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Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

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Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#11

Post by jjice »

KMnO4 wrote: post #3

I’ve always wanted a curated list of textbooks from people who actually read them in depth. I’ve read through a couple textbooks front-to-back on topics that are completely unrelated to my field[0]. A good textbook should be able to explain tough concepts while engaging the reader with interesting content and relation to the world. 0: I quite enjoyed Anthony J.F. Griffiths et al ’s Introduction to Genetic Analysis, d…

Absolutely agree. I always saw textbooks as a thing I had to read or a place to find the homework problems, not a place to learn.

Then I had a professor who had an accent I struggled to understand. Thankfully, she picked a fantastic Linear Algebra textbook. That's when I realized that the textbook is debatably the most important part of a class (at least for math and science).

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#12

Post by jamessb »

dfbsdfbwe2ef2e wrote: post #7

Does anyone know of a good way of searching textbooks? Sort of a search engine where I can type in "astrodynamics" and a list like this would be returned.

The Open Syllabus Explorer? https://opensyllabus.org/

The search results for "astrodynamics" [1] include several of ht ebooks listed above; clicking on the entry for Bate shows the co-assigned books, which inlcudes all of them.

[1]: https://opensyllabus.org/results-list/titles?size=50&findWor...

[2]: https://opensyllabus.org/result/title?id=55740085568884

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#13

Post by abecedarius »

KMnO4 wrote: post #3

I’ve always wanted a curated list of textbooks from people who actually read them in depth. I’ve read through a couple textbooks front-to-back on topics that are completely unrelated to my field[0]. A good textbook should be able to explain tough concepts while engaging the reader with interesting content and relation to the world. 0: I quite enjoyed Anthony J.F. Griffiths et al ’s Introduction to Genetic Analysis, d…

Something like that: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-t...

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#14

Post by GlenTheMachine »

True story: when I was fifteen, I went on a school field trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and picked up a copy of BMW in the museum bookstore. I was determined that I was going to make it out of my podunk little town and become an aerospace engineer, so I decided to work through the book on my own.

The problem was that I had never had calculus, much less differential equations. I fact I didn't know what calculus was; I only knew it as a word that meant "really hard math". So I made it about five pages in and realized that I had no chance. BMW stayed on my bookshelf.

Ten years later, I was in a graduate program for aerospace engineering and had finally made it through all the pre-recs for 600-level astrodynamics. BMW was one of the textbooks for the course. The moment, a month into that class, when I opened the book and it actually made sense was one of the highlights of my life, and that copy of the book I bought as a teenager is one of my most prized possessions.

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#15

Post by Rerarom »

abecedarius wrote: post #13
KMnO4 wrote: post #3

I’ve always wanted a curated list of textbooks from people who actually read them in depth. I’ve read through a couple textbooks front-to-back on topics that are completely unrelated to my field[0]. A good textbook should be able to explain tough concepts while engaging the reader with interesting content and relation to the world. 0: I quite enjoyed Anthony J.F. Griffiths et al ’s Introduction to Genetic Analysis, d…

Something like that: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-t...

That collection of posts/comments is highly misleading.

Better just to search for the subject on reddit.

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#16

Post by abecedarius »

Rerarom wrote: post #15
abecedarius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like that: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-t...

That collection of posts/comments is highly misleading. Better just to search for the subject on reddit.

Picking one entry at random: ordinary differential equations. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-t...

The corresponding reddit search: https://old.reddit.com/search?q=ordinary+differential+equati...

Draw your own conclusions. From any source, that's what you'll have to do in the end. In this sample, it happens I've skimmed the lesswrong thread's recommended book and thought it looked much more interesting than the text I learned from years before (Boyce & diPrima). The reddit thread seems pretty barren in glancing through the results summary.

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#17

Post by chernevik »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #14

True story: when I was fifteen, I went on a school field trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and picked up a copy of BMW in the museum bookstore. I was determined that I was going to make it out of my podunk little town and become an aerospace engineer, so I decided to work through the book on my own. The problem was that I had never had calculus, much less differential equations. I fact I didn't know what c…

Congratulations on sticking with it despite the early hurdle.

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#18

Post by CliffStoll »

Showing my age: As an undergrad, in 1969, I read Dirk Brouwer's book, Methods of Celestial Mechanics; much of it over my head. I remember writing a Fortran program to solve Kepler's Equation and -- surprise -- getting the same answer as the textbook's analytic solution.

  Turned out to be really useful when I studied planetary science in grad school - just knowing the language of the coordinate systems and expansions.  

  Later, I picked up a copy of Mattias Soop's sweet monograph, "Introduction to Geostationary Orbits" ... even today, it's a joy to read.

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#19

Post by fiprofessor »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #14

True story: when I was fifteen, I went on a school field trip to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and picked up a copy of BMW in the museum bookstore. I was determined that I was going to make it out of my podunk little town and become an aerospace engineer, so I decided to work through the book on my own. The problem was that I had never had calculus, much less differential equations. I fact I didn't know what c…

Great story. Reminds me of the book and movie October Sky, in which the protagonists, who are high school students, strive to learn calculus so that they can learn how to better build rockets.

Re: Astrodynamics Textbooks on My Shelf

#20

Post by treeman79 »

jjice wrote: post #11
KMnO4 wrote: post #3

I’ve always wanted a curated list of textbooks from people who actually read them in depth. I’ve read through a couple textbooks front-to-back on topics that are completely unrelated to my field[0]. A good textbook should be able to explain tough concepts while engaging the reader with interesting content and relation to the world. 0: I quite enjoyed Anthony J.F. Griffiths et al ’s Introduction to Genetic Analysis, d…

Absolutely agree. I always saw textbooks as a thing I had to read or a place to find the homework problems, not a place to learn. Then I had a professor who had an accent I struggled to understand. Thankfully, she picked a fantastic Linear Algebra textbook. That's when I realized that the textbook is debatably the most important part of a class (at least for math and science).

Old math teacher would put homewoek assignment on board at start of day.

So I would just solve it during class. Teaching myself from the book.

One day assignment wasn’t on board. So I asked her for it so I could do it during class.

She was confused and asked me how I was going to learn the material if I wasn’t paying attention.

Well it turns out people get really upset when you logically explain how you don’t need them since the book teaches it just fine.

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