The Cosmic Inquirers: Modern Telescopes and Their Makers by Wallace Tucker, Karen Tucker

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 977 great resources of capital and skill, and a substantial proportion of highly efficient mines, had regained a leading position in the supply of energy. Yet today, because of economic uncertainties and intense competition, Ashworth says, the industry’s weaknesses and inefficien­ cies have left it a large question mark. This is a well-written, comprehensive, and thoroughly documented account of the nationalization period. Ashworth has found the correct place for the many developments that occurred in those years, and this volume, like those previously published, will remain the definitive history of the British coal industry. His failure to discuss even briefly the NCB’s research on coal liquefaction (LSE process) at its Coal Research Establishment near Cheltenham, therefore, is disappointing. Anthony N. Stranges Dr. Stranges teaches the history of science at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Electrons and Valence and is currently completing a book on the international development of the synthetic fuels industry. The Cosmic Inquirers: Modern Telescopes and Their Makers. By Wallace Tucker and Karen Tucker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. 221; illustrations, bibliography, index. $20.00. This book is a journalistic introduction to some of America’s fore­ most astronomers and an overview of the state of modern astronomy. Based on interviews with about sixteen of the most eminent current (or recent) scientist-administrators at the outstanding observatories or laboratories of the United States where high-tech inquiry about the cosmos is being conducted, the authors have constructed “a montage of the tribulations and triumphs of the dreamers, the pragmatists, and the politicians who have been driving forces behind the creation of the preeminent telescopes of. the 1980s” (p. 4). Wallace Tucker is an astrophysicist and his coauthor is a free-lance writer. They complement each other well in presenting a balanced overview of five major parts of modern astrophysics: radio astronomy; X-ray astronomy; gamma ray astronomy; infrared astronomy; and, of course, optical astronomy soon to ascend into orbit. These cate­ gories translate into primary attention being given to five major NASArelated operations that are often events more than places. First, how­ ever, is definitely a place, namely the Very Large Array (VLA) of twenty-eight radio telescope antennas, each dish 25 meters in diam­ eter, positioned in a Y-shaped configuration along railroad tracks about 21 kilometers in length located on the plains of San Augustin in New Mexico. Over a decade of planning and construction was required before the VLA became fully operational in 1980. Second, the Einstein X-ray Observatory, alias NASA’s High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAD) 2, had evolved out of NASA’s Small Astronomy Satellite (SAS-1), alias Uhuru, launched from Kenya in 978 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 1970. Although prepared out of Harvard, managed in the Boston area, and monitored at NASA’s Goddard Center near Baltimore, the HEAD-2 mission was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Center at Cape Canaveral on November 13, 1978, and performed brilliantly in orbit until April 26, 1981. Third, a Gamma Ray Observatory is expected to be launched in 1988 to capitalize on the successes of SAS-2 in 1972 and of HEAD-3 in 1979. So far, the ground work for gamma ray astronomy has been centered on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena and the Goddard Center, but Goddard only knows where it may next be centered. Fourth, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on January 25, 1983, for almost a year of useful observations also had a complicated pre- and post-history. Planned at Goddard but bequeathed to NASA’s Ames Center near Silicon Valley as well as JPL near the Rose Bowl, IRAS was also mon­ itored by a Dutch-British team that milked it for some astounding information—about colliding galaxies, for instance. Fifth, NASA’s Edwin P. Hubble Space Telescope, or simply the Space Telescope, is another project long delayed, most recently by the Chal­ lenger disaster, which happened after this book went to press. Tra­ ditional optical astronomers have long awaited the chance to get a big scope up above the world so high that the stars won’t...