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Rating: 
Summary: Good and bad
Review: I teach a Space Systems Engineering class and have used this book as a class text. I've found it to be both good and bad.On the good side, SMAD provides a very good overview of the satellite and mission design process. It's full of realistic and experience-based design information, and useful data and algorithms for sizing and costing. Especially useful are the "Process" tables, which map out the design process into several distinct steps. The book has its downsides, though. The various authors are usually far too verbose -- their points are often lost in the blizzard of words. The length of the book could be profitably cut by at least 100 pages. Also, the authors often come to the table with a distinct agenda, which leads them to say things which are not necessarily accurate. (See, e.g., Wertz's diatribes on autonomous orbit determination and maneuver planning -- the latter is almost a veiled advertisement for a software product being sold by Wertz's company.) The effect is to cut off consideration of other valid options. Finally, the book can be extremely uneven in the level of technical knowledge required. For example, Chapter 9 (Payload Design) presupposes a tremendous amount of detailed knowledge of, say, optical payloads, to the effect that: if you knew all of the stuff required, you wouldn't need SMAD; and if you don't know the stuff, SMAD won't help you. Despite these problems, it is still a very good and useful book -- you just have to be careful sometimes in how you use it.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding inclusive text on satellites
Review: This is an outstanding text covering all aspects of space missions and satellites. Orbital geometries, payload design, spacecraft design, subsystems, communications, operations, propulsion, launch systems, reliability. You name it, it's covered. It has become a valuable and indispensable resource in my personal library!
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