Science fiction is more popular now than it has ever been, as seen by the number of interesting and imaginative science-fiction books, magazines, movies, and television shows produced each year. The scale modeling world has embraced the science-fiction phenomenon by offering a number of detailed and creative scale-model spaceship and diorama kits. In How To Build Sci-Fi Model Spacecraft, author Richard Marmo guides readers through a number of step-by-step buildups of styrene and resin kits. He offers helpful advice on subjects from basic kit assembly to more advanced methods like combining kits and customizing kits with unique, scratch-built pieces. Readers will learn the creative methods that allow them to add a personal touch to their kit and increase its overall detail, quality, and accuracy.

Rockets and spacecraft were among the very first models made as commercial kits, and although never as numerous as aircraft, ships or road vehicles, the many kits produced over the years provide a fascinating niche in the world of model-making. The build-ups in this book reflect the current situation with spacecraft modelling; although there are still a number of conventional all-plastic kits available, there is also a growing range that uses more specialist materials, especially resins. The book explains the various techniques required when dealing with these non-traditional materials. Scale Spacecraft Modelling also covers scratch building and adaptation, the techniques needed to make those pristine models really dirty to match the ones you see in the movies, and the design and construction of realist dioramas and settings.

Foreword by Sir Arthur C Clarke. Space exploration began with model and toy rockets. History shows that the greatest Rocketeers began their careers flying model rockets. Now in this book the story of the space race is told in dazzling colour. From the birth of models to the present day the toy rockets have often inspired the real rockets of the future. In fact model manufacturers like Revell and Aurora were frequently in trouble with the defence department for revealing military secrets! This is the Story of the Space Age, and uses the models to illustrate the way history twisted and turned to put us where we are today -- and maybe how space travel will develop in the future.

The past five decades have witnessed often fierce international rivalry in space, but also surprising military restraint. Now, with an increasing number of countries capable of harming U.S. space assets, experts and officials have renewed a long-standing debate over the best route to space security. Some argue that space defenses will be needed to protect critical military and civilian satellites. Others argue that space should be a "sanctuary" from deployed weapons and military conflict, particularly given the worsening threat posed by orbital space debris. Moltz puts this debate into historical context by explaining the main trends in military space developments since Sputnik, their underlying causes, and the factors that are likely to influence their future course. This new edition provides analysis of the Obama administration's space policy and the rise of new actors, including China, India, and Iran. His conclusion offers a unique perspective on the mutual risks militaries face in space and the need for all countries to commit to interdependent, environmentally focused space security.

Modeling Ships and Space Craft: The Science and Art of Mastering the Oceans and Sky begins with the theories of Aristotle and Archimedes, moving on to examine the work of Froude and Taylor, the early aviators and the Wright Brothers, Goddard and the other rocket men, and the computational fluid dynamic models of our time. It examines the ways each used fluid dynamic principles in the design of their vessels. In the process, this book covers the history of hydrodynamic (aero and fluid) theory and its progression – with some very accessible science examples – including seminal theories. Hydrodynamic principles in action are also explored with examples from nature and the works of man. This is a book for anyone interested in the history of technology – specifically the methods and science behind the use of scale models and hydrodynamic principles in the marine and aeronautical designs of today.

The problem of scale pervades both the natural sciences and the vi sual arts. The earliest scientific discussions concentrate on visual per ception (much like today!) and occur in Euclid's (c. 300 B. C. ) Optics and Lucretius' (c. 100-55 B. C. ) On the Nature of the Universe. A very clear account in the spirit of modern "scale-space theory" is presented by Boscovitz (in 1758), with wide ranging applications to mathemat ics, physics and geography. Early applications occur in the cartographic problem of "generalization", the central idea being that a map in order to be useful has to be a "generalized" (coarse grained) representation of the actual terrain (Miller and Voskuil 1964). Broadening the scope asks for progressive summarizing. Very much the same problem occurs in the (realistic) artistic rendering of scenes. Artistic generalization has been analyzed in surprising detail by John Ruskin (in his Modern Painters), who even describes some of the more intricate generic "scale-space sin gularities" in detail: Where the ancients considered only the merging of blobs under blurring, Ruskin discusses the case where a blob splits off another one when the resolution is decreased, a case that has given rise to confusion even in the modern literature.

Numerous applications of rod structures in civil engineering, aircraft and spacecraft confirm the importance of the topic. On the other hand the majority of books on structural mechanics use some simplifying hypotheses; these hypotheses do not allow to consider some important effects, for instance the boundary layer effects near the points of junction of rods. So the question concerning the limits of applicability of structural mechanics hypotheses and the possibilities of their refinement arise. In this connection the asymptotic analysis of equations of mathematical physics, the equations of elasticity in rod structures (without these hypotheses and simplifying assumptions being imposed) is undertaken in the present book. Moreover, a lot of modern structures are made of composite materials and therefore the material of the rods is not homogeneous. This inhomogeneity of the material can generate some unexpected effects. These effects are analysed in this book. The methods of multi-scale modelling are presented by the homogenization, multi-level asymptotic analysis and the domain decomposition. These methods give an access to a new class of hybrid models combining macroscopic description with "microscopic zooms".