How we'll live on Mars

136 Pages·2015·7.554 MB·English

by  Stephen L. Petranek

HOW WELL
~L IVEO NM ARS
= A
be
STEPHEN L.P ETRANEK
Can. $21.99
Living on Mars is not jusé
possible, it’s inevitable.
The race is on. Meet the fascinating characters
engaged in the big-money, high drama effort to
put the first humans on the Red Planet. Private
companies, driven by iconoclastic entrepreneurs
such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Richard
Branson, and by the Dutch space mission Mars
One, are competing with NASA and several other
foreign government space agencies to plant the
first stake on Mars.
It sounds like science fiction, but within twenty
years, humans will live on Mars. We'll need to. In
this sweeping, provocative book, award-winning
journalist Stephen Petranek makes the case that
living on Mars is an essential backup plan for
humanity and explains in fascinating detail just
how it will happen and what the very real risks
could be.
Why go to Mars? Life on another planet has
potentially life-saving possibilities for everyone on
Earth. Depleted water supplies, overwhelming cli-
mate change, and a host of other disasters all loom
large. We must become a spacefaring species to
survive. Shockingly, we have had the technology
to get humans to Mars for more than thirty years.
Now, we have within our grasp the knowledge to
convert Mars into a habitable planet.
How We'll Live on Mars takes the reader from
deep history to fantastic future; from the exciting
early days of rocket development to the next gold
rush of asteroid mining. Petranek > wes the
landing on Mars into the great »\ \\.of human
exploration, ultimately proving \\ \\ \\g on Mars
isn’t just our dream, it’s our desti\
CEDAR MILL COMM LIBRARY
4P ORLNAW pita ee RD
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2021 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/nowwellliveonmar0000petr
TEDBooks

, PETRANEK
STEPHEN L
Be TEDBooks
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue oft he Americas
New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Petranek
Allrights reserved, including the right to reproduce this
book or portions thereofi n any form whatsoever. For information
address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
TED, the TED logo, and TED Books are trademarks of
TED Conferences, LLC.
First TED Books hardcover edition July 2015
TED BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of
TED Conferences, LLC.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949
or [email protected].
For information on licensing the TED Talk that accompanies
this book, or other content partnerships with TED, please contact
[email protected].
Interior design by: MGMT. design
Cover design by: Chip Kidd
Cover photo by: Daniel Kaesler/Alamy
Manufactured in the United States of America
TOSSO NS 7M ONS Ai 3002) oad)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-8476-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-8477-9 (ebook)
I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash
new jobs ... pushing out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay.
Last month, we launched a new spacecraft as part of areenergized space
program that will send American astronauts to Mars.
—President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address,
January 20, 2015