You may say that he’s a dreamer; celebrate him as a visionary, or dismiss this as futurist fantasy.
The moonwalking astronaut offers a passionate but not always persuasive manifesto encompassing space tourism and the inevitability of inhabiting Mars within a couple of decades.
Though Aldrin (Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, 2009) again shares some impressions of his historic Apollo 11 mission, here he’s far less focused on the past than the future. For the author, who wrote the book with the assistance of veteran space journalist David, the moon is the past, at least as an American governmental priority—“a dead end, a waste of precious resources”—while Mars is the future. His vision for bringing space exploration back to the launching pad includes international cooperation rather than competition, private enterprise augmenting public subsidy, and space travel within the reach of citizens who win a lottery, a game-show competition or have deep pockets—“the pay-per-view seat price is $200,000,” he writes of one proposed expedition that has already attracted “hundreds of customers.” Aldrin envisions a cruise-ship model of commercial space travel: “Loop around the Moon, return to Earth, sling-shot around the Earth, and return to the Moon again. The round trip will take just over a week. And every time the Lunar Cycler swings by Earth, it’s met by a supply ferry, maybe even restocked with champagne, and boarded by a fresh group of travelers.” Maybe this seems feasible, but he then proceeds to his more audacious proposal: settling Mars as an outpost of human habitation, not merely exploration. It would be a six-month, one-way trip, and he sees no reason to provide those initial explorers with a return ticket: “What are they going to do…write their memoirs? Would they go again? Having them repeat the voyage, in my view, is dim-witted. Why don’t they stay there on Mars?” What he terms the “deposit, no return” nature of those voyages awaits a generation ready to go where no man has ever gone before…and to stay there.
You may say that he’s a dreamer; celebrate him as a visionary, or dismiss this as futurist fantasy.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1017-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The recent impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter made the world aware of the potential for another worldwide disaster of the sort that purportedly killed off the dinosaurs; here an astronomer assesses the risks. Steel, an Australian research astronomer (Univ. of Adelaide), begins his book with a sober and mathematics-laden discussion of the astronomical probabilities of a major asteroid or comet impacting the Earth, and the probable results—namely, the end of civilization. Nobody who has kept abreast of the scientific research is likely to disagree with this part of his thesis, yet he presents this conclusion dryly and with little concession to the sensibilities of the general reader. Only around chapter five, where he looks into the historical debate about meteor impacts on Earth, does the momentum of his argument begin to mount; unfortunately, many readers will have given up by then, in many cases those who might most enjoy the subsequent chapters, which include a discussion of the possible relation of Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids to meteoric bombardments. Steel calculates that dying as the result of a cosmic collision is about twice as likely as dying in an airplane crash, a sobering estimate (especially to those who fear flying). He suggests that the most useful response to the danger is Project Spaceguard, a program combining astronomical resources with the technology of the ``Star Wars'' SDI defense system to detect incoming asteroids and to deflect them with atomic explosions. (Inexplicably, he neglects to mention the perhaps equally significant step of removing a portion of the human population from the target area by colonizing habitats other than Earth.) An important evaluation of one of the key long-range threats to human survival, aimed at a popular audience but full of solid scientific data.
Pub Date: May 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-471-30824-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A superbly written and informative account that gives geophysics the excitement of a science-adventure tale. Vogel, a former associate editor for Discover magazine, clearly has a love affair going with earthquakes, volcanoes, and tectonic plates. Her infectious enthusiasm and lucid prose make this debut an engaging page-turner. ``The earth is the main character of this book,'' she tells us, and it is, as the author breathes life into scientific theory, portraying our world in a constant process of change. The text is well organized and gives just enough information for the science enthusiast, never too much. Vogel begins with the familiar—earthquakes—and builds our understanding of what they are and why they happen. She takes us into the not-so-distant past when plate tectonics was still a new, cutting-edge theory; she then shows us the enormous amount of supporting data that was gained from ocean mapping done by warships and submarines during WW II and the Cold War. She explains the interrelationship between the earth's mantle and its magnetic core; hot spots and the plumes that form ocean mountains; and how these affected the breakup of Pangea, the supercontinent that once incorporated all of what today are separate land masses. Returning to the present, she also describes the way the earth releases heat and the effect of asteroids on geophysics. Vogel makes it clear that we are living in a tiny period of history along the larger geophysical continuum: ``Efforts to `save the earth' should properly be termed `save our species.' With or without our survival, the earth will continue for eons.'' Dynamic and unpretentious, this is the kind of book that teaches us to be curious about the unfamiliar.
Pub Date: May 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93771-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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