Grand tour of the solar system
Author
1) Powersat
Author
Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.6 - AR Pts: 20
Language
English
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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...
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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
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English
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In the twenty-first century, the world is on the brink of a scientific renaissance, about to birth a future where space has become privatized and the moon transforms into a fertile commercial ground. As former astronaut Paul Stavenger works to turn a handful of abandoned government moon shelters into a full-fledged moonbase, powerful corporate lobbies align against him. Against the neo-Luddites is Masterson Aerospace, a company funding and creating...
4) Mars
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Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 4
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English
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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
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English
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A lunar colony faces off with corrupt Earth forces intent on destroying it, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Moonrise. This fast-paced, high-tech adventure is the continuation of the story of Douglas Stavenger, the Kennedy-esque scion of Moonbase's founding dynasty. While Moonbase has been flourishing under Stavenger's management, its existence, and even Stavenger's life, both depend on nanotechnology that has been outlawed on Earth...
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 6
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English
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Description
Jamie Waterman is named commander of a second journey back to Mars, where he must overcome a destructive rivalry, emotional upheaval, and a series of deadly "accidents" to unlock the secrets of the Martian world.
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.6 - AR Pts: 17
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
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English
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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
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.9 - AR Pts: 15
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
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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
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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
Language
English
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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
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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
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Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 14
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English
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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
Language
English
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Description
Jamie Waterman has made an important discovery on Mars. A cliff dwelling reveals 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. But 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...
16) Venus
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Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 16
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English
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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
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English
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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,...
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Grand tour of the solar system volume 18
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English
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Description
What secrets lurk in the depths of Jupiter's oceans? In Ben Bova's novel Jupiter, physicist Grant Archer led an expedition into Jupiter's planet-wide 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...
19) Farside
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Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 19
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English
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 show whether or not the planet is truly like Earth-and...
20) New Earth
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Series
Grand tour of the solar system volume 20
Language
English
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
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English
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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...