Book Review: Mars And Earthlings

book cover Review: Mars and the Earthlings by Jeff Foust Monday, April 7, 2025 Mars and the Earthlings: A Realistic View on Mars Exploration and Settlement by Cyprien Verseux, Muriel Gargaud, Kirsi Lehto, and Michel Viso (eds.) Springer, 2025 hardcover, 452 pp., illus. ISBN 978-3-031-66880-7 US$179.99 To say that opinions about exactly when humans will make to Mars widely vary is an understatement. At one end is Elon Musk, who has argued that Starship could be ready to send people to Mars as soon as the end of the decade, once the vehicle has proven its ability to perform robotic landings, quickly building up a large presence. At the other end are those skeptical that humans will ever be able to live in significant numbers there given its hostile conditions (as an essay in The Atlantic put it several years ago, “Mars Is a Hellhole.”) NASA has fallen somewhere in between, suggesting human missions might be feasible in 2040s as part of its Moon to Mars Architecture. There are certainly major challenges, from transportation and life support to regulation and governance, that must be tackled before humans establish a sustained presence on Mars. Are those challenges, though, being overestimated or underestimated. That’s the focus of Mars and the Earthlings, a book that attempts to offer a “realistic” assessment of those difficulties, although it’s unclear if it will sway many people. “We presume that, as this book draws to its end, the reader will concur: Mars is a harsh place,” the editors conclude. The book is, at the very least, comprehensive. Its 11 chapters cover topics from the science of Mars to the how and why of crewed missions, including settlements. The book also covers legal and ethical issues, the influence of science fiction on plans for Mars exploration and even if Mars can be terraformed (spoiler: the authors are extremely skeptical.) Skepticism is a theme of the book, but not an overriding one: the authors of many of the chapters acknowledge the plausibility of human missions to Mars and the benefits they offer. That said, they are wary of many of the promises that advocates like Musk have made of rapidly sending people to Mars. The expertise the authors offer has its limits. One chapter suggests creating a broad public private partnership to pursue Mars missions that includes intergovernmental organizations like Eutelsat and Intelsat; both were privatized about a quarter-century ago. Another suggests that the “national exceptionalist driver” for Mars missions “may be faltering under the impact of globalisation processes.” National exceptionalist drivers seem alive and well, more so now than at any time in recent memory. The biggest flaw of the book, though, is that list of authors. There is an impressive list of more than 50 contributors to the book, but they hail from European universities and organizations. What blind spots might the book have from lacking American, Chinese, Japanese or other perspectives, not to mention those from industry? (An exception is NASA scientist Chris McKay, who contributed the foreword with a brief overview of Mars exploration from the perspective of searching for evidence of life there.) “We presume that, as this book draws to its end, the reader will concur: Mars is a harsh place,” the editors conclude in the book’s final chapter. They envision a future where Mars may be like Antarctica, “with heroic expeditions and, perhaps, permanent research stations,” but with humanity’s future tied to the Earth for centuries to come. It’s unlikely, though, to be the last word on the topic. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.