Robert Zubrin

Zubrin made the case for a cheap, efficient "Mars Direct" mission to send 4 people to Mars and keep them there for a couple years, using very available technology, in 1990. In the 2011 edition of this 1996 book, there were updates which made the case even stronger, and the case is stronger still today.

The funny thing is every one of the errors in the 1996 version was in underestimating the incompetence of governments, the high pace of non-aerospace technology development, and Elon Musk -- show more i.e. Zubrin was too conservative.

I personally would be very interested in going to Mars (one-way, even); the only counterbalance is if medical/life extension tech on earth gets dramatically better in the next 10-15 years vs. the same on Mars, so it becomes a choice of "go to Mars in 2025-2030" vs. "live for 150-200 years and go to Mars in 2050". show less

Humans will never settle on Mars. It will always be beyond the range of human habitability. The lesser gravity, the cosmic radiation, the dust storms, the climate, the thinness of the atmosphere, the absence of liquid water, the distance, the human factors, etc., would require superhuman technological and human adaptations. It will never be profitable or cost effective. This book offers solutions, mostly hi-tech and very expensive. Despite its optimism that Mars can be terraformed, it will show more never be worth the cost to do so, even if the formidable engineering problems could be solved. This book assumes that the Earth will always be available to support Mars missions, but the support systems on Earth will be facing serious limitations.

The terraforming of Mars would be accomplished by artificially-induced global warming. Even if that could be done successfully within a reasonable time, what would prevent it from eventually getting out of control? Might as well stay on Earth!

It is possible that humans will walk on Mars some day, but they will not colonize it, for the same reasons that we haven’t colonized the moon.

The title of this book betrays the author’s bias. He wants to do this. His book is an advertisement for Mars colonization, an appeal for the funding it would require. Thus he has a vested interest in minimizing the difficulties. His talk about “living off the land like Lewis and Clark” is unrealistic. His attitude is expansionist and strongly pro-technology. He thinks stagnation is the only alternative to perpetual expansion into new frontiers. He thinks technology is progress. But expansionism and technology can and do create serious problems. It is not our manifest destiny to colonize the planets. A society that lives within realistic limits is not to be disparaged as a “closed society.”

This book is about the Red Planet; it is more about engineering and technology. If you decide to read it, get the latest edition because this is a moving topic. show less

Robert Zubrin outlines, in great detail, how a manned mission to Mars could be achieved within a decade, for less money than is generally assumed, if only we were willing to thoroughly commit to doing it. His plan involves a launch directly from Earth to Mars (with no expensive orbital construction or stepping-stone bases on the moon), using Mars' natural resources to synthesize fuel and other necessities, and an extended stay on the surface to get some real science done. He's put lot of show more thought into every aspect of the endeavor, from launch vehicles to orbital trajectories to crew habitats to scientific objectives, and his scheme seems extremely plausible.

Zubrin also looks a bit further afield, talking about a plan for permanent Martian settlements and even the prospect of terraforming Mars. These chapters are a lot more speculative and rather less convincing, but they are interesting possibilities, and also feature lots of carefully thought-out specifics. In fact, some of the details here can get pretty dry -- I admit to sort of skimming some of the bits about the chemistry of fuel and plastics manufacturing on Mars -- but you don't necessarily have to be a rocket scientist to understand the basics of his arguments.

Of course, that "if only we were willing to thoroughly commit" is one great big "if," and I can't say I'm feeling much in the way of optimism. If anything, the goal seems further away now than it did in 1996, when the first edition of this books was published. Alas. show less

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 show more 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.) show less