Robert Zubrin

Full disclosure: I'm an astronaut candidate with Mars One, a non-profit organization that is seeking to put people permanently on Mars within the next decade. Much of Mars One's technology roadmap is based upon this book. So I am definitely coming at this with a certain bias.

I'm waiving my self-imposed rule in order to give this a 5-star rating without having re-read it yet. I'm doing so because I believe the content to be so solid and important to understanding our need to go to Mars as well as how best to do it. All in all, this is a very cogent and complete exposition of Zubrin's plan. There is a much more concise version, published as [b:Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future: A Special from Tarcher/Penguin|17298280|Mars Direct Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future A Special from Tarcher/Penguin|Robert Zubrin|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1359384684s/17298280.jpg|23933929]. But the engineering details are missing from that book, and so may not be as convincing.

Some of this book's content gets a little repetitive, but that is because Zubrin is assuming (probably correctly) that some readers will skip about in the book, so he wants to ensure that his line of reasoning and evidence always hang together. And one can always skim over the redundant text. Zubrin has put a lot of thought in the end-to-end details of going to Mars. I cannot think of any aspect of it which he has not addressed fully to the extent of our current knowledge of the Red Planet. (Which reminds me: make sure you get the revised version of this book, published in 2011.)… (meer)

Zubrin provides an entertaining look at the work leading up to the establishment of the Mars Society's simulation habitats in the arctic (on Devon Island, Canada) and in the desert (Utah). Through the use of crew diaries, he provides a clear idea of what it is like to be in one of the crews simulating life on Mars by wearing bubble-helmeted, gloved "spacesuits" outside for multi-week expeditions. But I most enjoyed one of the final chapters, "Lessons of the Sims", that summarizes the lessons learned from the simulations up to that point, and the impact those lessons should have on designs for actual Mars missions.… (meer)

I want to give this book 5 stars for its vision, boldness, and optimism; 2 stars for its... naivete?.. and, as I shudder at my own "wokeness," blinkered history; and 3 or maybe 4 stars for schematic programs or predictions or what-ever it is best to call them. So I have to settle for a 3-star overall rating.

Leaving aside the other stuff, I did find some of the "technical" discussion on asteroid mining, settlement, etc. annoying for one recurring reason. He likes to say things like 'having solved the problem of getting stuff into orbit on the cheap, we'll need to sort out settlement on the asteroids; and once that is done, we'll be able to mine and ship back metals in bulk by extracting them and storing them by transforming them via the reaction X Y(CO)4 ...' So that he's giving very specific e.g. proposed chemical transformations (nevermind how you would actually get the reactions done) AFTER completely glossing over setting up mining operations and settlements on asteroids. He might as well have included 30 significant digits in all his thrust/impulse figures. Anyway, that kept sticking out to me like a splinter in a sore thumb.

His optimism on human shittiness is well received, generally, and, damn do we need it given the atmosphere of defeatism, self-flagellation, etc. that has taken over the (in particular) left in the US... but is TOO optimistic. People are in fact shitty, and we need to think about that in planning for the future, not just write it off.… (meer)