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Rating: 
Summary: Good, but way too long
Review: I use this book as a college text. SMAD offers a wealth of good information, but it's far too wordy and prone to personal ruminations on the parts of the contributors. It could profitably be shortened by at least 200 pages. In addition, Chapter 9 (on payloads) needs significant re-work, especially on the discussion of optical payloads. The chapter somehow manages to be both too detailed, and too top-level, for the reader to actually use it. Those who can fill in the technical gaps will not need SMAD, and those who cannot, cannot use SMAD. The proper approach would be to offer a qualitative assessment of how payloads affect satellite design. Leave the deep-down technical details for other texts. Finally, there are sections which can only be described as advertisements for Wertz's company. The discussions of autonomous orbit determination and autonomous orbit control are vastly biased, and do not cover the full range of considerations that have to go into selecting an approach for either activity.
Rating: 
Summary: THE definitive satellite design book
Review: This book covers the large amount of information required to design and plan a space mission, and does it in a clear and succinct way.
Rating:
Summary: Very cool space engineering book - a must have!
Review: This book is intened for those with the equivalent of a BS. I found it very well formatted and a wealth of information. It is a very fun book to have for us space junkies with a technical background to make use of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for mission design work
Review: Wertz has continued his good works, this time branching out with Larson from vehicle design (his book Attitude Determination & Control is considered a bible for NASA as well as contractor ACS engineers) to mission-oriented design. The scope is larger with emphasis on many example missions, so necessarily the technical detail is not as rich; but for ACS systems, definitely get his first one.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for mission design work
Review: Wertz has continued his good works, this time branching out with Larson from vehicle design (his book Attitude Determination & Control is considered a bible for NASA as well as contractor ACS engineers) to mission-oriented design. The scope is larger with emphasis on many example missions, so necessarily the technical detail is not as rich; but for ACS systems, definitely get his first one.
Rating:
Summary: THE book for practicing space systems engineers
Review: What can I say about SMAD? It is THE book for the practicing space systems engineer. After several years in this industry my copy of SMAD is well-thumbed and constantly borrowed by colleagues. I refer to it regularly, and don't know how I could have survived without it. Every time I go back to this book I find some new nugget of information. Wertz and Larson have managed to condense a whole slew of useful information into one volume. The only problem with SMAD is that it takes a kind of "cookbook" approach, without many derivations. But that approach is necessitated by the breadth of material it covers, and is made up for by a wealth of references for more in-depth material. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: THE book for practicing space systems engineers
Review: What can I say about SMAD? It is THE book for the practicing space systems engineer. After several years in this industry my copy of SMAD is well-thumbed and constantly borrowed by colleagues. I refer to it regularly, and don't know how I could have survived without it. Every time I go back to this book I find some new nugget of information. Wertz and Larson have managed to condense a whole slew of useful information into one volume. The only problem with SMAD is that it takes a kind of "cookbook" approach, without many derivations. But that approach is necessitated by the breadth of material it covers, and is made up for by a wealth of references for more in-depth material. Highly recommended!
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