Brian Harvey

Shortlisted for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction An adventure story set against the backdrop of a son trying to understand his father After a 25-year break from boating, Brian Harvey circumnavigates Vancouver Island with his wife, his dog, and a box of documents that surfaced after his father's death. John Harvey was a neurosurgeon, violinist, and photographer who answered his door a decade into retirement to find a sheriff with a summons. It was a malpractice suit, and it did not go well. Dr. Harvey never got over it. The box contained every nurse's record, doctor's report, trial transcript, and expert testimony related to the case. Only Brian's father had read it all -- until now. In this beautifully written memoir, Brian Harvey shares how after two months of voyaging with his father's ghost, he finally finds out what happened in the O.R. that crucial night and why Dr. Harvey felt compelled to fight the excruciating accusations.

Sailing After My Father

Sea Trial

Computer Science Logo Style

Guided by genius engineer Hideo Itokawa, Japan’s space program began with small scientific satellites more than 50 years ago. Since then, its space probes have travelled to the Moon, Venus, the asteroids and even a comet. The country launched weather satellites to warn of typhoons, communications satellites to connect the Japanese archipelago and remote sensing technology to observe the Earth and warn of climate change. Engineering technology satellites became the basis of Japan’s electronic industry as Japanese astronauts flew into space, working on their Kibo module on the International Space Station. Now, Japan is one of Asia’s leading space powers, alongside China and India, vying for influence in the region. Its solid and liquid-fueled rockets are estimated to be among the most advanced and reliable in the world, its technology among the best. This book examines the history of Japan’s space program, the country’s current state of development and its future. It describes the extensive infrastructure that has gone into the forging of Japan’s picturesque oceanside launch sites, training centers, testing facilities and tracking stations. This book also outlines the politics of space in Japan, financial difficulties, its space industry, the symbiotic relationship with the United States and the recent sharp change-of-course to invest in military satellites. From the role of influential personalities, such as Hideo Shima and Shinichi Nakasuka, to political leaders, such as Yasuhiro Nakasone and Takeo Kawamura, you will read about how Japan has paved its own star-lit path to space. The future may expect to send Japanese probes to Mercury and the moons of Mars, all while the first Japanese astronauts set foot on our own Moon and drive innovative rovers across its surface.

Past, Present and Future

Japan In Space

Henk H. F. Smid

Theo Pirard

This work introduces the important emerging space powers of the world. Brian Harvey describes the origins of the Japanese space program, from rocket designs based on WW II German U-boats to tiny solid fuel 'pencil' rockets, which led to the launch of the first Japanese satellite in 1970. The next two chapters relate how Japan expanded its space program, developing small satellites into astronomical observatories and sending missions to the Moon, Mars, comet Halley, and asteroids. Chapter 4 describes how India's Vikram Sarabhai developed a sounding rocket program in the 1960s. The following chapter describes the expansion of the Indian space program. Chapter 6 relates how the Indian space program is looking ahead to the success of the moon probe Chandrayan, due to launch in 2008, and its first manned launching in 2014. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 demonstrate how, in Iran, communications and remote sensing drive space technology. Chapter 10 outlines Brazil's road to space, begun in the mid-1960's with the launch of the Sonda sounding rockets. The following two chapters describe Brazil's satellites and space launch systems and plans for the future. Chapters 13 and 14 study Israel's space industry. The next chapters look at the burgeoning space programs of North and South Korea. The book ends by contrasting and comparing all the space programs and speculating how they may evolve in the future. An appendix lists all launches and launch attempts to date of the emerging space powers.

The New Space Programs of Asia, the Middle East and South-America

Emerging Space Powers

Until the Apollo-Soyuz flight of 1972, the Russian Space Program was shrouded in such complete secrecy that only rumors of failures (or catastrophes) reached the West. This comprehensive history of the Russian Space Program, from its Sputnik origins to the privatized Mir Space Station, addresses the technical, political, historical, human, and organizational issues and provides a balanced focus on the manned and unmanned programs. It is the first book to assess the Russian Space Program including the 10-year period since the fall of communism.

The failed frontier?

Russia in Space

Illustrated with photographs from Soviet Venus and Mars probes, images of spacecraft, diagrams of flight paths and maps of landing sites, this book draws on published scientific papers, archives, memoirs and other material. The text reviews Soviet engineering techniques and science packages, as well the difficulties which ruined several missions. The program’s scientific and engineering legacy is also addressed, within the Soviet space effort as a whole.

History, Development, Legacy and Prospects

Russian Planetary Exploration

This, fifty years after Sputnik, is the definitive book on the Russian space program. The author covers all the key elements of the current Russian space program, including both manned and unmanned missions. He examines the various types of unmanned applications programs as well as the crucial military program, and even analyzes the infrastructure of production, launch centres and tracking. You’ll also find discussion of the commercialization of the program and its relationship with western companies. Russia’s current space experiment is also put in a comparative global context. Strong emphasis is placed on Russia’s future space intentions and on new programs and missions in prospect.

50 Years After Sputnik, New Frontiers

The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program

The development of the space industry in the Asian and Pacific Rim region provides the context for this book. The two major countries hoping for leadership in the area (apart from China) are Japan and India, both of whom have significant launcher capabilities. There is a general introductory chapter which places the space programmes of the region in the comparative context of the other space-faring nations of the world. The author reviews the main space programmes of Japan and India in turn, concentrating on their origins, the development of launcher and space facilities, scientific and engineering programmes, and future prospects. The book concludes with a chapter comparing how similarly/differently Japan and India are developing their space programmes, how they are likely to proceed in the future, and what impact the programmes have had in their own region and what they have contributed so far to global space research.

The Japanese and Indian Space Programmes: Two Roads Into Space

Olga Zakutnyaya

Brian Harvey recounts for the first time the definitive history of scientific Russian space probes and the knowledge they acquired of the Earth, its environment, the Moon, Mars and Venus. He examines what Russian Space Science has actually achieved in furthering our knowledge of the Solar System, focusing on the instrumentation and scientific objectives and outcomes, the information gained and lessons learnt. Boxes and charts are used extensively in order to convey in an easily understandable manner for the non-scientific reader the problems and issues addressed and solved by Soviet space science. The book opens with the story of early space science in Russia, which started when the first Russian rockets were fired into the high atmosphere from Kapustin Yar in the late 1940s. Instruments were carried to measure and map the atmosphere and later rockets carried dogs to test their reactions to weightlessness. In order to beat America into Earth orbit, two simpler satellites than originally planned were launched, Sputnik and Sputnik 2, which provided some initial information on atmospheric density, while the following Sputnik 3 carried twelve instruments to measure radiation belts, solar radiation, the density of the atmosphere and the Earth’s magnetic field. The author recounts how, by the 1960s, the Soviet Union had developed a program of investigation of near-Earth space using satellites within the Cosmos program, in particular the DS (Dnepropetrovsky Sputnik), small satellites developed to investigate meteoroids, radiation, the magnetic fields, the upper atmosphere, solar activity, ionosphere, charged particles, cosmic rays and geophysics. Brian Harvey then gives the scientific results from Russian lunar exploration, starting with the discovery of the solar wind by the First Cosmic Ship and the initial mapping of the lunar far side by the Automatic Interplanetary Station. He describes Luna 10, which made the first full study of the lunar environment, Luna 16 which brought soil back to Earth and the two Moon rovers which travelled 50 kms across the lunar surface taking thousands of measurements, soil analyses and photographs, as well as profiles of discrete areas. Chapters 4 and 5 describe in detail the scientific outcomes of the missions to Venus and Mars, before considering the orbiting space stations in Chapter 6. Space science formed an important part of the early manned space program, the prime focus being the human reaction to weightlessness, how long people could stay in orbit and the effects on the body, as well as radiation exposure. Chapter 7 looks at the later stage of Soviet and Russian space science, including Astron and Granat, the two observatories of the 1980s, and Bion, the space biology program which flew monkeys and other animals into orbit. The final chapter looks forward to a new period of Russian space science with the Spektr series of observatories and a range smaller science satellites under the Federal Space Plan 2006-2015.

Scientific Discoveries and Future Missions

Russian Space Probes

Piano tuner Frank Ryan is paid in kind by an aging music teacher with an old manuscript that turns out to be Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony. Launched into a world of intrigue and violence, Ryan, an unlikely sleuth, realizes he must use his wits to conquer his enemies and solve the mystery of the manuscript. In the process Ryan discovers whom he can trust and what he is made of. The first in a series featuring Frank Ryan, Beethoven’s Tenth is a smart page-turner.

Beethoven's Tenth

A Guide to European Voluntary Organisations

Networking in Europe

The story of European-Russian collaboration in space is little known and its importance all too often understated. Because France was the principal interlocutor between these nations, such cooperation did not receive the attention it deserved in English-language literature. This book rectifies that history, showing how Russia and Europe forged a successful partnership that has continued to the present day. Space writer Brian Harvey provides an in-depth picture of how this European-Russian relationship evolved and what factors—scientific, political and industrial—propelled it over the decades. The history begins in the cold war period with the first collaborative ventures between the Soviet Union and European countries, primarily France, followed later by Germany and other European countries. Next, the chapters turn to the missions when European astronauts flew to Russian space stations, the Soyuz rocket made a new home in European territory in the South American jungle and science missions were flown to study deep space. Their climax is the joint mission to explore Mars, called ExoMars, which has already sent a mission to Mars. Through this close examination of these European-Russian efforts, readers will appreciate an altogether new perspective on the history of space exploration, no longer defined by competition, but rather by collaboration and cooperation.

From de Gaulle to ExoMars

European-Russian Space Cooperation

A first, comprehensive account of the development of Europe’s highly successful space programme.- Explains the politics, science and organisation of the European Space Programme and the many technological achievements of its satellites and rockets.- Highlights the major contributions of the European Space Agency’s scientific and applications programmes and puts them in a global perspective.- Focuses on Europe placing the various national programmes in a European context.

To Ariane and Beyond

Europe's Space Programme

This book tells the story of the Soviet and Russian lunar programme, from its origins to the present-day federal Russian space programme. Brian Harvey describes the techniques devised by the USSR for lunar landing, from the LK lunar module to the LOK lunar orbiter and versions tested in Earth’s orbit. He asks whether these systems would have worked and examines how well they were tested. He concludes that political mismanagement rather than technology prevented the Soviet Union from landing cosmonauts on the moon. The book is well timed for the return to the moon by the United States and the first missions there by China and India.

Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

This series is for people—adults and teenagers—who are interested in computer programming because it's fun. The three volumes use the Logo programming language as the vehicle for an exploration of computer science from the perspective of symbolic computation and artificial intelligence. Logo is a dialect of Lisp, a language used in the most advanced research projects in computer science, especially in artificial intelligence. Throughout the series, functional programming techniques (including higher order functions and recursion) are emphasized, but traditional sequential programming is also used when appropriate. In the second edition, the first two volumes have been rearranged so that illustrative case studies appear with the techniques they demonstrate. Volume 1 includes a new chapter about higher order functions, and the recursion chapters have been reorganized for greater clarity. Volume 2 includes a new tutorial chapter about macros, an exclusive capability of Berkeley Logo, and two new projects. Throughout the series, the larger program examples have been rewritten for greater readability by more extensive use of data abstraction. Volume 1 Symbolic Computing, is addressed to a reader who has used computers and wants to learn the ideas behind them. Symbolic computing is the manipulation of words and sentences, in contrast both to the graphics most people associate with Logo and to the numerical computation with which more traditional languages such as Pascal and C++ are most comfortable. This volume is well known for its clear and thorough presentation of recursion, a key idea in computer science that other texts treat as arcane and difficult. The Logo programs in these books and the author's free Berkeley Logo interpreter are available via the Internet or on diskette.

Computer Science Logo Style: Symbolic computing

In 2019, China astonished the world by landing a spacecraft and rover on the far side of the Moon, something never achieved by any country before. China had already become the world’s leading spacefaring nation by rockets launched, sending more into orbit than any other. China is now a great space superpower alongside the United States and Russia, sending men and women into orbit, building a space laboratory (Tiangong) and sending probes to the Moon and asteroids. Roadmap 2050 promises that China will set up bases on the Moon and Mars and lead the world in science and technology by mid-century. China’s space programme is one of the least well-known, but this book will bring the reader up to date with its mysteries, achievements and exciting plans. China has built a fleet of new, powerful Long March rockets, four launch bases, tracking stations at home and abroad, with gleaming new design and production facilities. China is poised to build a large, permanent space station, bring back lunar rocks, assemble constellations of communications satellites and send spaceships to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and beyond. A self-sustaining lunar base, Yuegong, has already been simulated. In space, China is the country to watch.

Brian Harvey

About

Books

Join the club