Customer Reviews

Mission to Mars

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Michael Collins (the command module pilot for Apollo 11) did a superb job describing the challenges to be faced by the first human mission to Mars. He also did a fine job in describing why a human mission to Mars is important, and why it should take priority over first going back to the moon. The author obviously has extensive knowledge of the technical issues involved, such as what propulsion systems might be used, and he does a great job explaining these issues to the reader.

The only problem is that this book was published in 1990 and thus does not have any information about more recent Mars mission architecture plans. For instance, the book was written just prior to the Mars Direct plan, which was developed in the early 1990s. The Mars Direct plan was a breakthrough in reducing the the cost of a Mars mission, since it was the first plan to utilize in situ propellant production in an effective way. NASA later also came out with their own plans for human missions to Mars that expanded on the Mars Direct plan (the NASA reference missions), which are also not included in this book. The author was also too optimistic in his thinking about when a Mars mission might be accomplished, thinking that it might occur as early as 2005. This can be forgiven though, since the reason that a human Mars mission wasn't accomplished by 2005 has nothing to do with the technology not being ready, but rather with a lack of funding and a lack of political will.

Although this book is a bit out of date, the reader can still learn a lot from this book about Mars and about spaceflight. The arguments presented are as current today as they were back in 1990, and I found myself agreeing with just about everything that the author said.