Space Design Books

Space Design Books

The two leading publishers of space design books are AIAA and Microcosm. Microcosm has a series called the Space Technology Library (MSTL), with nine books currently in the series. The cornerstone of this series is Space Mission Analysis and Design (SMAD), which is in its 3rd edition.

AIAA Education Series

C. D. Brown, Spacecraft Propulsion, AIAA, 1996. I don’t own this book. However, I have seen it and it seems to be inferior to Humble et al (MSTL).

C. D. Brown, Spacecraft Mission Design, AIAA, 1998. I own this book. It is essentially an applied astrodynamics text. Vallado (MSTL) is much more thorough.

C. D. Brown, Elements of Spacecraft Design, AIAA, 2003. I haven’t seen this book yet, but it looks like it might be comparable to SMAD.

M. D. Griffin and J. R. French, Space Vehicle Design, AIAA, 1991. I own this book. The right material is there, with many worked examples, but no exercises or suggested projects. I have not used it as the text for space design though, primarily because SMAD does a better job of presenting the big picture of spacecraft design.

W. E. Hammond, Design Methodologies for Space Transportation Systems, AIAA, 2001. I don’t know anything about this book or the 1999 version.

W. E. Hammond, Space Transportation: A Systems Approach to Analysis and Design, AIAA, 1999

Microcosm Space Technology Library

R. W. Humble et al (editors), Space Propulsion Analysis and Design, McGraw-Hill, 1995. This seems to me to be an excellent overview of space propulsion systems with a design emphasis. I think Joe Wang uses it.

W. J. Larson and J. R. Wertz (editors), Space Mission Analysis and Design, 3rd edition, Microcosm, 1999. This is the text of choice for senior spacecraft design. The one feature I really like is the running “FireSat” example that is used to illustrate design calculations in every chapter.

T. P. Sarafin (editor), Spacecraft Structures and Mechanisms, Microcosm, 1995. Like Humble et al, this book covers pretty much everything you need for space structures. I recommend that my students buy this book for spacecraft design.

J. R. Wertz and W. J. Larson (editors), Reducing Space Mission Cost, 1996, Microcosm.

Other Publishers

B. N. Agrawal, Design of Geosynchronous Spacecraft, 1986, Prentice-Hall.
This book is about communication satellites, and has all the right material, but it does focus on geostationary orbits.

P. Fortescue and J. Stark (editors), Spacecraft Systems Engineering, 2nd edition, 1997, Wiley. Like SMAD, this book is written by a variety of experts and covers many of the same topics.

V. L. Pisacane and R. C. Moore (editors), Fundamentals of Space Systems, Oxford University Press, 1994. This book is superior to SMAD in that everything is developed from first principles. However, in a course, there isn’t time to cover all the subsystems with this level of detail. I recommend that students use this book as a reference.

D. H. Waltz, On-Orbit Servicing of Space Systems, 1993, Krieger.
This book gives extensive coverage of the design and operations concepts required for spacecraft planned for on-orbit construction and servicing.