Call of the Cosmic Wild. Relativistic Rockets for the New Millennium

About the Book

This book includes numerous calculations for the many specific examples included within. I have included the many calculated examples to provide the reader with immediate justifications for the numerous concepts described. This was not done to belittle or talk down to the reader but rather to give the reader a clear sense of the plausibility for the propulsion methods and performance capabilities thereof. Interstellar travel at the many specific highly relativistic velocities contemplated in this book—and, in some cases, extreme vehicle masses—is still a very controversial subject but nonetheless a highly mathematicalized and intelligible subject. My hope and intention is to thus clearly inspire and show the reader the plausibility of the concepts by providing the reader with proper evidence through his or her simple inspection of the formulas and values included in the computations. Some speculative physics is included, which is based on commonly presented theoretical constructs. Significantly, more content is provided relative to the third expanded edition of the title.

About the Author

I received my BS in physics from George Mason University and went on to complete some graduate-level physics and math classes. My infatuation with manned space exploration began early in grade school, fueled by the Apollo Space Program and lunar landings and the promise of manned missions to distant planets in the not-so-distant future. It seemed as though by the 1980s, we would definitely be sending humans on martian exploratory missions. My interest in manned space travel waned a bit during the late 1970s through the mid-1990s but picked up again after I had read a book on real-world potential interstellar travel methods based mainly on known and well-established physics.