Acknowledgments

The writing of a book such as this was an exciting process, made even more so by many people who helped me understand the dimensions of this subject and express it clearly. My wife, Sue, and my daughters, Emily Rosa and Stacia Elise, gave me a tremendous amount of support by just “being there” and understanding my peculiar early morning writing rituals. We are all going to look forward to having more breakfasts together again! I would like to thank my editor, Holly Hodder at Columbia University Press, for her enthusiasm for this project and the many excellent suggestions she made in helping me organize this material to make it readable. If you should find this book both thought provoking and captivating, it is largely to Holly’s credit. I would also like to thank Susan Pensak for her excellent job of copyediting this book.

A subject as large as this, with as many facets, has to be written with great care, and I am grateful for the help I received from many colleagues and experts in space weather issues, NASA policy, and the industrial community. I would like to thank Joe Allen at the National Geophysical Data Center for his careful reading of the manuscript and numerous excellent suggestions and comments. I also thank George Withbroe, director of NASA’s Office of Space Science, for explaining to me NASA’s Living with a Star program. Any errors or misunderstandings you may uncover in this book about current policy, budget, or program issues in space weather are entirely the fault of the author. I would like to thank James Burch, Shing Fung, Dennis Gallagher, Jim Green, Pat Reiff, and Bill Taylor of the IMAGE satellite project for many conversations about space weather issues and IMAGE science objectives. I am grateful to John Kappenman at Metatech for helping me to understand the electrical power industry and GICs. I would like to thank Art Poland, former project manager for the NASA SOHO program, Eric Christian, ACE deputy project scientist, and Tycho von Rosenvinge, ACE coinvestigator, for their insight into how these space science missions operate. Barbara Thompson, E. Stassinopoulos, and Michael Lauriente at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center were most helpful in explaining to me how individual researchers in space science receive their funding and how radiation mitigation issues are being investigated. Mike Vinter, vice president of International Space Brokers, Inc., was very helpful in describing the way that satellite insurers operate, which for me dispelled several important misconceptions about this fascinating and highly volatile subject.

There was a great deal of material that had to be trimmed to keep the story focused. Please visit the Astronomy Cafe web site (http://www.theastronomycafe.net) and click on the link for Space Weather. This page contains notes for each chapter and more bibliographic information about space weather issues. Updates on the progress of the 23rd Cycle and its impacts can be found on-site as the information becomes available as well. I will also post any corrections to material in the printed version of this book. If you have questions or comments about this book, or on the subject, please visit the web site and send me an e-mail letter. I will post these in a public FAQ area on the web site along with my responses, as time permits.