Harvesting Space for a Greener Earth

Greg Matloff has published or delivered about 100 research papers related to atmospheric physics, space exploration and space science and has authored or co-authored nine books and many popular articles. Dr. Matloff is a professor emeritus and adjunct professor at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where he teaches astronomy. Matloff consulted for NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; he is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and a Hayden Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, where he worked on asteroid diversion techniques. He also heads the science board on the new Institute for Interstellar Studies. C Bangs has exhibited her art in museums and galleries throughout the United States, South America, Europe and Australia. Bangs has created chapter frontispiece art for the books authored by her husband, Greg Matloff. Reversing roles with Greg, she created her first artist/scientist book, which has been collected by the Brooklyn Museum and the British Interplanetary Society for their artist book collections. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Analog: Science Fact and Fiction and Zenit. Bangs worked under a grant at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and then as a NASA faculty fellow for three sequential summers. Bangs’ art is included in numerous public and private collections. Les Johnson is the deputy manager of NASA’s Advanced Concepts at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Previously he managed NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Technology Project, developing advanced technologies such as solar sails and aerocapture for future space science missions. He was the NASA co-investigator on the Japanese T-Rex tether propulsion experiment in 2010. In addition to his NASA credentials, Johnson is also an inventor. He holds three patents and was twice the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal. He is the author of numerous technical publications, co-author of three mass-market popular science books and two science fiction books and has consulted on various novels and two major motion pictures.

Foreword.- Acknowledgments.- Synopsis and Chapter Summaries.- Author Biographies.- Introduction: Welcome to the Present.- Chapter 1: Space Utilization – A Moral Imperative.- Chapter 2: Fire – Formation of the Earth and the Solar System.- Chapter 3: Earth Before Man – Utopia or Nightmare?.- Chapter 4: The Environmental Dilemma – Progress or Collapse?.- Chapter 5: Exploding Population.- Chapter 6: Climate Change.- Chapter 7: Vanishing Life.- Chapter 8: Diminishing Energy.- Chapter 9: Humans Before the Industrial Age – A Desirable Ecological Goal?.- Part III: Paradise Regained.-  Chapter 10: Raw Materials from Space.- Chapter 11: Power from the Sun.- Chapter 12: Environmental Monitoring from Space.- Chapter 13: Protecting Earth.- Chapter 14: Mitigating Global Warming Using Planetary Engineering.- Chapter 15: Mitigating Global Warming Using Space-Based Approaches.- Chapter 16: Setting the Solar System.- Chapter 17: Paradise Regained – An Optimistic Future.- Index.