The Case for Mars

Read the book – The Case for Mars

Watch the film – Mars Underground

Join the club – Mars Society

Paying the way to Mars

I’ve had an article published in The Mars Quarterly, the Mars Society magazine. You can find the preview version here which, you will be excited to know, includes my article.

Here is a taster:

We have the technical know-how to send humans to Mars if we choose. Where the whole endeavour fails, of course, is money.

The obvious source of money is government spending. This worked extremely well to get to the Moon. The goal was set in 1962 and achieved seven years later. That is a phenomenal achievement, but the

effort could not be sustained for long after the race was “won”.

That success makes the solution for Mars seem so simple: persuade the President, get money. But the space race was a product of the Cold War; a very different time to the present, which lacks the burning imperative to climb hard and fast toward the stars. Unless a new space race begins, such an imperative will continue to be absent.

I dumped an unedited first draft of this on the blog some time ago, here.

PS: That photo is a little old now – I no longer have a goatee, although the youthful good looks remain.