“And just as the New World entranced and enticed mariners here on Earth,” Zubrin writes, “so can Mars entice a new generation of voyagers, a generation ready to fashion the ships and sails proper for heavenly air.” Given the departure to Mars of NASA’s Curiosity mega-rover later this year, readers will gain added insight as to why robotic explorers are setting the stage for human explorers to reach for the red planet. But will we embrace the challenge, Zubrin questions. Moreover, given the will, human footprints on the red planet could be planted by decade’s end. Overall, America’s space program needs to move beyond square one, Zubrin explains while offering a compelling case for opening the Martian frontier for the human future. “We hold it in our power to begin the world anew. It is a task for ours,” Zubrin writes in a preface to the revised edition. “The human exploration of Mars is not a task for some future generation. Zubrin’s Mars prognosis is that many a naysayer is wrong – near-term human Mars exploration is within the technologies that we possess today. The author maintains that NASA is much better prepared to dispatch humans to Mars today than when the country hurled humans to the Moon in 1969. Given the 15 years that have passed since this book’s initial printing, the “get to know the red planet” forages by robotic craft have helped nail down what makes Mars so inexplicitly fascinating. You’ll find a provocative plea here for humanity to step out…and onto Mars.
It remains a grand read – but also counts as a place marker for a future now on hold. This is a revised and updated issue of the seminal Mars book on human space travel to the red planet – a volume first issued some 15 years ago. The Case for Mars – The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by Robert Zubrin with Richard Wagner Free Press – an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, New York $16.99 (paperback) 2011.
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