Over the course of undergrad and grad school, I have acquired way too many textbooks. Some for classes, others for projects, others still just for fun. In this series, I’m going to select 5 of them per post to discuss my thoughts on them. The theme of this post will be Astrodynamics
Books
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics – Bate, Mueller, White (and I guess now Saylor as well) – Fundamentals of Astro, also sometimes called BMW after the initial of the original writers, is a classic and many people’s first exposure to astrodynamics (the fact that it’s a Dover publication and therefore only ~$20 helps). Written at the US Air Force Academy in the 70s, it’s a very applied book, and the chapter on ballistic missiles should drive home which audience this book is meant for. My favorite feature of it is how there are several projects in the back that feed into each other and help show real applications of the stuff you learned.
Analytical Mechanics of Space Systems– Schaub and Junkins – Take the old “you, vs the guy she tells you not to worry about” meme. In it, you are BMW, and the guy she told you not to worry about is Schaub and Junkins. IMO everything in Schaub and Junkins is better than BMW, except the price. While BMW might only cover the ideas and some basic math, the first half of Schaub and Junkins (which is longer than BMW) is just math, with the second half being devoted to space. I’ve used this textbook for everything from Intermediate Dynamics classes to Spacecraft Dynamics and Controls. Even today I keep it near me at work as my go-to book on attitude representations and frame transformations. It’s a great book, highly recommend it.
An Introduction to the Mathematics and Methods of Astrodynamics – Battin – This is a tour-de-force of analytical methods of astrodynamics. Today we mainly use numerical methods for astrodynamics, and so this book has fallen out of favor. I personally do not bring it to work, as I don’t find there is much day to day use for it, but if you are studying astrodyanmics at the graduate level, I think you should try working through as much of this book as you can. It is good for the soul. Even better than just being good for the soul, it exposes you to a bunch of old analytical tricks. Multiple times while reading papers, the authors present some analytical tricks to improve their numerical schemes, and I can follow along because I already saw that trick in Battin. Overall I would recommend this book to graduate students doing astrodynamics, but not undergraduates.
Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics – Hughes – Basically the equivalent of BMW except for attitude dynamics. It’s a Dover book, so it’s cheap. It goes over the math, but not too much, focusing instead on applications (which are IMO a bit dated).
Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students – Curtis – My qualifying exam allowed me to use this book for the orbital mechanic’s section (it was open this book only, but every school is different so don’t go out to buy this book just for your quals unless it’s specified). IMO it falls in between BMW and Schaub and Junkins in every way, from mathematical background, to usefulness, to price. I’d say if you’re starting out, go with BMW, and if you want to get more advanced, go with Schaub and Junkins **cite**, you can skip over this one.
Note: I only went over five books in this post, so more will be coming, but feel free to leave a textbook that you want a review for in the comments, and if its on my shelf, I’ll try to include it in the next round of reviews.
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