Introduction.- Space Shuttle Performance Estimates.- Columbia Shuttle Accident Analysis.- Reentry and Landing of the Orbiter.- Hubble Space Telescope Design.- Solenoid Robot Kicker Design using BotE Techniques.

Engineers need to acquire "Back-of-the-Envelope" survival skills to obtain rough quantitative answers to real-world problems, particularly when working on projects with enormous complexity and very limited resources. In the case studies treated in this book, we show step-by-step examples of the physical arguments and the resulting calculations obtained using the quick-fire method. We also demonstrate the estimation improvements that can be obtained through the use of more detailed physics-based Back-of-the-Envelope engineering models. These different methods are used to obtain the solutions...