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| Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications
Paperback
Edition: 3rd
Author: David A. Vallado
Publisher: Microcosm Press/Springer
Release Date: 2007-04-20
ISBN-10: 1881883140
ISBN-13: 9781881883142
List Price: $63.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
This Microcosm Press "2007 Author of the Year" award winner has graced us once again with the standard astrodynamics reference for those in the business of spaceflight. What sets this book apart is that nearly all of the theoretical mathematics is followed by discussions of practical applications implemented in tested software routines available to readers at no cost. For example, the book includes a compendium of algorithms that allow students and professionals to determine orbits with high precision. Without a doubt, when an astrodynamics problem arises, it will continue to be standard practice for engineers to keep this volume close at hand and "look it up in Vallado". While the first and second editions were exceptionall useful and popular throughout the community, there are a number of reasons why the third edition will be even more so.
Excellent coverage!
| Customer Rating: | I would not recommend it for the beginner and would recommend Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bate, Muller, and White (often call it "BMW") instead. However, this is an excellent book for practical numerical analysis of orbits and trajectories.
It includes detailed coverage of reference frames, numerical prorogation methods, perturbing forces including spherical-harmonic representations of gravity models, dynamical time, line-of-sight and line-of-light analysis, and other important topics and was extremely helpful when I was designing "frozen" orbits around the moon.
The only thing that I felt that this book lacked was a detailed explanation of the JPL ephemeris, ballistic capture trajectories, and trajectory optimization. Nevertheless, this book "feels" like a classic the ("Valldo" book) is a must-have in any GN&C reference collection. |
Excellent book for the practicing engineer
| Customer Rating: | I find this book to be excellent from the point of view of the practicing engieneer. Vallado gives a lot of details on how to solve practical problems and puts a wealth of information in terms one can use almost directly to write algorithms.
The book is structured so that the chapters flow in logical manner. Once you understand the logic you'll have no problem navigating the book.
It is true it is not a book for beginners. I've tried to teach Orbital Mechanics out of it to junior level aerospace engineering students and most of them didn't like it.
The book has quite a few typos but an errata is available on the publisher's website. Also available on the publisher's website are the algorithms presented in the book - in FORTRAN, C, C++, Ada, and MATLAB.
Overall I believe that Vallado put back "Fun" in "Fundamentals".
Enjoy! |
Notes on Vallado's book
| Customer Rating: | | This is a book I would definitely recommend for those interested in the practical application of basic Astrodynamics. The only real problem is you have to double check the math since there are a fairly large number of errors in the computations. I especially like the discussions comparing and contrasting different methods and algorithms. |
Admirable survey
| Customer Rating: | | This is a detailed text covering a broad collection of the most relevant topics, primarily aimed at engineers and engineering students practicing astrodynamic theory and orbit determination. It properly emphasizes that modern astrodynamics is now practiced on the computer, combining numerical methods with classical celestial mechanics to provide dozens of algorithms suitable for machine solution. It excels on two fronts: 1) it provides much generic "pseudo-code" (computer recipes) for writing subprograms, and 2) it touches on everything from Keplerian motion to estimation theory to atmospheric modeling for drag perturbations. Because it covers so much in under 1000 pages, the author does not fully derive all the algorithms. However, there is a fifteen page appendix of additional references, and the author's disarming writing style makes the text very approachable to the student. It is well illustrated with excellent diagrams and numerous tables, and much of the notation (equations and symbols) is standardized with other textbooks in this field. Being a 1st edition, it has a few mistakes. There is a couple of noticeable equation typos and some numerical errors in a few of the many examples (the programmer will quickly discover these). There is probably undue emphasis on some minor topics, and likewise a few important concepts are sometimes briefly mentioned without clarity. Being so broad in scope, the reader is sometimes required to go from chapter to chapter to get the big picture or gather all the details. While this may be distracting at times, most of the needed information is there - few astrodynamics textbooks can claim to be as complete. An engineer or computer programmer who needs to solve problems in this field will immediately discover that this title serves to fill a large void in the academic literature on non-relativistic astrodynamics. Those wanting a purer treatise of fundamental theory might find a text on analytical celestial mechanics or dynamical astronomy will help supplement this text for self-study. |
Lousy attempt
| Customer Rating: | | I felt that this book made a very lousy attempt at clearly explaining the subject material. I had previously owned Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and had hoped that this book would provide additional useful information. I have since ended up throwing this book into the pit out back where I accumulate wasteful material for future burning. I would not recommend this book to an engineer or scientist in the field. |
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