ICARUS 22, 235-236 (1974)

Serrch the Solar System. JAMES STRONG. the orbits of Earth and other planets and Crane, Russak and Co., New York, 1973. 160 pp. satellites) and on transfer orbits for comet Price $8.50. encounters.

In this book James Strong, a British aerospace engineer and spaceflight enthusiast, describes for the lay reader the past and possible future uses of unmanned probes for the investigation of the Solar System. He advocates an internation- al program of exploration of planets, satellites, asteroids, comets, interplanetary space, and the Sun itself, drawing upon the proposals of numer- ous NASA and other study panels and liberally interjecting his own ideas as well. There is no question of his enthusiasm and good intentions in writing this little volume. Unfortunately, he appears not to understand many of the scientific problems that must provide the ultimate justi- fication for planetary exploration. Strong dis- plays the zeal of the amateur who, armed with a few tidbits of knowledge and a bag of purple prose, sets out to entertain and inspire the masses with the righteousness of his cause. I wish him luck, but I regret that he has not produced a better informed book, even for a strictly lay audience.

Strong and his publishers also indulge in tw-o mannerisms that particularly annoy me. The first is the use of the adjective “Venusian”. I do not understand why authors avoid “Ven- erian”, but if t.hey reject this obvious term, they can always fall back on the obscure (but increasingly popular) “Cytherean”. The second is the introduction of false significant digits when writing metric equivalents of English units. The worst example in this book is on page 67, where Strong suggests that the outgassing of Martian volcanoes might amount to “100,000 gallons (454,600 liters)” of water per year. Conversions such as this, which are so common in newspaper discussions of the metric system, can only have the effect of turning the average reader against metric measurements, since he will infer that in the metric system he will have to keep track of more numbers.

Icarusl is not the place for a detailed review of a popular work such as Search the Solar h’yatem, particularly one with so many inaccuracies of fact and interpretation. What student of the planets will be interested in reading a history of research on Venus in which it is asserted that radio astronomy has not made much contri- bution, but that radar has been the technique by which temperature in the atmosphere and subsurface have been measured (pp. 38-39)? Or that Mars has green and purple markings (p. 62)? Or that the advance of the perihelion of Mercury was explained by Einstein in 1905 in his Special Theory of Relativity (p. 78)? And what scientist or engineer working on design of vehicles for remote exploration will benefit from a discussion of the problem of controlling a moving vehicle on Mars that is written by an author who seems to believe (p. 55) that the time lag in a visual feedback loop is only the one-way, rather than the round-trip, light travel time? Technical errors such as these abound in this book, averaging about one per page. The only two chapters that appeared to me to be relatively free of errors were those on interplanetary communication (the author argues for relay stations at the “Trojan” Lagrangian points of

Copyright 0 1974 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Printed in Great Britain

This book can not be recommended to any scientist or research libarary. It can only be recommended to a general purpose library if one assumes that the public is unlikely to recog- nize the many technical half-truths and mis- interpretations that it contains. Perhaps, at least in the absence of any popular account of higher quality that deals with the excitingexplor- ation of the solar system now underway, it is proper to take such an attitude, but I find it difficult to be that cynical.

Institute for fistronomy Univerkty of Hawaii Honolulu, HI 96822

DAVID MORRISON

Fundamentals of Aeronomy. R. C. WHITTEN AND I. G. POPPOFF. John Wiley & Sons, N.Y. 1971. 464 pp. $14.95.

In their preface the authors say that their aim is to remedy the lack of a textbook in aero- nomy “by developing the principal themes of aeronomic science from basic physical principles. We try to emphasize the fundamental physics throughout rather than concentrate on the results of the most recent work in each area.” Unfortunately, in spite of the assiduous work of the authors, in my opinion this book has serious

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