Reddit reviews Spacecraft Systems Engineering 3rd Edition

People never believe me, but I constantly tell them we're really good at building planes... as there is a lot of data to infer from, which is why we have several extremely, notable books. Rocket and space craft design are a grey area. The one that is always recommended first to everyone is "Space Mission Analysis and Design". Most colleges use it and it's #1.

I can't speak for this "Spacecraft Systems Engineering." The recommendations say it's a good supplement to the book I mentioned above-so that's a good sign. Would consider getting it afterward the one above.

There are interesting papers from the early 70s about multiple directions that original shuttle design work was going into and they included metallic TPS / internal fuel tanks / reusable flyback boosters and many more interesting technologies.
There is a great MIT course on that subject http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/video-lectures/lecture-7/ and the book http://www.amazon.com/Spacecraft-Systems-Engineering-Peter-Fortescue/dp/0471619515
Is a good place to start

>I can't speak for this "Spacecraft Systems Engineering." The recommendations say it's a good supplement to the book I mentioned above-so that's a good sign. Would consider getting it afterward the one above.

I have both the SMAD and this book and I can recommend both. They are both really good books imo and have lots of information for the preliminary design of spacecraft and are definitely very good to learn the basics. I think the main difference between the two books is that the SMAD is originally from the United States and Spacecraft Systems Engineering is originally from the UK, its pretty interesting to see how some problems are approached slightly differently across the globe. The general story is about the same though. However note that if you really want to go into detailed design I think more specialised books/papers are needed.