was not a shared goal. Making money off the Americans seemed to be the overriding consideration" (p. 43).

A centerpiece of this book is the exceptionally difficult crises on Mir while Linenger was aboard. The first took place on February 24, 1997, when Linenger and his fellow crewmembers fought a fire caused when an oxygen generator in Kvant 1 malfunctioned and ignited. While the fire burned for only about ninety seconds, the crew was exposed to heavy smoke for five to seven minutes and donned masks in response. Linenger had been in the Spektr module working on his computer when he heard Mir's master alarm go off. He shut down his computer--in case the power should go off--put on some protective gear, and rushed as best he could in his weightless condition to the scene of the accident. They all realized that the fire was serious, it could jeopardize the station and their lives, for it blocked access to one of the Soyuz spacecraft needed for return to Earth. Crewmembers extinguished the fire with foam from three fire extinguishers, each containing two liters of a water-based liquid. The fire was not small. Burning in all directions in the microgravity of the space station, the oxygen from the generator fueled hydra-like flames up to three feet long. Periodically, said Linenger, bits of molten metal from the oxygen generator went splattered the bulkhead. Once the fire had been contained they started purging the atmosphere of the smoke, and Linenger, a physician, examined the other members of the crew to ensure they had not been injured. The crew wore masks and goggles until an analysis of the Mir atmosphere ensured that they experienced no serious health risk.

The fire foreshadowed a series of problems aboard Mir during the spring and summer of 1997. Oxygen generators broke down, the automatic docking system malfunctioned, various types of equipment both great and small interrupted the normally monotonous activities, the station's orientation system broke down, the power system failed when the solar arrays lost their position toward the Sun, and leaks in the Kvant-2 cooling system forced numerous repairs and seemingly endless fussing to keep it running. It appeared that the Mir crew, including Linenger, spent the majority of their days repairing the space station. They gingerly positioned Mir in relation to the Sun so that they could control temperature on various parts of the station. The environment on Mir was uncomfortable, and the crew complained about it.

Linenger believed that Russian mission control failed to inform the crew about the status of their station. He expressed nothing but praise for his fellow crewmembers for their strength and perseverance throughout the mission. Even with communication difficulties, a cloud of doubt surrounding the station's systems, difficulties with mission control, and fires and toxic fumes, the crew worked relatively well under very difficult circumstances.

Linenger tells his story with verve and style, and not a little humor, but that that barely hides a cynicism aboiut the whole effort. He concluded, "That the shuttle Mir program is primarily a political rather than a technical endeavor is obvious to anyone working on it or familiar with it" (p. 113). He also notes that the Shuttle/Mir program was essentially a form of foreign aid by the Clinton administration to Russia using NASA's space exploration money rather than funds appropriated through the various foreign aid programs of the United States. He concluded: "the U.S. government perceived that engaging the Russians in a cooperative space undertaking was reason enough to stick by Mir. Or perhaps having a means for our government to funnel millions of dollars in foreign aid to Russia under the guise of `rent money' so the United States can send astronauts to Mir is a valuable political stratagem" (p. 248).

In many ways this is a fascinating book, pulling back the curtain on the Shuttle/Mir cooperative program between the U.S. and Russia in the mid-1990s.

Great story, but too much ego..........2006-07-01

When you see members of the author's family adding book reviews to this website which attack other reviewers (as you can see here on the reviews for this book) you know something is wrong with this book - it doesn't need defending if it could stand on its own. Having read this book, I can see why the family is being overprotective and jumpy. What people have written here is true - this is an amazing story, obscured by the overpowering ego of the writer.

I hope the author had the integrity to call off his family, as they embarrass him here with such posturing. I recommend reading this book and judging it on its own merits - it really is an amazing tale.

Interesting but horribly written.......2005-10-25

If you read past this highly egocentric astronaut's explanations why he's so great it's really interesting. But actually it's a book that tells a story of someone who takes the American living standard as a measure for everything, thus he becomes amusing when he tells you about Russia, like a person who never set foot outside of an American military base.
I can't recommend the book despite a nice stories of fire, etc.

Better than I expected.......2005-07-20

Several years ago, I read Brian Burrough's book DRAGONFLY, which described the travails of the shuttle-Mir program in 1997. Many of the major figures in DRAGONFLY are presented "with warts and all," especially astronaut Jerry Linenger. DRAGONFLY portrays Linenger as petulant and antisocial -- a man more interested in exercising and carrying out his experiments than helping his fellow crewmates battle the daily problems aboard the space station. I found the book highly informative, and I gave it a solid four stars out of five.

Armed with this advance portrayal of Linenger, I was almost itching to dislike him as I read his account of his mission in OFF THE PLANET. The first 60-70 pages did nothing to dispel what I already felt I knew about him. He is intensely self-centered and resume-driven, even boasting about the number of "doctor" titles that should precede his name.

But his approach is more straightforward when he reaches orbit at the start of his mission to Mir. He shares a good deal of hard-won experience about long-duration space travel, a lot of which is a first for any astronaut autobiography. He's especially adept at explaining the medical idiosyncrasies of spaceflight, since he's a practicing MD.

According to Linenger, the mission's problems of disharmony were with the ground controllers in Moscow and not amongst crewmembers. He says mission control was often part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Some of this can be attributed to the terrible air-to-ground communications, which often rendered crew relations with earth untenable. But mission control also maintained a puppetmaster's approach to managing their crews, which was often counterproductive and at times downright adversarial. Still, if Linenger had a better camaraderie with his crewmates than his aloof portrayal in DRAGONFLY, this book doesn't quite reveal it.

The book's strongest passages come from the mission's crises -- a fire on February 23, 1997 that raged for 14 agonizing minutes, and a close near-miss of an unmanned cargo spacecraft during a docking attempt. (After Linenger's stay, another docking attempt resulted in a collision with Mir that forced the crew to close off the Spektr module to save their lives.)

I expected Linenger's tone to be more defensive, as if responding indirectly to Burrough's book. But Linenger is quite matter-of-fact, and doesn't come across as someone looking for excuses or a record to set straight. He's not very gossipy, and he rarely points fingers, and I liked that about him.

At times, I found Linenger's writing a little too breezy, and I would have liked some stretches shared with more detail. His prose also has an annoying tendency to jump around in time. He often follows event descriptions with post-flight commentary that really belongs at the conclusion of the book, so the writing appears somewhat unpolished.

I can recommend the book for what it is -- a very rare autobiographical account of an astronaut's long-duration space mission. Manned spaceflight can learn from Linenger's insight and also from his faults. For now, the book is in a class almost by itself, even though it doesn't set the bar very high. We should see a new standard if we ever see the accounts of Shannon Lucid, Michael Foale, or even the beleaguered Mir commander Vasily Tsibliev. I look forward to their stories.

2008 Asteroids, Comets, and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs): Tracking and Studying Threats to Planet Earth, NASA Spacecraft Missions and Studies, Options for Deflection (CD-ROM)

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2008 Asteroids, Comets, and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs): Tracking and Studying Threats to Planet Earth, NASA Spacecraft Missions and Studies, Options for Deflection (CD-ROM)
World Spaceflight News
Manufacturer: Progressive Management
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

Comets, Meteors & Asteroids | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1422009289

Product Description

This up-to-date electronic book on CD-ROM presents a comprehensive library of authoritative federal government scientific documents and publications covering all aspects of the threat posed to Earth by Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), asteroids, and comets. It provides a complete reproduction of the important March 2007 NASA report on NEO Survey and Deflection, an Analysis of Alternatives, plus complete coverage of Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs), impact risk assessment, and ongoing projects to detect, track, catalogue, and characterize these objects. There is detailed information about major NASA spacecraft missions studying asteroids and comets: DAWN, NEAR, STARDUST, DEEP IMPACT, and others. Asteroids and comets are the two types of potentially hazardous objects (PHO). For objects in the inner solar system, astronomers can distinguish these bodies on the basis of their appearance. Moving objects that appear as a star-like point of light are known as asteroids. Moving objects that appear diffuse or those that have visible tails are known as comets. People have known about comets since antiquity. The existence of asteroids, however, was not known until about 200 years ago when telescopes became powerful enough to detect the largest such objects. It has taken several generations of improvements in telescope design to detect and understand the small bodies that orbit near Earth. Differences in the appearance of comets and asteroids reflect in part a difference in their composition. Generally, asteroids are relatively rocky or metallic objects without atmospheres, while comets are composed in part of volatiles such as water ice that vaporizes when heated to produce a tenuous and transient atmosphere around the solid nucleus. Comets that are far from the Sun or those that have lost most of their volatiles can look like an asteroid. A volatile-rich object will develop an atmosphere only when heated sufficiently by a relatively close approach to the Sun. The near-Earth as

21st Century Essential Guide to Asteroids, Comets, and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs): Tracking and Studying Threats to Planet Earth, NASA Spacecraft Missions and Studies, Options for Deflection (CD-ROM)

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21st Century Essential Guide to Asteroids, Comets, and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs): Tracking and Studying Threats to Planet Earth, NASA Spacecraft Missions and Studies, Options for Deflection (CD-ROM)
World Spaceflight News
Manufacturer: Progressive Management
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

Comets, Meteors & Asteroids | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

General & Reference | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1422009270

Product Description

Asteroid Rendezvous: NEAR Shoemaker's Adventures at Eros

Average customer rating:

An Excellent Account of a Unique Space Science Mission
Very Good Book About A Great Space Mission

Asteroid Rendezvous: NEAR Shoemaker's Adventures at Eros

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

Comets, Meteors & Asteroids | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Book Description

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) was the first mission to orbit and eventually land on an asteroid. A phenomenal success, the mission returned with hundreds of thousands of images, spectra, and other measurements about the large near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros. Some of the scientists and engineers who made NEAR such a success describe the mission here in their own words, from the initial concept studies, through the development phase, launch, cruise operations, the flyby of asteroid Mathilde, the near-catastrophic main engine failure in 1998, the heroic rescue and recovery of the spacecraft, the amazing year-long up-close look at one of Earth's most primitive celestial neighbors, and, finally, the daring attempt to land the spacecraft on Eros at the end of the mission. The book is illustrated throughout with images from the mission and explanatory diagrams. Jim Bell is an Assistant Professor in the Cornell University Astronomy Department whose research focuses on the geology, chemistry, and mineralogy of planets, asteroids, and comets using data obtained from telescopes and spacecraft missions. He is a member of a number of space science teams, including the NASA Mars Pathfinder and NEAR. Author of some 70 first and co-authored journal publications, he is a frequent contributor to popular astronomy magazines and radio shows. The International Astronomical Union recently awarded him the honor of having asteroid 8146 Jimbell named after him. Jacqueline Mitton is the Press Officer and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a member of the International Astronomical Union, and a Member of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. She is the author or co-author of 16 astronomy books; her most recent being The Cambridge Dictionary of Astronomy (2001).

Customer Reviews:

An Excellent Account of a Unique Space Science Mission.......2003-09-23

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission completed in 2001 was the first to orbit and eventually land on an asteroid. That fact makes it significant. The fact that the mission was an unqualified success-when a success for NASA was truly critical in the aftermath of two successive failures with Mars probes in 1999-makes it rare. The fact that it was conducted by the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory over the protests of the mighty Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's traditional solar system exploration center, makes it politically sensitive. The fact that the NEAR team performed the mission on the cheap, spending less than $150 million, makes it unprecedented for deep space probes. The fact that it returned thousands of images, spectra, and other measurements about the large near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros makes it scientifically relevant.

After a long gestation period, NEAR began its voyage to Eros on 17 February 1996, the first mission flown under NASA's new Discovery program, a series of low-cost planetary science projects. NEAR finally moved into orbit around Eros on 14 February 2000, roughly a year later than intended.

Throughout 2000, NEAR explored Eros offering spectacular pictures and a rich harvest of spectroscopy data. At the conclusion of the mission, on 12 February 2001, the mission team landed it on the surface of Eros. Although the NEAR spacecraft was not designed to survive landing, its instruments remained operational until 1 March 2001.

In "Asteroid Rendezvous" several of the scientists and engineers who conducted the NEAR mission describe it in their own words from initial concept studies through development, launch, and cruise operations. The book is liberally illustrated throughout with both stunning images from the mission and explanatory diagrams.

"Asteroid Rendezvous" is long on description and celebration and short on analysis and critical examination. Even so, it is a very interesting book, and a fine start in documenting the history of this important mission. It will be of interest to amateur astronomers and general readers who want to know about the American space program. It will serve as grist for future serious historical studies of planetary exploration.

Very Good Book About A Great Space Mission.......2003-02-19

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission was the first of NASA's "Faster, Better Cheaper" spacecraft. Its primary mission was to orbit the asteroid 433 Eros, thereby becoming the first robotic explorer to orbit and eventually land on an asteroid. On the journey to Eros, NEAR flew by the main-belt asteroid Mathilde as well as our home planet, the Earth and returned dozens of pictures; however, the journey to Eros was almost lost when a software error caused the main engine to shut down prematurely. Due to the efforts the engineers and scientists supporting this project, the space probe was saved and the NEAR mission became one of the most successful NASA missions. In the end, the mission returned with hundreds of thousands of images, spectra, and other measurements about the large near-Earth asteroid Eros.

In this book, the author, Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and professor at Cornell, has assembled nine different articles about various aspects of this mission into one concise book about all aspects of this specular mission. The book opens with a chapter providing an overview of Eros and then moves into two chapters dedicated to the spacecraft and its mission, and its trip to Eros, from launch to rendezvous. The remaining chapters cover the different discovers made by the NEAR spacecraft, such as its overall landscape, its history, and several on its geology. There is also one chapter, which explains the photography planning, and eventual execution of this plan.

In general, I did not find the book to be very technical and there is a glossary of terms to help the layman as well as numerous photographs, figures and graphs are found throughout the book to further explain a given topic.

Customer Reviews:

Cox and Chester go for impact with "Doomsday Asteroid".......1998-03-17

"Doomsday Asteroid" presents an interesting perspective on the problems surrounding Earth's defense against cosmic impact.

Part of the defense that Cox and Chester expound upon is a space-based telescope, orbiting the Sun ahead of the Earth, that can provide early warning of an impending collision.

If nothing else, "Doomsday Rock" should be read because of the stirring prologue from Arthur C. Clarke's 1973 novel "Rendezvous With Rama". In addition to providing the impetus for the now-famous Rama saga, the prologue also lends it's name to the Spaceguard Survey that NASA undertook in 1992.

What detracts from the book is the lack of attention to smaller rocks that threaten the Earth. Although much less likely to cause global destruction, asteroids as small as 100 meters can cause vast devastation in urbanized regions and, in the case of a sea strike, coastal areas.

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