Book Review: Janice Van Cleave’s Engineering for Every Kid

Title: Janice Van Cleave’s Engineering for Every Kid

Author: Janice Van Cleave

Format: Paperback

Pages: 205

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Date: 2007

Retail Price: $14.95

ISBN: 978-0-471-47182-0

 

Engineering for Every Kid is the latest in Janice Van Cleave’s series of books that provide a fun introduction to a variety of science topics to children. This particular book is particularly relevant now, as engineering is vital to the continuing prosperity of our technology-based society as well as to the maintenance of the infrastructure that we all depend upon.

 

On October 4, 1957 I, along with millions of other kids was inspired by the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, by the Soviet Union. It seemed miraculous to see that tiny dot of light passing overhead, and realize that it was a machine that engineers had built. I wanted to be a part of that kind of achievement. Now the generation that was energized by Sputnik is approaching retirement age. Who will take the place of those engineers who designed the Apollo moon ships, the Viking Mars landers, the Cassini Saturn orbiter, and all the other machines that have taught us so much about the world we live in and the greater world we hope to live in, in the future? Who will design the bridges, the highways, the power plants, and the energy efficient cars that will be needed to replace the aging infrastructure we have today? We need young people with a passion for learning about the world and for using that knowledge to make the world better.

 

Engineering for Every Kid should be a required textbook at every elementary school in the country. Each chapter describes one of twenty-five different engineering disciplines, many of which did not exist when Sputnik was launched. For each discipline there is a set of exercises and a hands-on activity that the kids can do to drive the lesson home. Each chapter is illustrated with excellent drawings by Laurie Hamilton. The drawings help to focus the reader’s attention and also make the book more friendly and approachable. Throughout the text, new terms are rendered in bold type and are defined in a glossary at the back of the book.

 

Bottom line: Janice Cleave’s Engineering for Every Kid is a great way to get a young person interested in engineering. I would have loved it if it had been available when I was a kid. As it turns out, I went into engineering anyway, but not everyone is so lucky.

 

© 2007 Allen G. Taylor

This review originally appeared on the Web site of the National Space Society, www.nss.org.

Book Review: Red Lightning

Title: Red Lightning

Author: John Varley

Format: Paperback

Pages: 368

Publisher: Ace

Date: 2007

Retail Price: $7.99

ISBN: 0441014887

 

Twenty years after the events chronicled in Varley’s Red Thunder, the solar system is a very different place. Manny Garcia and Kelly Strickland have married, had two children, and moved to Mars to operate the Red Thunder Hotel. Mars has become a major tourist destination, served by squeezer-powered interplanetary cruise ships such as the Royal Caribbean Sovereign of the Planets. For this sequel to Red Thunder, the point of view character is teenage Ray Garcia-Strickland, a fairly typical Martian kid, despite the fact that his famous parents were members of the first crew to land on Mars.

 

Ray, like teenagers everywhere, is not totally enamored with his life on Mars, although he is convinced that life on Earth would be even worse. He has to confront life on Earth sooner than he would like when a large object, traveling at just slightly below the speed of light strikes the Atlantic Ocean, launching a tsunami that devastates the islands of the Caribbean and the entire East Coast of the United States. Ray’s grandmother owns and operates a beachfront hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, one of the hardest hit communities. Ray, Manny, Kelly, Ray’s sister Elizabeth, and Ray’s girlfriend Evangeline book passage to Earth on the Sovereign of the Planets to do what they can to rescue grandma. The devastation they encounter is graphic, informed as it is by Varley’s study of the Sumatra earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 2004. In this case, however, the damage and loss of life is far greater. When two massive objects collide at close to the speed of light, bad things happen.

 

Although the damage caused by the tsunami was horrific, things were about to get worse. Ray’s “Uncle” Jubal Broussard thought the disaster was his fault and disappeared, setting off a chain of events that put powerful groups on Earth in conflict with each other, with Mars, and particularly with Ray’s family. The shadowy quasi-governmental groups trying to capture Jubal would stop at nothing to find him, and Ray’s family, particularly Ray himself, was believed to be the key to locating him.

 

Red Lightning, informed as it is by 9/11, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the recent erosion of freedoms in America in the name of Homeland Security, paints a dark vision of the future, but with rays of hope (Rays of hope?) personified by courageous individuals such as Travis and Jubal Broussard and every member of the Garcia-Strickland clan. Like Red Thunder, this book is very reminiscent of the work of Robert A. Heinlein. Independent-minded people summon inner strength to break out of the control of a society that is becoming progressively more constricting. Will virtue triumph over the forces of evil? Maybe. The battle is never completely won.

 

 

© 2007 Allen G. Taylor

This review originally appeared on the Web site of the National Space Society, www.nss.org.

Book Review: Red Thunder

Title: Red Thunder 

Author: John Varley
Format: Paperback
Pages: 416
Publisher: Ace
Date: 2004
Retail Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0441011624

In Red Thunder, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author John Varley has written a novel in the vein of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic juvenile novels such as Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, but updated to the present. As in the Heinlein novels, ordinary young people are thrust into a decidedly extraordinary situation.

The story takes place in a near future in which the Lockheed Martin VentureStar successor to the space shuttle was not cancelled and VentureStars lift from Cape Kennedy on a weekly basis, headed for the space station. Most things are pretty much as they are in our world in the first decade of the 21st century. One visible difference is the presence of automated highways that take control of your car and whisk you from point A to point B at high speed in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The point of view character is Manny Garcia, a 19 year old Cuban-American who recently graduated from the fictional Gus Grissom High School in Daytona Beach, Florida. He and his mother run the iconic Blast-Off Motel, a relic of sixties kitsch left over from the early days of America’s space program.

The story gets rolling when Manny, his African-American friend Dak, and their girlfriends Kelly and Alicia, are joyriding on the beach in Dak’s highly customized pickup, Blue Thunder. They narrowly avoid running over a passed-out drunk lying in the sand. The drunk turns out to be a Cajun ex-astronaut, Travis Broussard, who had been the most highly skilled pilot in the corps until his drinking problem booted him out of NASA. After the kids take Travis home, things get interesting.

Travis lives with his genius cousin Jubal, who was nearly killed by his deranged and abusive father. Jubal suffered serious brain damage, which makes him appear to be retarded, but his streak of genius survives. He discovers a way of extracting unlimited energy from another dimension of space-time, which holds the promise of opening up the solar system.

Jubal’s discovery comes none too soon, as both Chinese and American missions are headed to Mars, with the Chinese poised to land first. The American ship is powered by Franklin Chang-Diaz’ VASIMR drive and Jubal has concluded that it will likely fail on the long trip, killing all the astronauts on board, including Travis’s ex-wife, Holly.

Jubal, Travis, and the four young friends believe that Americans should be the first to land on Mars, so the only sensible course is to build a Mars ship using Jubal’s squeezer drive to beat the Chinese to Mars and rescue the Americans if their ship fails. That being the case, four teenagers, a recently dried out alcoholic, and a badly damaged genius proceed to build Red Thunder, a squeezer-powered ship that can accelerate continuously at 1 g halfway to Mars, then flip over and decelerate to rendezvous with the Red Planet, all in the space of three days.

As you might expect, there are a number of challenges that work to prevent the team from ever lifting off in Red Thunder, let alone successfully beating the Chinese to Mars or rescuing imperiled NASA astronauts. Manny’s mother is none too keen on having her son fly off to Mars with a recovering alcoholic. Kelly’s father would go ballistic if he were to find out his daughter was planning to really go ballistic. The FBI and the U.S. Coast Guard also supplied serious obstacles. The team of adventurers, with the help of various Broussards and other family members, works together to face the challenges as they arise.

I enjoyed this story a lot. It brought back memories of the Heinlein stories that fired my interest in space travel a half century ago. The technical details are accurate. Orbital mechanics is correctly covered as are life support, propulsion, and the problems, both physical and psychological, that are likely to arise on a conventional three month trip to Mars, such as those undertaken by the Chinese and NASA astronauts. Jubal’s squeezer drive is, of course, as fanciful as H.G. Wells’ cavorite anti-gravity propulsion was a century ago. The book shows China to be NASA’s likeliest rival in manned space travel to the Moon and beyond, and also shows the US government’s cool attitude toward private space activity. Perhaps our current reality, in which VentureStar never made it off the ground, is better after all. Private space ventures are sprouting up all over, and there is the potential at least that China may be a valuable partner in space rather than a rival. It would indeed be wonderful if the first human being to set foot on Mars could truthfully say, “We come in peace for all mankind.”

© 2007 Allen G. Taylor

This review originally appeared on the Web site of the National Space Society, www.nss.org.