Kenneth William Gatland (1924-1990) was a British aerospace engineer, author and populariser of astronautics. A leading figure of the British Interplanetary Society, where he served as vice-president and later president, he was a long-standing contributor to Spaceflight magazine. A prolific writer of both technical and popular works on rockets, satellites and spaceflight, he was known for the precision of his technical descriptions and the quality of the cutaway artwork in his books. His Illustrated Encyclopedia of Space Technology (1981) remains one of the most comprehensive illustrated surveys of the history of space exploration.