447 pgs, 2000, Microcosm/Kluwer
ISBN 978-1881883111

The Logic of Microspace provides the reader with the technical and managerial tools and perspectives to lead a microspace program. But more importantly, the reader gains the desire to use small, low-cost space missions to create a better program, a better project, and even a better world. Rick's humor and sincere enthusiasm, his deep, native understanding of the field, are contagious. The Logic of Microspace is the fastest route to an infusion of infectious new ideas you won't want to resist.

Changing the focus of the multibillion dollar global aerospace business toward smaller, lower-cost spacecraft is not happening solely due to technical, managerial, financial or market motivations. The Logic of Microspace, Rick Fleeter's second book on the small, low-cost space programs which are the fastest-growing segment of aerospace activity, gives the reader a keen understanding of the full spectrum of factors driving this profound change. The Logic of Microspace then goes beyond engineering technologies and management techniques to envision the tantalizing prospects microspace has in store for the industry, its present markets and those of the future.

The Logic of Microspace is three books in one. The technologies underlying small space were the subject of Rick's widely acclaimed first book, Micro Space Craft, which sold out its first printing by word of mouth. This highly understandable, entertaining book, called the only comedic pageturner ever written about aerospace engineering, has been thoroughly updated and is the first book within The Logic of Microspace.

But microspace is much more than a technical field. Management of the program, the mission, the client, the team and even the press, all play a role in a successful mission. The second book within this trilogy-inside-one-cover brings the same understandable, humorous, fast-reading and informative style of the technical sections to a complementary book on minimum size and cost mission management and the philosophical and often surprising psychological underpinnings of minimum-cost space missions.

All the technical and managerial tools to build minimum-cost spacecraft are useless without the human motivation to build low-cost missions. The third part of The Logic of Microspace is a dramatic novella, possibly the first in any aerospace text, describing several alluring opportunities for benefiting humanity and the space industry via low-cost satellites and space missions.

Rick Fleeter is founder and President of the small spacecraft company, AeroAstro. He has built more than 20 successful small satellites.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: Microspacecraft

1. Why Are We Here?
2. Propulsion --o Or, HOw to Get There?
3. Orbit Mechanics -- Or, What Keeps These Things UP, Anyway?
4. Orbit Mechanics II: The Movie
5. You Send Me: Orbit Mechanics III
6. Magnetic Attractions
7. Everything You Always Wanted To KNow About Radio, Part I: Shatter the myth of the Digital Miracle?
8. Everything You Always Wanted To KNow About Radio, Part II: Faster than a Speeding Bullet
9. Everything You Always Wanted To KNow About Radio, Part III: What's Up, Doc?
10. Thermal Dynamics: Tough Talk About Temperature.
11. You got an Attitude, Buddy? A Primer on Small Satellite Stability and Control
12. Memory Systems of Spacecraft -- or -- Memory -- What Is It Good For?
13. Mechanisms: The Nuts and Bolts of Small Satellites
14. Batteries Not Included
15. Bring 'Em Up Clean
16. Choosing A Launch Site
17. Satellite Constellations

Part II Missions and Management Reliability
Section 1: Missions

1. The Smallest Show on Earth or, Tom Thumb in the Big Top
2. Telepresence: Paul Bunyan Takes a Hike
3. Being Disruptive -- or -- Lessons from the Ever-Expanding Backpack
4. More of Less is More: The Logic of Microspace
5. The One-Bit Sound Bite
6. Nothing Is Cost-Optimized
7. What Came First, Chickens or Eggs -- Really? Some Recipes

Section 2: Reliability

1. The Mantra of Reliability
2. Fun With Parts
3. The Logic of Auto Parts
4. Darwin Predated Satellites but Engineering Obsoletes Evolution
5. Baby Boomer Risk Reduction: Revisiting the Clean Room
6. Engineering Religion
7. Where to Look for Historical Underpinnings, Term Definitions, and Revolutionary Zeal

Section 3: Critical Design Review

1. Critical Design Review: A Meditation
2. The Dilbert Wars: The Front Lines of Program Management
3. Killing the Wooly Mammoth
4. What Mood is Your Program in?
5. Developing a Program Plan
6. The Future: A Lot of Unknowables, a Few Inevitables
7. Space History and a Possible Future

Part III: A Wrinkle in Microspace