Radioisotope Power Systems: An Imperative for Maintaining U.S. Leadership in Space Exploration Book

I'd like to give it 5 stars, and yet I don't think it deserves it - at least under the consideration of my expectations.

Now, what is it that you get, if you read this book?

It is a collection of speeches, I guess (some read like speeches), or scientific articles which were collected for an AAAS-event in 2002. Scientists and scientific-minded spirits met and discussed the topic of "multi-generation starships". This kind of ships would be needed, if humankind decides to fly to one of the nearer stars, which are 4,3 or far more light-years away, but lacks to have FTL-drives (faster-then-light propulsion- and engine-systems). Therefore any such travel would take many years, decades, if not centuries rendering common spaceship-techologies and concepts useless.

So, in the series of articles in this book the reader learns about propulsion-issues and the more or less likely to be deployed technologies on the one side, and on the other side issues like genetic diversity, linguistics, culture etc. Especially the latter and softer sciences were arranged around the concept of having a ship's crew of about 150-200 people flying up to 200 years - thus 5-8 generations, therefore a multi-generation travel-experience - in order to reach the next star, observe it for a short period of time and return back to Earth.

What I really enjoyed about this book and the variety of articles is that you don't need to be a rocket-scientist or -engineer in order to understand the articles - not even the very sophisticated articles about speed, acceleration, different types of engines etc., because the different authors offer enough pictures, easy explanations and annotated mathematical formulae, which should help most readers to get along with the provided information. I am neither a scientist nor an engineer, and I actually understand most of the maths in the first articles on propulsion; and even the very interesting article about genetics and genetic diversity, which I consider to be one of the more challenging articles in this book, were not half as heavy as the average article on most scientific magazines written for a broader audience. Considering only this the book really deserves 5 stars - at least from me without hesitation, if not ...

I hoped to find some more extra-information ... like: If there is a multi-generation starship mission, what purpose would it serve? It would be about colonizing a nearby star-system. Hence what about the size of the crew, the equipment and the set-up of the ship? In my humble opinion the crew would or should be much bigger then just 200 people, right?
And speaking of the crew, this would also involve answering the question about what tasks would have to be performed for many decades on board the ship and later on during the first years of colonization?
And what about the hull and the concept of the ship? Would it be like the famous O'Neill-cylinder, or more kind of a sphere, or maybe something completely different? And what challenges would the architecture of such a device have to master?
And what about animals, food, different levels of social activities?

Questions like these are not answered in this book (by the way: the article on linguistics and culture has left the impression that it was abbreviated a lot; it stopped way too abrupt without a conclusion, and somehow it did not "fit" into the quality of the whole series of articles ...) , which is why I am 'only' willing to spread 4 stars on this title. But while writing this I still stick to it: This book is worth the reading. In fact it helped me a lot about understanding the concept and some of the complications of a multi-generation starship. And since many of the articles refer to other sources I may do some research in order to learn more details I longed to, but did not get from this book ...