Customer Reviews

Mars: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 10 (Includes CDROM: Mars Movies and Images)

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In a departure from other books in this series, this one focuses on unmanned missions, in this case the missions to Mars. Going all the way back to Mariner 4, the mission that broke the hearts of sf fans everywhere by showing that Mars was a cratered desert planet with no John Carter or Dejah Thoris to be found anywhere, it includes press kits and mission reports for each mission to Mars, as well as investigation reports for those missions that have failed (most notably the recent ones).

The enclosed CD is somewhat better organized than usual, with many, many images from the various missions, plus movies and additional reports that didn't make it into the text.

The last item in the book is a rather depressing one. It's a 1969 report from Wernher von Braun on a manned Mars landing. If we'd followed von Braun's vision, by now we'd have a permanent space station with a crew of 100, a lunar base with a crew of 50, and a Mars presence with 48 on the ground and 24 in orbit, and all for maybe double the budget of NASA now (which is still effectively far less than the Apollo days). What we have instead is a skeletal space station.

It's another must-have for the space completist but less key for those less interested, except perhaps as a very useful reference.

This is an absolutely indespensable compendium of data relating to the US's unmanned Mars missions starting with the Mariner probes and bringing us right up to 1999's troubling double failures. The text is surprisingly lucid for such a technical document and the data on the missions is exhaustive. The disk features literally hundreds of photos that give the reader an appreciation of how far the imaging technology has come in the past 30 odd years. Reading this volume also makes you appreciate the incredible complexity and challenge of mounting even a small unmanned mission to mars.

It's hard to get more technical, but it's exactly what you need if you want to have a look at the technology that was used to conquer that "final frontier", starting about 40 years ago. It was definitly a time where exploration was risky, and NASA was actually willing to risk it.

Those little probes were so rudimentary compared to what we can do now, and yet, they were state-of-the-art machines that were launched one after another to the planets... with equally deceiving and surprising results. When you think that the Viking data is still being used (and the new results are still controversial), it's hard not to be impressed.

Ironically, this book, which may have been a tribute to NASA creativeness, ends up with the Mars Observer, Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter reports, three probes that failed. The failure is definitly not the problem, because most of the Mars probes failed. But NASA attitude has dramatically changed since the first Mariner. A failure was merely a plausible outcome, but now, it's a catastrophy that invokes a complete Mars programme reeavaluation...

And to kill it completely, this invaluable little book includes the Werner Von Braun infamous roadmap to Mars... envisionned for the 1980's. Another sad hint that NASA failed to its destiny, and will probably never recover.

This book shoudl definitly be read with some other good space history books, that will help put the technical prowess in perspective. I would recommend the following:

- Failure is Not An Option, by Gene Kranz
- Korolev, by James Harford
- Russia In Space, by Brian Harvey
- Moon Hunters, by Jeffrey Kluger

"MARS: THE NASA MISSION REPORTS" is an excellent reference. Robert Godwin has produced yet another gem in his now classic series of historical books on NASA's space missions. The present work encapsulates key technical information on NASA's Mars exploration efforts since the beginning of the space program. The book contains an edited selection of official NASA press kits, press releases and mission reports, along with a profusion of illustrations reproduced as they originally appeared. While the focus of the book is on the sequence of Mars robotic missions NASA has flown to date, a final chapter is dedicated to the historic presentation Wernher Von Braun gave to President Nixon's Space Task Group on August 14, 1969 discussing his plans for a "manned" mission to Mars. According to that plan, humans would have landed on Mars by 1982. The book is very well organized and the information it contains has the great advantage of being reliable in that it was obtained from its very source: NASA's archives. The reader can quickly look up anything from the list of contractors who built the Mariner 4 space probe to the power output of the two RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) on the Viking Landers (2 x 35 watts). The book comes complete with a CD packed with even more information, including full NASA publications on Mars exploration from NASA's "SP" (special publications) series, three NASA videos, and hundreds of NASA Mars mission images. This book is quite simply a "must have" for anyone interested Mars exploration past, present, and future.

I concentrated my readings on space to manned missions. Later I became a life member of the Mars Society and realized I knew very little of NASA missions to Mars.

This book is a great "catch up" of early NASA missions to Mars. Both NASA success and failure missions are listed. Nothing is sugar coated. We see massive amounts of information on Mariner 4,6,7, and 9. Lots of information on Viking 1 and 2 and the fact that the possibility of mars life was NOT proven or disproved. Also the highly successful Pathfinder mission, and the small rover. The fantastic Global Surveyor Mission is given in great detail( Great pictures...fascinating). The failure mission of the Mars Climate Polar Orbiter ( really dumb human error metric/inches in software differences causing spacecraft to crash into Mars. Worse no program to catch this really dumb error). The loss of the Polar Lander and the 2 small impact deep space probes is mentioned. Also proposed future missions and a mars manned landing is shown.

I realise that basic human errors occur. What really made me mad was not the metric/inches incompatibility in the Polar Orbiter software causing the spacecraft to crash into Mars but not having procedures in place to catch the mistake before hand and thus eliminating the mission failure.I realize that sending any spacecraft to Mars is highly risky and there have been many failures. However the science learned is well worth it and we must continue and we must send a manned mission to Mars soon.

I am not a rocket scientist so I appreciated there was no heavy math in the book. However LOTS of the book is extremely dry with massive amounts of specifications of the spacecraft, trajectories, and mission planning. Great color images are shown in the middle and back of the book. What really impressed me with the missions was the built in redundancy so if a part of the spacecraft failed another part could be used and the spacecrafts can keep in contact with mission control if temporary loss of signal using other systems/antennas. The times that the spacecraft would not be able to transmit back to Earth due to Mars being in the way is shown as well as the data holding capacities of the computers/chips are given.

So much new technology tried (air bag systems, lots of cameras, lasers, atmospheric measuring devices and lots more). Each later mission was based on the new knowledge learned from previous missions and mistakes learned and hopefully avoided.

This is a great book for those wanting detailed information about the various spacecraft that went to Mars. I read every word of the book. Be prepared for INMO some dry specification reading.

I really liked the DVD supplied with the book describing Mars. I liked the different images of Mars gullies, valleys, mountains etc. The quality of the mission people videos was only average as it was taken from old images. The audio was perfectly understandable.

A good book. With lots of great information. If you want to read every word be prepared for some very dry specification information. 4 stars

This book is a collection of reports from every American Martian probe of the 2oth century, as well as coming attractions for the long running Mars Exploration rover, now known as Spirit and Opportunity.
In this age when we routinely receive High Definition pictures from Mars on a daily basis, it is sobering to see that it took the better part of a day to receive just one picture from the early Mariner probes.
I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of Martian exploration. It is the history of Martian exploration.

Apogee Books once again strikes gold! This Mars book is one of the best written, because it deals specifically with the spacecraft and missions that went to the Red Planet. Original press kits and fact sheets for the first few Mariner missions (a rare find!) have the orbital calculations for the trans-Earth and trans-Mars trajectories - how many times have you seen estimated times for travel, but wondered "How did they get that?"

The data for the Viking missions are also interesting - they list the 3 main experiments that was going to solidify the "Life on Mars" argument. The data was inconclusive, and I can't quite remember if the press kits covered the results - however, the fact that the experimental procedures and equipment were listed is amazing.

Apogee Books have a high "geek" factor built in and this book does no less than the rest of the series. If you're one of those who needs to know how it works or the 'rest of the story' then Mars: The Nasa Mission Reports, Vol. 1 & 2 are for your library.

This book pulls together a ton of publicly available information on the unmanned Mars probes from the United States, tracking the changes in our understanding of the Red Planed. The bonus CD has, among other things, a cool short film starring Carl Sagan, showing the experiments on the Viking landers that were to show whether there is life on Mars.

This book is a nice handy reference of robotic exploration of Mars (Mariner IV to Mars Polar Lander). The information is detailed enough to give you an understanding of the mission objectives and the spacecraft design. The level of detail varies for each mission, but in most cases gives the reader a starting point. Before this book was available I spent many hours trying to compile this information myself and was never fully able to obtain a complete collection. So I would recommend this book because of it's completeness (at least to Mars Polar Lander) and for the insight it does provide into each mission. May there be many more volumes to come.

"MARS: THE NASA MISSION REPORTS" is an excellent reference. Robert Godwin has produced yet another gem in his now classic series of historical books on NASA's space missions. The present work encapsulates key technical information on NASA's Mars exploration efforts since the beginning of the space program. The book contains an edited selection of official NASA press kits, press releases and mission reports, along with a profusion of illustrations reproduced as they originally appeared. While the focus of the book is on the sequence of Mars robotic missions NASA has flown to date, a final chapter is dedicated to the historic presentation Wernher Von Braun gave to President Nixon's Space Task Group on August 14, 1969 discussing his plans for a "manned" mission to Mars. According to that plan, humans would have landed on Mars by 1982. The book is very well organized and the information it contains has the great advantage of being reliable in that it was obtained from its very source: NASA's archives. The reader can quickly look up anything from the list of contractors who built the Mariner 4 space probe to the power output of the two RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) on the Viking Landers (2 x 35 watts). The book comes complete with a CD packed with even more information, including full NASA publications on Mars exploration from NASA's "SP" (special publications) series, three NASA videos, and hundreds of NASA Mars mission images. This book is quite simply a "must have" for anyone interested Mars exploration past, present, and future.