The Exploitation Of Space - Hardcover

Each title in this series focuses on an important contemporary issue that has worldwide implications, and provides valuable background reading for GCSE studies and Standard Grade in Scotland. This book examines the practical consequences of space research of the last decades. It describes the actual and potential benefits derived from space research, balancing them against the problems which beset programmes and the possible ill-effects of current development. It highlights the high cost of launching satellites and developing re-usable spacecraft, and explains the growing danger to spacecraft from the space debris which clutters up the earth's orbit. He then describes the increasing militarization of space, anti-satellite weapons and the US Strategic Defense Initiative. It concludes with an examination of how space research has altered the way in which we think about our own planet and its place in the universe. The author also wrote "The Guiness Book of Space Records" and "The First Men on the Moon".

Tim Furniss is a spaceflight writer and consultant. He has been interested in space and its secrets since he was a boy. He is spaceflight correspondent of 'Flight International' - the UK's international aerospace weekly magazine.