Going to Mars: The Stories of the People Behind NASA's Mars Missions Past, Present, and Future

Being written by two science fiction writers (Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens) and a scientist (Brian Muirhead, who worked and still works with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), this book is both unconventional and highly entertaining. Not only the technical dimension of space exploration is highlighted, but also the human aspect. What makes people want to explore space? How is an idea translated into an actual mission? How are the new BFC-missions (Better, Faster, Cheaper) managed? Etc. etc. This book gives a lot of information on past, present and future missions to Mars, information that is often not covered in other books. As Brian Muirhead was flight system manager of the team that developed the Mars Pathfinder, the first rover that landed on Mars in 1997, a substantial portion of the book is dedicated to this mission. The book contains many black-and-white photographs of (only) reasonable quality. In the middle of the book are 32 pages with really very high quality photographs and artwork. All in all to me this book deserves a full five stars. I really enjoyed reading it.