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Mission to Mars
Michael Collins flew his first space flight mission as pilot of Gemini 10 in 1966, and three years later he was the command module pilot of the historic moon-landing mission, Apollo 11. Now, with Mission to Mars, Collins offers a provocative new plan for the much-debated American space program. With compelling arguments and contagious enthusiasm, Collins shows that the most effective way to revitalize space exploration (and NASA) is to resolutely focus our planning, research, and development on one major goal: human exploration of Mars, with the long-range objective of establishing a permanent colony on the planet.
He approaches this enormously complex expedition by mapping out a trajectory for the flight that would depart on June 3, 2004, and return twenty-two months later after a forty-day stay on Mars. He leads the reader on a fascinating and pragmatic examination of the host of physical, technical, and psychological demands that will have to be met before we can walk on the surface of our nearest neighbor planet. Should both sexes fly on the mission? What will be the effects of radiation and weightlessness - and other factors we don't yet understand - on the health of the crew? How will they cope with the long months of confinement? What will the mission cost - both in dollars and in national commitment? These and many other questions are addressed in Collins's riveting scenario of the space flight and his ground plan for a Mars colony.
In keeping with his accelerated schedule, Collins rejects the current plans for setting up a preliminary outpost on the Moon, suggests simplifying the space station Freedom to accommodate the Mars project, and advocates joining with the Soviets to develop space technologies together. Mission to Mars calls for bold governmental leadership, multinational collaboration, and an energetic pursuit of this great challenge, and gives us a detailed, dramatic, and exciting picture of how it can be achieved.
He approaches this enormously complex expedition by mapping out a trajectory for the flight that would depart on June 3, 2004, and return twenty-two months later after a forty-day stay on Mars. He leads the reader on a fascinating and pragmatic examination of the host of physical, technical, and psychological demands that will have to be met before we can walk on the surface of our nearest neighbor planet. Should both sexes fly on the mission? What will be the effects of radiation and weightlessness - and other factors we don't yet understand - on the health of the crew? How will they cope with the long months of confinement? What will the mission cost - both in dollars and in national commitment? These and many other questions are addressed in Collins's riveting scenario of the space flight and his ground plan for a Mars colony.
In keeping with his accelerated schedule, Collins rejects the current plans for setting up a preliminary outpost on the Moon, suggests simplifying the space station Freedom to accommodate the Mars project, and advocates joining with the Soviets to develop space technologies together. Mission to Mars calls for bold governmental leadership, multinational collaboration, and an energetic pursuit of this great challenge, and gives us a detailed, dramatic, and exciting picture of how it can be achieved.
- GenresSpaceNonfictionScience
307 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1990
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120 people want to read
About the author
Michael Collins
18 books83 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
(2)Astronaut
Michael Collins was a former American astronaut and test pilot. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was Gemini 10, in which he and command pilot John Young performed two rendezvous with different spacecraft and Collins undertook two EVAs. His second spaceflight was as the command module pilot for Apollo 11. While he orbited the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first manned landing on the lunar surface.
During his day flying solo around the Moon, Collins never felt lonely. Although it has been said "not since Adam has any human known such solitude", Collins felt very much a part of the mission. In his autobiography he wrote "this venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two". In the 48 minutes of each orbit when he was out of radio contact with the Earth while Columbia passed round the far side of the Moon, the feeling he reported was not fear or loneliness, but rather "awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation"
After spending so much time with the CSM, Collins felt compelled to leave his mark on it, so during the second night following their return from the Moon, he went to the lower equipment bay of the CM and wrote:
"Spacecraft 107 – alias Apollo 11 – alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP"
After retiring from NASA in 1970, Collins took a job in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. A year later, he became the director of the National Air and Space Museum, and held this position until 1978, when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1980, he took a job as vice president of LTV Aerospace. He resigned in 1985 to start his own consulting firm. Along with his Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011.
(2)Astronaut
Michael Collins was a former American astronaut and test pilot. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was Gemini 10, in which he and command pilot John Young performed two rendezvous with different spacecraft and Collins undertook two EVAs. His second spaceflight was as the command module pilot for Apollo 11. While he orbited the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first manned landing on the lunar surface.
During his day flying solo around the Moon, Collins never felt lonely. Although it has been said "not since Adam has any human known such solitude", Collins felt very much a part of the mission. In his autobiography he wrote "this venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two". In the 48 minutes of each orbit when he was out of radio contact with the Earth while Columbia passed round the far side of the Moon, the feeling he reported was not fear or loneliness, but rather "awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation"
After spending so much time with the CSM, Collins felt compelled to leave his mark on it, so during the second night following their return from the Moon, he went to the lower equipment bay of the CM and wrote:
"Spacecraft 107 – alias Apollo 11 – alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP"
After retiring from NASA in 1970, Collins took a job in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. A year later, he became the director of the National Air and Space Museum, and held this position until 1978, when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1980, he took a job as vice president of LTV Aerospace. He resigned in 1985 to start his own consulting firm. Along with his Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 10, 2023
If you are interested in Mars and the way people have thought about Mars, this is an engaging read. It's obviously dated, but that's part of the appeal in some ways because it offers a snapshot of what one of the Apollo astronauts, and the head of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum thought about the possibilities at the time.
January 11, 2022
An interesting book. However, it is very dated. (Hence the rating)
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February 7, 2023Unique. A real mission to the planet Mars is outlined. After settlement, terraformation of the surface is explored.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 4, 2014
Written by former astronaut Michael Collins, who flew as command module pilot aboard Apollo 11, this is a late 80s/early 90s proposal for a joint US-Soviet manned mission to the red planet.
Collins gets a little more into specific details than a number of other books of its kind, which tend to stay at a high level. He proposes three separate mission trajectory opportunities, for example--a long mission (minimum fuel), a short mission (maximum fuel), and a compromise mission (medium fuel, short stay). This is a particularly reasonable set of scenarios--at least technically, if not politically.
Collins' book was, however, the victim of unlucky timing. The cold war ended within a year of its publication, quickly rendering the US-Soviet partnership idea a non-starter. Nevertheless, NASA adopted some of that spirit of partnership as the agency's cooperation with the Russian space program began in earnest later in the 90s. Collins deserves at least some credit for his foresight. (I should note here that Collins was not the first, of course, to propose the idea of US-Soviet cooperation for a Mars mission, although Collins' vision was a bit broader than a number of others, in my opinion.)
Having also read Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct proposal ( The Case for Mars ) later in the 90s, it's clear that Zubrin has read Collins. Collins says here that we should avoid going back to the moon and proceed directly to Mars, which is what Zubrin took up in his own proposal. Collins also proposes a Venus flyby and a ~45 day stay on the martian surface, a scenario which Zubrin ridicules as a waste of time.
Collins devotes much of the second half of the book to a fictional scenario which serves as a vehicle to share some of his ideas. I guess it works, but I was lukewarm at best to reading fiction in the middle of a Mars mission proposal. It's been done before (former astronaut Brian O'Leary did it--poorly--in his own Mars proposal, Mars 1999 , while inserting himself as commander of his proposed mission), and maybe Collins does it adequately here, but I found it distracting to jump back and forth from non-fiction to fiction. I think Collins would have been better off putting his fiction into a full-fledged novel as a basis for putting his ideas in motion, and it's probably unfortunate that he has not, because such a book would have been served well by his writing talents. But it's just a distraction here in the non-fiction environment.
Mission to Mars is still a fairly reasonable book in its basic concepts, even if the political winds have shifted away from the cold war scenario--at least that particular cold war scenario, with me writing this as Vladimir Putin's Russia apes Soviet-style aggression in 2014.
Collins gets a little more into specific details than a number of other books of its kind, which tend to stay at a high level. He proposes three separate mission trajectory opportunities, for example--a long mission (minimum fuel), a short mission (maximum fuel), and a compromise mission (medium fuel, short stay). This is a particularly reasonable set of scenarios--at least technically, if not politically.
Collins' book was, however, the victim of unlucky timing. The cold war ended within a year of its publication, quickly rendering the US-Soviet partnership idea a non-starter. Nevertheless, NASA adopted some of that spirit of partnership as the agency's cooperation with the Russian space program began in earnest later in the 90s. Collins deserves at least some credit for his foresight. (I should note here that Collins was not the first, of course, to propose the idea of US-Soviet cooperation for a Mars mission, although Collins' vision was a bit broader than a number of others, in my opinion.)
Having also read Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct proposal ( The Case for Mars ) later in the 90s, it's clear that Zubrin has read Collins. Collins says here that we should avoid going back to the moon and proceed directly to Mars, which is what Zubrin took up in his own proposal. Collins also proposes a Venus flyby and a ~45 day stay on the martian surface, a scenario which Zubrin ridicules as a waste of time.
Collins devotes much of the second half of the book to a fictional scenario which serves as a vehicle to share some of his ideas. I guess it works, but I was lukewarm at best to reading fiction in the middle of a Mars mission proposal. It's been done before (former astronaut Brian O'Leary did it--poorly--in his own Mars proposal, Mars 1999 , while inserting himself as commander of his proposed mission), and maybe Collins does it adequately here, but I found it distracting to jump back and forth from non-fiction to fiction. I think Collins would have been better off putting his fiction into a full-fledged novel as a basis for putting his ideas in motion, and it's probably unfortunate that he has not, because such a book would have been served well by his writing talents. But it's just a distraction here in the non-fiction environment.
Mission to Mars is still a fairly reasonable book in its basic concepts, even if the political winds have shifted away from the cold war scenario--at least that particular cold war scenario, with me writing this as Vladimir Putin's Russia apes Soviet-style aggression in 2014.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews