Documents the fundamental theoretical developments in astrodynamics and space navigation that eventually led to man's ventures into space. Covers all essential elements of celestial mechanics, spacecraft trajectories, and space navigation, as well as the history of the underlying mathematical developments over the past three centuries, culminating finally with 20th-century space exploration. Early chapters deal with mathematical preliminaries of hypergeometric functions, analytical dynamics, Lambert's problem, Kepler's equations, and the two-body problem. Later chapters explain mathematical concepts related to non-Keplerian motion, perturbation methods, numerical integration of equations of motion, and space navigation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)