Book Review: On to Mars

On to Mars: Colonizing a New World compiled by Robert Zubrin and Frank Crossman had a huge variety of content that varied wildly in its quality. It is a collection of papers about many aspects of Mars exploration: engineering, business, law, finance, spirituality, public outreach, science, and ethics.

Who should read this book?

If you are interested in Martian engineering, public outreach, space exploration business and law, or exobiology I recommend just reading those sections and skipping the rest.

The Good

There were generally two kinds of articles.

1. Interesting, informative, and well researched papers.
2. Papers I could have written myself by just bullshitting how I felt Mars exploration relates to philosophy, spirituality, or general technology.

This section is about the first type. As a rule, any technical paper with actual calculations, charts, or graphics were worthwhile. The propulsion, power, and colony design articles were great.

"First on Mars Should Own It" by Ron Pisaturo was perhaps the only philosophy paper worth reading. It presents the notion that the first human to set foot on Mars for a year and return should own the planet. I recommend this article highly because at first the idea sounds absurd but Pisaturo effectively guides us through all the good that would happen as a result. Along the way he justifies the immense importance of private property. Unfortunately the paper concludes with a hamfisted capitalism masturbation, but overall it is very worthwhile.

"The Race to Settle Mars: Is the Public Ready?" is some great work done by Peter Perrine where he collected public opinions on Mars exploration. He interviewed people in laundromats, parents at swim lessons, swimming instructors, and senator's offices. The responses are all there, and well worth a read.

"Terraforming and Human Ecologies on Mars" by Robert Zubrin also had a ton of surprises. I now feel very well equipped to talk about biomatter exchange between Earth, Mars, and solar systems.

The Bad

Perhaps half the papers are not worth reading under any circumstance. The articles on the human hand, Mars IT, theology, and distant future legal frameworks for Mars were particularly worthless. Most finance papers also seemed worthless, though I'm not knowledgeable enough to say for sure.

I was particularly surprised to see four articles written by reverends. From an atheist's perspective, it is delusional in the extreme to think that a blood soaked book from bronze age Palestine could give us any insight into the science and ethics of space exploration. Unsurprisingly, the theology papers were less about Mars and more about promoting spirituality and creationist theory, including the now thoroughly debunked "bacterial flagellum" as an example of irreducible complexity.

I see some utility in gathering support from religious communities for Mars exploration. But I think it's asking a lot for religious people to have faith in a scientific endeavor because a reverend says so.

Summary

This is a generally good collection of articles that I learned a lot from. Even though the standards of the editors may have been too low, it is clear that every author cared about Mars exploration and wanted to contribute what they could. Even the articles whose content I do not recommend were well written. A reader will have a good experience by picking and choosing which topics interest them most.