I know two young boys at least who would love to take a space shuttle apart; I am not so sure about the likelihood of their getting it back together again. As I have said often enough before, the book can still give a unique virtual experience and here we have a further example. A book, or series, such as Take it Apart must have an exact degree of content and detail, illustration and text, all in a suitable balance. That is achieved here: Take it Apart: Space Shuttle starts with a full shuttle orbiter and its major components (booster rocket, fuel tanks etc) then works down to ever closer detail (flight deck, eating and drinking, for example). It also looks at Spacelab and ends with a section on launch procedures and components. Clear illustrations are closely allied to straightforward largely non‐technical texts and supplemented by bright yellow fact boxes which feed children’s delight in numbers and abstruse facts or comparisons (“There are more than 21,000 tiles on the orbiter. Each one must be a slightly different shape from the others”). With a standard contents page, glossary and index, all combines to make a very factual book of reference well suited to the six‐ to eight‐year‐old age range.
Space exploration seems to have gone a bit out of fashion and popularity compared with the 1960s and 1970s. But that is probably partly because satellites in particular are now a fundamental part of everyday life: telecommunications and weather forecasts are just the most obvious applications on which our technical and scientific infrastructure now relies. The revelation in earlier stages of space exploration that the most significant developments and applications would lie with unmanned satellites and probes was not particularly popular, especially among those advocating or attracted by the glamour of manned spaceflight, but it was always true and remains so. Our dependence on the artificial satellite in a huge number of applications is brought out in Future Tech: Satellites, a comprehensive survey for the eight‐ to 12‐year‐old age range. It deals with all relevant aspects: a brief history and description of how satellites work, are followed by standard double‐page spread sections on applications ranging from communications and navigation to science and spy satellites. The final section deals with SETI (search for extra‐terrestrial intelligence).
This title is aimed at an older age range than the space shuttle book so has more information packed into a larger format. It makes good use of photographic and commissioned illustration (except that some of the satellite images of the earth would be better reproduced in a larger size) combined with excellent overall design, not forgetting a clearly written and jargon‐free text. Complete with a glossary and index, this is an excellent introduction and fact source for its stated age range.
