The Space Telescope: A Study of Nasa, Science, Technology, and Politics

By Robert W. Smith

Book Overview

Robert Smith's The Space Telescope sets the fascinating and disturbing history of this massive venture within the context of 'Big Science'. Launched at a cost of no more than $2 billion, the Space Telescope turned out to be seriously flawed by imperfections in the construction of its lenses and by solar panels that caused it to shudder when moving from daylight to darkness. Smith analyses how the processes of Big Science, especially those involving the government's funding process for large-scale projects, contributed to those failures. He reveals the astonishingly complex interactions that took place among the scientific community, government and industry and describes the great range of personalities and forces - scientific, technical, political, social, institutional and economic - that played roles in the Space Telescope's history.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521266343
• ISBN13: 9780521266345
• Release Date: October 1989
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.5" x 1.3" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

What a big project got to go through

If you thought they just build the Hubble Space Telescope and launched it, you're wrong. This book let you see what all such projects got to go through from the first bright idea and to the actual launch of an earth orbiting space vehicle. Sander Elvik, aerospace engineering student