The Space Business (Paperback)

From Hotels in Orbit to Mining the Moon – How Private Enterprise is Transforming Space

Andrew May

Dreams, schemes and opportunity as space opens for tourism and commerce.

Twentieth century space exploration may have belonged to state-funded giants such as NASA, but there is a parallel history which has set the template for the future.

Even before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, private companies were exploiting space via communication satellites – a sector that is seeing exponential growth in the internet age. In human spaceflight, too, commercialisation is making itself felt. Billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have long trumpeted plans to make space travel a possibility for ordinary people and those ideas are inching ever closer to reality. At the same time, other companies plan to mine the Moon for helium-3, or asteroids for precious metals.

Science writer Andrew May takes an entertaining, in-depth look at the triumphs and heroic failures of our quixotic quest to commercialise the final frontier.

Andrew May is a freelance writer and former scientist, with a PhD in astrophysics. He has written five books in Icon's Hot Science series: Destination Mars, Cosmic Impact, Astrobiology, The Space Business and The Science of Music. He lives in Somerset.

Eight Improbable Possibilities (Hardback)

The Mystery of the Moon, and Other Implausible Scientific Truths

John Gribbin

'Gribbin casts a wide net and displays his breadth of knowledge in packing a lot into each chapter . . . a brief read, but one that may inspire readers to dig deeper.' Giles Sparrow, BBC Sky at Night Magazine

A mind-warping excursion into the wildly improbable truths of science.

Echoing Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum, John Gribbin tells us: 'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is certainly possible, in the light of present scientific knowledge.' With that in mind, in his sequel to the hugely popular Six Impossible Things and Seven Pillars of Science, Gribbin turns his attention to some of the mind-bendingly improbable truths of science. For example:

We know that the Universe had a beginning, and when it was – and also that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. We can detect ripples in space that are one ten-thousandth the width of a proton, made by colliding black holes billions of light years from Earth.

And, most importantly from our perspective, all complex life on Earth today is descended from a single cell – but without the stabilising influence of the Moon, life forms like us could never have evolved.

John Gribbin's numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger's Cat and Six Impossible Things, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize. He has been described as 'one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around' by the Spectator.

Astroquizzical – The Illustrated Edition (Hardback)

Solving the Cosmic Puzzles of our Planets, Stars, and Galaxies

Jillian Scudder

A beautifully illustrated, enlightening edition of astronomer Jillan Scudder’s exploration of our universe.

Looking up at the night sky, it is almost impossible to imagine that we can trace our common ancestry with the distant stars and galaxies back over 13.8 billion years.

Astroquizzical explores this connection by travelling back through the generations of the cosmic family tree, from Earth (parent) to the stars (grandparents), galaxies (great grandparents) and first atoms of the Big Bang (great-great grandparents). On the journey, the reader is invited to become ‘astroquizzical’ by asking the questions and investigating the many scientific mysteries of how the universe was formed and how it works.

This updated and illustrated edition combines beautifully curated space images with ten sketchbook ‘thought experiments’ to create a uniquely accessible guide to the science of Earth’s place among the planets, stars, and galaxies.

Jillian Scudder is an astrophysicist and Assistant Professor of Physics at Oberlin College, Ohio. She hosts and writes the popular Astroquizzical blog, in which she tackles some of the mysteries of the universe by answering space-related questions from the public. Her writing has been published in Forbes, Quartz, Medium, and The Conversation.

Seven Pillars of Science (Paperback)

The Incredible Lightness of Ice, and Other Scientific Surprises

John Gribbin

John Gribbin, author of Six Impossible Things, shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize, presents a tour of seven fundamental scientific truths that underpin our very existence.

These 'pillars of science' also defy common sense. For example, solid things are mostly empty space, so how do they hold together? There appears to be no special 'life force', so how do we distinguish living things from inanimate objects? And why does ice float on water, when most solids don't? You might think that question hardly needs asking, and yet if ice didn't float, life on Earth would never have happened.

The answers to all of these questions were sensational in their day, and some still are. Throughout history, science has been able to think the unthinkable – and Gribbin brilliantly shows the surprising secrets on which our understanding of life is based.

John Gribbin's numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger's Cat and Six Impossible Things, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize. He has been described as 'one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around' by the Spectator. In 2021, he was made Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex.