Konstantin Kakaes

Fun little Kindle Single. A geek detective story. The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter and Saturn now headed for the star Aldebaran that it will reach in 2 million years (if the Klingons don't blow it away first), began exhibiting some anomalous distance and velocity readings. For over a decade a few intrepid scientists at JPL, Ames Research Center, and a few volunteers worked to track down the source. With some hoping this might herald a flaw in Einstein's theory of relativity, and possibly new insight into gravitational theory, they finally figured it out. I won't spoil it here, but the fun in this is not the destination, but the journey. Well written and quite worth an hour or two of your time!… (more)

Neat little book, crisply written, easy to consume and enjoy in one sitting. I've always been fascinated by the Voyager story, Carl Sagan's Murmurs of Earth is treasured. The Pioneer craft who led the way for deep space travel, becoming the first man-made objects to exit the solar system, arent as well-known as Voyager, but their story is no less fascinating. Kakaes weaves their epic journey outward bound from earth to the stars into a scientific detective story about the "Pioneer Anomaly", a phenomenon that for a time threatened to overturn Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. No heavy science in here, it is easily understandable by the layman and moves swiftly without bogging down. Excellent quick read.… (more)