Stephen Sandford has written an engaging book to present a daring vision of a reinvigorated American space program. Although the title is taken from mathematical physics, the book mainly is a call for a broader discussion of public policy.
Sandford, an engineer at NASA Langley in Hampton, gives an insider’s view of space research in a book that you don’t have to be a scientist to understand. If you do happen to be a student of physics, you may recall that a graph of an object’s potential energy in a gravitational field describes a curve with a deep dip, sometimes called a “well.”
The author has applied this mathematical metaphor to our physical situation here on earth. The closer you are to the bottom of the well, the steeper the sides are and the more difficult it is to climb out. The presence of another massive body, like the moon, distorts the shape of the well, resulting in “flat spots” called Lagrange points — and we can take advantage of them to make the climb.
I’ve now covered most of the science in the book. The rest of it makes the case for why we should climb out of the gravity well to the Lagrange points, the moon and beyond. Sandford describes America’s aerospace mission in the context of NASA’s organization, which encompasses astrophysics, aeronautics and more, including the manned space program.
He gives the reader a whirlwind tour of the federal government’s investments in aerospace, from the McKinley administration’s grant to Samuel P. Langley to construct a flying machine to present-day plans for a mission to Mars, along with the technical benefits they have reaped.
Today, not all space travel is done by governments. Companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are flying rockets too. A key point Sandford makes in “Gravity Well” is the necessary interplay between the public and private sectors. He argues that neither the government nor private industry can go it alone in such an endeavor.
Private companies might be able to launch spacecraft on their own, but Sandford points out that they never would have been able to do it without mining the “knowledge ore” accumulated in decades of government-funded NASA projects.
Although the book has 304 pages, 100 of them are devoted to appendices, the most interesting of which is former NASA administrator James Webb’s letter to President John F. Kennedy in support of the space program. Some of the points the author makes about the benefits to society of space science are in fact applicable to basic research generally.
I’ve made some of them on behalf of particle physics in the course of my own work in that field. As a scientist, I find that I agree with Sandford on most points. However, this book’s real audience is people who are not scientists but want to engage in a conversation about science in our society. At a time in America’s history when a sense of unity and purpose seems elusive, this conversation is an important one to have.
“The Gravity Well: America’s Next, Greatest Mission” by Stephen Sandford with Jay Heinrichs. Gavia Books, 304 pages, $24.95.
David Boehnlein is a retired particle physicist who lives in Hampton. He is a volunteer at Virginia Living Museum’s Abbitt Observatory and does occasional science writing.
