Norbert Kraft

Full Disclosure: I am in the Mars 100, one of the remaining candidates for the Mars One mission. I was interviewed for a portion of this book.

This is a book for those who perhaps are not interested in the rockets-and-hardware part of Mars One, but who are nonetheless curious about the mission in its more human dimensions. It is a collection edited and, in part, written by the members of the Mars One Selection Committee. The essays offer a professional examination into the skills and temperament that the Committee looks for in those volunteering to go on a one-way trip to create a settlement on Mars. The question is approached from various angles: psychological, sociological, medical, educational, etc.

I enjoyed most of the contributions and appreciated the variety of ways from which the human side of this endeavor were examined. There were essays in which I found myself wishing for more scientific and technical details. But I think the authors generally struck a good balance in providing professional insights written for a popular audience. I doubt anyone will be searching the Internet to explain many obscure technical terms.

The book includes an appendix laying out the Mars One mission roadmap and the timeline current as of the book's printing.

If you have questions about the Mars One mission or my candidacy to become a Martian settler, feel free to contact me here on Goodreads.… (meer)

First things first, the timetable given in this book for boots on the ground is wildly optimistic, and already dated, which is immediately deflating given its lofty ambitions. The title unfortunately amplifies this, as rest assured, there is no first human settlement on Mars to be "inside" of. That said, the book is a series of articles on what will be necessary to accomplish the goal of a Mars colony, and they largely fall into the psychological and physical requirements. The huge problems we will encounter (radiation on the journey and destination, muscle atrophy in a lower gravity, cost) are largely glossed over as problems for the future, which would be fine if the clock wasn't already ticking in the books timetable. For example, one author postulates a reality TV show to help defray the costs--seriously, it's going to cost tens of billions of dollars to do this, you're not going to pay for it with a TV show. There are some interesting insights here, and some fine imagination, but this is not a nuts and bolts book on colonizing another planet. I could have done without the puffy quotes from all the applicants as well, they mostly read like college entrance essays. I got this as an ebook for $3, so I can't call it a waste of money--but if you're interested in ideas for colonizing Mars, I would instead recommend Frank Crossman Mars Colonies: Plans for Settling the Red Planet, a 700 page collection of actual plans submitted for colonizing the planet, submitted by various groups in competition, published in 2019, also available as an ebook.… (meer)

This book is a fairly lightweight collection of essays from the now dead Mars One Project. If you are after a deeper dive on the technicalities of living on Mars, the books "The Case for Mars" and "How we will live on Mars" by Robert Zubrin are considerably better. The discussion on Law and Society are OK, although the entire law section could be summed up with "the UN has a detailed plan, that no-one who owns a rocket has agreed to" and the details of the selection process are fairly interesting in retrospect with some historical detail from experiments in Russia and experiences in Arctic exploration. It's a very optimistic book but some of the ideas are just daft and you can see how it all fell apart.… (meer)