Orbital Mechanics

[taibak]

Hey,

One of my students is interested in doing an honors project where he'd be calculating the path of a spaceship leaving the Earth, landing on the Moon, and returning. I was wondering if anyone could reccomend some good textbooks for a high schooler on the subject. All I have are some basic physics books, but I'm not sure how useful those would be.

Thanx in advance.

[Bob B.]

I don't know any books to recommend but I've put together a Web page that teaches the basics of orbital mechanics:

www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm

[iamspartacus]

I own a book called :

Introduction to Space Dynamics
By William Tyrrell Thompson
Published by Dover
ISBN 0-486-65113-4

This includes a section on orbital mechanics. It claims to be aimed at undergraduates and has proved useful to me on occasion.

A quick trawl through Amazon brings up quite a few titles. One that seems to fit the bill is:
Orbital Mechanics: For Engineering Students
By Howard Curtis
Published by Butterworth-Heinemann
ISBN: 0750661690

I cannot give a personnel recommendation for this one though.

[noiamspartacus]

hnnmph!**!

[iamspartacus]

You do know what happened to those who declared, "No I'm Spartacus!" don't you?
;D

[Al Johnston]

"I'm Brian and so is my wife!"