Space Mission Analysis and Design

Well, here I am again reviewing this fantastic book. Two years after its purchase, I finally came to an end and finished the whole stuff. As I usually do with this type of books, I read them from the very beginning till the end. During my reading I found out that a new version of SMAD is out, although its rating seems not to be as good as I expected at first. In any case, this book's 3rd revision deserves every penny you could spend on it. Almost all the most important parts when designing space missions are here, from technical point of view to administrative / political / whatever other environments in space missions you can find. Probably the only one miss I have found in this book is its practically absence of outer space technology and planning. There are some hints about Voyayer program, and some other gravity assisted programs, but in general little information on systems beyond GEO orbits. This obviously includes third extraterrestrial object landing, which is also not available. Taking in mind that its roughtly 1000 sheets sometimes becomes boring, in general this book covers the whole basis about "old way of space faring proceeding". New commercial approaches, new available IT technology, small satellite configuration and, in general, new perspectives on "Of the shelf" technology makes this book a little outdated. However, and in any case, it is very nice to understand the beginning of everything. I have used extensivelly this book in order to plan a mission to Moon, and it helped me a lot doing some harsh proceedings, especially when dealing with Astrodynamics, near Earth problems and picky behaviour while managing some fly by operation. From my experience at job (not space related (yet)), approximations when budgeting are quite good, although from an "outsider" perspective it could become hardly comprehensive. Such approximations in budgets, considering the very small amount of stocastic events are, at best, daunting tasks. It will become too aggresive to pre-design something really realistic based upon the satellite data available inside this book. Even as of today, natural satellite taylored design makes this approach quite dangerous, although it may work at the very beginning. Another topic to be considered in the book, and worderfully skipped, regards with the crewed missions. There is no much more data available about STS operations. It seems authors decided to follow the "Orion" approach, focussing primary on satellites standard launch. Any comment about STS operations at shuttle's bay is skipped, making only references on Shuttle ballast and regulations to be fulfilled prior launching something in this (today dead) vehicle. To sum up, a perfect book for an student or a space engineer when dealing very basic space REGULAR missions. Calculations on Astrodynamics are easily followed and partly clear (some units and some data is not explained enough, so someone not used to that should figure out in which unit it is supposed to be the relevant data there: as for example trying to pass from covered angle in one day satellite orbiting to number of complete orbits around Earth a day). For other specific areas, like space structures, thermal balancing, Rocket Propulsion Elements , communications, other more specialized books are recommended.

Anyone studying space engineering knows that SMAD is the bible for us!! I ordered this book for my Masters course and have enjoyed reading it even out of University times. Great aid for newbies but also technical enough for more advanced readies. Book arrived before the expected delivery date, well packaged and in excellent condition.

A must for space system engineering

A good all round support book - A useful general reference work... Sets the science - Then on to the real work - Design and build a workable satellite..

I already have I copy of this book, Space Mission Analysis and Design (SMAD), and ordered it by accident. Regardless, it’s an excellent book. I highly recommend getting this book as well as Space Mission Engineering (SME, aka SMAD version 4). Each book has information the other book doesn’t and actually creates a two-volume SME reference that completes what the two books don’t do on their own.