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Loading... Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery (2010)by Stephen J. Pyne
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Stephen Pyne does an excellent job illuminating the nature of modern space exploration. Another area that I will need to read again to understand is the relationship of modern space exploration to past explorers. I think Pyne has captured the science and engineering that went into the Voyager mission very well. He says: Gravity assist was one of dozens of ideas - inventions, if you will - that made Voyager possible. Who invented Voyager? Who invented the Grand Tour?" Read this fascinating book to find answers to those questions. Very detailed story of the two Voyager missions and what they discovered. I must admit that I skipped the parts that talked about explorers from other ages (I just read the parts about the Voyager crafts)... but people who love history would enjoy that also. I learned alot and took many notes! Two very nice appendices.. one listing space missions.. when / where/ craft / country, etc. I really wanted to like this book as the history and science of unmanned space exploration can be fascinating. But I felt like I've been down this road before via Carl Sagan's ground-breaking book Cosmos. While the author provides some interesting information on the two Voyager space probes and their journeys to the outer planets I didn't really learn much of anything new. I would recommend this book to a high school science student who is new to the topic of space exploration. But for anyone who has followed planetary exploration for a while I'd say there are better books and sources of information on the web. no reviews | add a review
A new account of the Voyager space program--its history, scientific impact, and cultural legacy. Launched in 1977, the two unmanned Voyager spacecraft have completed their Grand Tour to the four outer planets, and they are now on course to become the first man-made objects to exit our solar system. To many, this remarkable achievement is the culmination of a golden age of American planetary exploration, begun in the wake of the 1957 Sputnik launch. More than this, Voyager may be one of the purest expressions of exploration in human history. For more than five hundred years the West has been powered by the impulse to explore, to push into a wider world. In this highly original book, Stephen Pyne recasts Voyager in the tradition of Magellan, Columbus, Cook, Lewis and Clark, and other landmark explorers.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)919.9204History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in Australasia, Pacific Ocean islands, Atlantic Ocean islands, Arctic islands, Antarctica and on extraterrestrial worlds Extraterrestrial regions Planets of solar systemLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Unfortunately, the author also has this theory of the Three Ages of Discovery when Western peoples voyaged out to learn what lay beyond their horizons. The first age is in the 15th-16th century and involves mainly Spanish/Portuguese expeditions to find new sea routes, circumnavigate the Earth and colonize the "New World." The second age is the primarily British 18th to early 20th century efforts to seek the sources of rivers, climb the highest peaks, open up continental interiors and reach the poles. The third age is the 20th-century exploration of space (and to some extent under the oceans). This framework is problematic due to its Eurocentrism and skimming over the details of colonialism and exploitation of "discovered" places and people who long had lived in these lands, although Pyne does tie this idea into the military and propaganda purposes to the United States of the putative global Voyager mission.
The whole Three Ages idea might make a good introductory chapter to the book, but instead every time things about Voyager get interesting, Pyne keeps popping back to talk about Vasco de Gama or Lewis & Clark or Robert Peary. This tends to distract rather than support the main narrative. Interviews with some of the many people who worked on the Voyager program over the decades would have better informed the book. I think a straight history of Voyager would make a more interesting book than the flabby, half-baked philosophical treatise we have here. ( )