News & Events
Professor’s Latest Book Earns AAP/PSP Prose Awards Honorable Mention
New York City College of Technology Physics Professor Gregory Matloff and co-authors Giovanni Vulpetti and Les Johnson took a Finalist/Honorable Mention Award in Cosmology & Astronomy at the 2008 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence Awards Luncheon held in Washington, DC, for their recent book Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel (Copernicus Books, 2008).
Dr. Vulpetti is a plasma physicists and member of the IAA Committee for Lunar Base and Mars Exploration. Johnson, who has co-authored two other books with Dr. Matloff, is a physicist and deputy manager of the Advanced Concepts Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Solar sails may well be the technology of choice for humankind’s further exploration of space. The book argues that all great enterprises of exploration begin with failure – with first, tentative probes into unknown territories, often utilizing untested technologies. During the last forty years, three such “failures” have, in effect made the solar sail a serious contender, in not the most series contender, for the propulsion system of choice in space travel and exploration.
“No one,” according to the publisher, “who thinks seriously about space-worthy propulsion systems wants to miss a chance to further develop this exciting, innovative and very real enabling technology, since our future as space-farers will very likely be based on it.”
Dr. Matloff has worked as a consultant to NASA since 1999 on the development of solar sail propulsion technology. He is the author of more than 100 papers and several books on astronomy and space exploration.
02.24.09
