On to Mars: Colonizing a New World [With CDROM]

Why is Mars the ideal goal for the space program? How will we get there, and how will we sustain ourselves once we make it? How can Mars even become a new, second home for humanity? This collection of essays offers to answer such questions as these, with dozens of contributions from a host of writers - of which I am one, so you know my bias. Although the best of them are NASA scientists, the only qualification in common among them all is enthusiasm. Sample article titles include, "Space Tourism After Dennis Tito," "The Long Range Mars Rover," and "Interstellar Panspermia Reconsidered: Implications for the Search for Life on Mars." The essays were selected from presentations given at three years' worth of meetings of the Mars Society. Taken together, the scope of this work provides worthwhile evidence of the drive and confidence in a bold human future in space, worthy to follow up on the glory days of Apollo, and offers a thought-provoking tour of the future, well-suited to invite further debate and discussion.