TABLE OF CONTENTS In this book we attempt to treat the major engineering specialty areas involved in space vehicle and mission design from the viewpoint of the systems engineer. To attain this breadth, the depth of coverage in each area is necessarily limited. This is not a book for the specialist in attitude control, propulsion, astrodynamics, heat transfer, structures, etc., who seeks to enhance his knowledge of his own area. It is a book for those who wish to see how their own specialty is incorporated into a final spacecraft design and for those who wish to add to their knowledge of other disciplines.
To this end we have subordinated our desires to include involved analyses, detailed discussions of design and fabrication methods, etc. Equations are rarely derived, and never when they would interfere with the flow of the text; however, we take pains to state the assumptions behind any equations used. We believe that the detailed developments appropriate to each specialty area are well covered in other texts or in the archive journals. We refer the reader to these works where appropriate. Our goal in this work is to show how the knowledge and constraints from various fields are synthesized at the overall system level to obtain a completed design.
We intend this book to be suitable as a text for use in a senior- or graduate- level design course in a typical aerospace engineering curriculum. Very few students emerge from four years of schooling in engineering or physical science...
