Grand tour of the solar system
Author
1) Powersat
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 1
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2005
Language
English
Description
Two hundred thousand feet up, things go horribly wrong. An experimental low-orbit spaceplane breaks up on reentry, falling to earth over a trail hundreds of miles long. And in its wake is the beginning of the most important mission in the history of spaceflight. Americans needs energy, and Dan Randolph is determined to give it to them. He dreams of an array of geosynchronous powersats, satellites that gather solar energy and beam it to generators...
Author
Series
Publisher
TOR
Pub. Date
1993
Language
English
Description
Dan Randolph never plays by the rules. A hell-raising maverick with no patience for fools, he is admired by his friends, feared by his enemies, and desired by the world's loveliest women. Acting as a twenty-first privateer, Randolph broke the political strangle-hold on space exploration, and became one of the world's richest men in the bargain.
Now an ecological crisis threatens Earth--and the same politicians that Randolph outwitted the first time...
3) Moonrise
Author
Series
Publisher
Avon Books
Pub. Date
c1996
Language
English
Description
A novel on the technological advances and corporate intrigues--including murder--of Masterson Aerospace. The company operates a moon base and is one of the beneficiaries of the privatization of space by the U.S. government.
4) Mars
Author
Series
Publisher
Bantam Books
Language
English
Description
Twenty-five astronauts travel to Mars. But even before the landers touch down, political and personal friction threatens to ground the mission.
5) Moonwar
Author
Series
Publisher
Avon Books
Pub. Date
c1998
Language
English
Description
Nanotechnology is banned on Earth, but colonists on the Moon refuse to follow suit as the technology is vital to their survival. So the United Nations dispatches a peacekeeping force to impose the ban and the colonists prepare to declare independence.
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 6
Publisher
Avon Eos
Pub. Date
c1999
Language
English
Description
The New York Times–bestselling and six-time Hugo Award–winning author's epic Mars adventure continues. Jamie Waterman is returning to the red planet, this time in charge of an expedition in which he hopes to demonstrate that one can study Martian life not only for the sake of the pursuit but more, that it can be profitable. Waterman also hopes to revisit a part of the canyon where he thought he spied a primitive cliff dwelling during the first...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in The Precipice.
Once, Dan Randolph was one of the richest men on Earth. Now the planet is spiraling into environmental disaster, with floods and earthquakes destroying the lives of millions. Randolph knows the energy and natural resources of space can save Earth's economy, but the price may be the loss of the only thing he has left--the company...
8) Jupiter
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 8
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2001
Language
English
Description
Grant Archer only wanted to study astrophysics. But the forces of the "New Morality," the coalition of censorious do-gooders who run 21st-century America, have other plans for him.
To his distress, Grant is torn from his young bride and sent to a research station in orbit around Jupiter, to spy on the scientists who work there. Their work may lead to the discovery of higher life forms in the Jovian system-with implications the New Morality doesn't...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Visionary space industrialist Dan Randolph is dead-but his protégé, pilot Pancho Barnes, now sits on the board of his conglomerate. She has her work cut out for her. For Randolph's rival, Martin Humphries, still wants to control Astro and still wants to drive independent asteroid miners like Lars Fuchs out of business. Humphries wants revenge against Pancho and, most of all, he wants his old flame, Amanda, who has become Lars Fuchs's wife.
Brimming...
10) The silent war
Author
Series
Publisher
Tor Books
Pub. Date
2004
Language
English
Description
Ben Bova's The Silent War is the breakneck continuation to The Asteroid Wars series that can end only in earth's salvation--or the annihilation of all that humankind has ever accomplished in space.
When corporations go to war, standard business practice goes out the window. Astro Corporation is led by indomitable Texan Pancho Lane, Humphries Space Systems by the rich and ruthless Martin Humphries, and their fight is over nothing less than resources...
11) Saturn
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 11
Language
English
Formats
Description
Second in size only to Jupiter, bigger than a thousand Earths but light enough to float in water, home of crushing gravity and delicate, seemingly impossible rings, it dazzles and attracts us:
SATURN
Earth groans under the thumb of fundamentalist political regimes. Crisis after crisis has given authoritarians the upper hand. Freedom and opportunity exist in space, for those with the nerve and skill to run the risks.
Now the governments of Earth...
12) Titan
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 12
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2006
Language
English
Description
Hugo Award-winning editor, author, scientist, and journalist, Ben Bova is a modern master of near-future science fiction and a passionate advocate of manned space exploration. For more than a decade, Bova has been chronicling humanity's struggles to colonize our solar system in a series of interconnected novels known as "The Grand Tour."
Now, with Titan, Ben Bova takes readers to one of the most intriguing destinations in near space: the extraordinary...
13) The aftermath
Author
Series
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2007
Language
English
Description
Six-time Hugo Award winner Ben Bova chronicles the saga of humankind's expansion beyond the solar system in The Aftermath.
In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse. With his wife and two children he plies the Asteroid Belt, hauling whatever cargo can be found. When the Syracuse stumbles into the middle of a military attack on the habitat Chrysalis, Victor...
14) Mercury
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 14
Language
English
Formats
Description
The closest planet to our Sun, Mercury is a rocky, barren, heat-scorched world. But there are those who hope to find wealth in its desolation.
Saito Yamagata thinks Mercury's position will make it an ideal orbit point for satellites that could someday create enough power to propel starships into deep space. He hires Dante Alexios to bring his dreams to life. Astrobiologist Victor Molina thinks the water at Mercury's poles may harbor evidence of...
15) Mars life
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 15
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2008
Language
English
Description
Jamie Waterman discovered the cliff dwelling on Mars, and the fact that an intelligent race lived on the red planet sixty-five million years ago, only to be driven into extinction by the crash of a giant meteor. Now the exploration of Mars is itself under threat of extinction, as the ultraconservative New Morality movement gains control of the U.S. government and cuts off all funding for the Mars program. Meanwhile, Carter Carleton, an anthropologist...
16) Venus
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 16
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2000
Language
English
Description
The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough to melt aluminum. The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft landers as though they were tin cans. The sky is perpetually covered with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a choking mixture of carbon dioxide and poisonous gases.
This is where Van Humphries must go. Or die trying.
His older brother perished in the first attempt to land a...
17) The return
Author
Series
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2009
Language
English
Description
After more than a century of exploring the stars, Keith Stoner returns to Earth to find that the world he has come back to does not match the one he left. The planet is suffering the consequences of disastrous greenhouse flooding. Most nations have been taken over by ultraconservative religion-based governments, such as the New Morality in the United States. With population ballooning and resources running out, Earth is heading for nuclear war. Stoner,...
Author
Pub. Date
2011
Language
English
Formats
Description
In Ben Bova's novel JUPITER, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter's hostile planetwide ocean, attempting to study the unusual and massive creatures that call the planet their home. Unprepared for the hostile environment and crushing pressures, Grant's team faced certain death as their ship malfunctioned and slowly sank to the planet's depths. However one of Jupiter's native creatures-a city-sized leviathan-saved the doomed ship. This...
19) Farside
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 19
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Farside, the side of the Moon that never faces Earth, is the ideal location for an astronomical observatory. It is also the setting for a tangled web of politics, personal ambition, love, jealousy, and murder. Telescopes on Earth have detected an Earth-sized planet circling a star some thirty light-years away. Now the race is on to get pictures of that distant world, photographs and spectra that will show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth,...
20) New Earth
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 20
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Award-winning author Ben Bova brings us New Earth, his latest tale of science fiction. The entire world is thrilled by the discovery of a new Earthlike planet. Advance imaging shows that the planet has oceans of liquid water and a breathable oxygen-rich atmosphere. Eager to gain more information, a human exploration team is soon dispatched to explore the planet, now nicknamed New Earth. All of the explorers understand that they are essentially on...
21) Earth
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 21
Publisher
Tor
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Description
"A wave of lethal gamma radiation is expanding from the core of the Milky Way galaxy at the speed of light, killing everything in its path. The countdown to when the death wave will reach Earth and the rest of the solar system is at two thousand years. Humans were helped by the Predecessors, who provided shielding generators that can protect the solar system. In return, the Predecessors asked humankind's help to save other intelligent species that...