Or, I should say, NASA’s, human mission to mars, since I hope women will be involved. But wow, what a very long way off! I mean, we could do this by 2020, so why wait all the way until 2031? I guess we have lots of problems these days, but we certainly sat on our laurels for the past, oh, thirty years or so, while the sailing was smooth. I recommend, if you are a serious reader interested in what it would take to get to, and survive on Mars, to pick up a copy of Robert Zubrin’s ‘The Case for Mars‘. It goes into lots of technical detail, and yet, he provides a way for lighter readers to skip to the important bits. While you’re reading that, a little fictional Mars adventure might get the old enthusiasm going, and so I recommend the three-volume set, ‘Red Mars‘, ‘Green Mars‘, ‘Blue Mars‘, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It tells a multi-generational, and multi-ethnic tale of the colonization and terraforming of Mars. After that, I say, ‘Get Your Ass to Mars!’!

• Mission to Mars!