Good Buy Venus!
I love these old astronomy books too. Fred Hoyle is certainly want of "the greats".
I'm a little more cynical than Fred though on his comment -
"the wealthiest nations will continue indefinitely to spend appreciable fractions of their incomes on the firing of instruments into space......"
well plenty being fired up into space, but the vast bulk would be telecommunications or security related stuff compared with that intended to advance knowledge.
cheers,