Further Reading: Capstone — and Where to Go From Here

This is the last "further reading" in the book, so it does double duty: it points you to the professional versions of everything you have built, and it points past the book — to the study, tools, and community that take you from "I designed a mission on paper" to "I am doing this." Sources are Tier 1 (canonical works we are confident exist) or Tier 2 (a real, named resource whose exact edition/page we do not pin down here).

The professional version of your MDR

Wertz, Everett & Puschell, Space Mission Engineering: The New SMAD. The book the industry actually opens. Everything in your Mission Design Review — the delta-v-budget-as- master-constraint, the margin tables, the subsystem sizing rules, worked mission examples — lives here in professional depth. Your astrotools package is a toy model of the spreadsheets inside it. If you read one book beyond ours, read this. Tier 1.

NASA, NASA Systems Engineering Handbook (NASA/SP-2016-6105). The authoritative account of the lifecycle and the review gates (MDR/PDR/CDR) you presented against. Free online, and the source of the vocabulary you will meet in any real review room. Tier 1.

Going deeper on each part of the book

Curtis, Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students; Vallado, Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications. The natural next step for Parts I–II. Curtis is the gentler on-ramp; Vallado is the reference you keep for life. Between them they contain every trajectory in this book, done to flight precision. Tier 1.

Sutton & Biblarz, Rocket Propulsion Elements. The classic for Part III. Where our propulsion chapters gave you the physics of one nozzle, Sutton gives you the whole engine, the whole propellant table, and the whole test stand. Tier 1.

Wertz & Larson (eds.), Space Mission Analysis and Design (the original "SMAD"). Often cheaper than The New SMAD and still superb on the design process of Part V — the funnel, the requirements, the trade studies you ran in your MDR. Tier 1.

Tools that make the paper design real

GMAT (General Mission Analysis Tool), NASA — free, open-source. Where astrotools stops, GMAT begins: a professional-grade tool that will propagate your orbits, optimize your transfers, and plan your maneuvers to flight fidelity. The direct upgrade path from this book's code. Tier 2 — free NASA software; search the name.

poliastro / Astropy (Python). If you enjoyed building astrotools, poliastro is the mature, community version — orbits, maneuvers, and plotting in the same language, correct to many more decimal places than we bothered with. Tier 2.

Kerbal Space Program. Still the fastest way to feel the rocket equation: build each of your four tracks to its sized wet mass and watch the delta-v readout confirm — or demolish — your budget. It is a mission-design spiral you can run in an evening, and it lies to you less than intuition does. Tier 2 — a commercial game.

Watch, listen, and keep up

Scott Manley, YouTube. The single best companion channel to this book: mission design, delta-v maps, engine cycles, and launch commentary, all at exactly the level you now understand. Tier 2.

Primary sources — mission press kits and mishap reports (NASA, ESA). Now that you can read them, launch press kits (delta-v budgets, masses, timelines) and mishap-investigation reports (the Mars Climate Orbiter and Challenger reports especially) are the most instructive documents in spaceflight. They are your MDR, written by professionals, for real vehicles. Tier 2 — publicly released; search by mission and title.

Suggested order — from here

1. Build one of your four tracks in KSP to its sized wet mass; confirm the delta-v budget with your hands, not just your calculator.
2. Reread the mission-design and delta-v-budget chapters of The New SMAD to see your MDR done professionally.
3. Re-fly your track's trajectory in GMAT (or poliastro) to real precision, and watch where the two-body ideal of this book meets the perturbed reality of Chapter 12.
4. Read one real mission's press kit end to end and map it onto the ten MDR rows of §40.1 — proof that what you learned here is exactly what the professionals do.
5. Then pick a mission nobody has flown, and design it. That is the whole point.