Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure i Space

Takes a close-up look at our relationship with Mars, the potential for colonization and the future of space exploration

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilford here provides a superb popular history of mankind's growing knowledge of Mars from antiquity, when it was associated with the god of war, to our unmanned satellite mapping of its surface. Mars is now dry and cold but water once inundated much of the planet--recent research indicates that a giant ocean may have covered most of its northern hemisphere. When water flowed, did life arise and then die out or do microbes survive in the hostile Martian environment? Is water locked in permafrost or polar caps, waiting for human colonists to release it? Wilford, championing the possibility of a joint U.S./Soviet mission to Mars, details the technological hurdles that must be overcome in order to get humans to the red planet and to establish settlements there. This is popular science at its best, and will appeal to those interested in the exploration of our solar system. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wilford, New York Times science editor , has produced an easy-to-read general introduction to Mars. He examines our fascination with Mars as the other planet in the solar system likely to harbor life, speculation that began with the ancients and took hold in the 19th century, when, based on their observations, astronomers erroneously concluded that Mars is inhabited by intelligent life. He details the findings of the unmanned probes that in recent years characterized Mars as it really is--a cold, dry world that, nevertheless, still exerts much of the same fascination on our imagination, embodied in current plans for manned missions to, and possible colonization of, the planet. Highly recommended.
- Thomas J. Frieling, Bainbridge Coll., Ga.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.