The space telescope : a study of NASA, science, technology, and politics
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The space telescope : a study of NASA, science, technology, and politics
Cambridge University Press, 1989
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Note
Bibliography: p. 425-469
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Robert Smith's The Space Telescope sets the fascinating and disturbing history of this massive venture within the context of 'Big Science'. Launched at a cost of no more than $2 billion, the Space Telescope turned out to be seriously flawed by imperfections in the construction of its lenses and by solar panels that caused it to shudder when moving from daylight to darkness. Smith analyses how the processes of Big Science, especially those involving the government's funding process for large-scale projects, contributed to those failures. He reveals the astonishingly complex interactions that took place among the scientific community, government and industry and describes the great range of personalities and forces - scientific, technical, political, social, institutional and economic - that played roles in the Space Telescope's history.
Table of Contents
- Preface to paperback edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. Dreams of telescopes
- 2. Building a program
- 3. Astronomers, industry and money
- 4. Selling the large space telescope
- 5. Saving the space telescope
- 6. Making an institute
- 7. Up and running
- 8. Problems arise
- 9. Closing in
- 10. Reflections
- Afterword
- Appendices
- Short essay on sources
- Notes
- Index.
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