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Mission To Mars: My Vision For Space Exploration (2013)

by Buzz Aldrin(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1426210175 (ISBN13: 9781426210174)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

National Geographic

review 1: Space, the final frontier. "Mission to Mars" by Buzz Aldrin is all about exploring the final frontier, space. Specifically this book focuses on the next step in space exploration. Aldrin makes the argument that the U.S. should focus its attention on putting man on Mars. This is the overarching concept of the entire book. In fact the rest of the book is all ideas Aldrin has thought of that can help obtain his goal of reaching Mars.The book is good, except it fails to meet my personal expectations of what I expected it to be. Maybe reading Star Wars novels over the years has done the disservice of relaying unrealistic expectations of space. There is no mention of exotic alien races or huge galactic space battles in, "Mission to Mars." The book is completely grounded in reali... morety. As the foreword at the beginning of the book describes,it is simply all the ideas Aldrin has come up with over the years packaged under the banner of his Unified Space Vision. Since the book limits its scope of space exploration to just reaching Mars he does not discus the presence of possible Earth like planets in other solar systems. As a result I found the book not as interesting as it could have been.In terms of actually reading the book it is not difficult at all. It took me about 6 hours to read front the back. The book is only 209 pages, half of which have pictures on them. There is not a lot of complicated science lingo. Aldrin does a very good job of explaining key concepts. (SPOILERS AHEAD)Aldrin is unquestionably an authority on the subject of space exploration. He has a clear plan he wants the world, specifically the U.S. to follow. This is where I have the most problem with his book. He wants the world's current space powers to work together i.e America, Europe, Russia, China and India. Except, his whole plan entails the U.S. taking the lead. As in the U.S. taking all the glory. For example, his whole plan is to focus on Mars. Not the Moon. He believes other nations should focus on the Moon meanwhile the U.S. should leapfrog to Mars. Even if his plan was less American centered,the two other leading space powers, Russia and China, are arguably enemies of the U.S. government. So why would any of the three nations mentioned work together? This is just my personal opinion that his plan should be less reliant on complete world cooperation and focus more on just what science needs to accomplish to get to Mars.Overall I gave this book 3/4 stars. If you want to learn more about space exploration this is certainly a good book to choose. Anyone can read it and learn more about what is being done to further space explorations. The book is not the most exciting. It is only 209 pages so I think it is still worth a read if you want to learn more. If you are a Canadian like me, I would wait for a price drop because this book is not worth $31.00. Other then that I look forward to seeing in the future Aldrin's plans come to fruition!By,Robert Moss
review 2: This is not what I expected, I guess the author had to water down the content in order for it to be readable by the public, but the lack of details is very disappointing. If it's possible to write books about black holes and genes for the public, I think it should be possible to list the options we have for near term space exploration without scaring away the readers, but this book failed to do so.As a plan for manned Mars exploration, this book also lacks one critical aspect: How will you finance this adventure? How much does a cycler cost? Assuming NASA budget does not increase (which is nearly a certainty), can we afford it? Do we have to abandon ISS to do this? Should we stop congress from wasting billions on SLS? What is the role of new space and new technology's role in Mars exploration? There're so many questions can be discussed, and I was hoping the author could use his experience and expertises to organize them for us and present a coherent plan (or more likely a number of plans, given different assumptions), but that is not the case. less

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