Zubrin - How to live on Mars: a trusty guidebook to surviving and thriving on the Red Planet

A man whose career has required the use of several names, Robert Zubrin was born in New Plymouth in 2071 and graduated Heinlein High in 2099. Due to an unfortunate accident that caused his parents payoff to the school administration to be misplaced, he was mistakenly ranked near the bottom of his class and was forced to accept employment from NASA for seven years (a time span he calls his dark period). Eventually, however, he was freed, and finding honest work, achieved interplanetary renown and financial success through a series of highly lucrative ventures in the areas of prospecting-claim evaluation, areopaleontology, and preterraforming real-estate development. He is no (proven) relation whatsoever to his twentieth-century namesake, a humorless astronautical engineer who developed the Mars Direct mission plan, authored the classic treatise The Case for Mars, and led the founding of the Mars Society in 1998. He regrets any confusion his current nom de plume may have caused.

The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization

First Landing

Mars on Earth: Adventures of Space Explorers in the High Arctic

The Holy Land

Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts

Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2008 by Robert Zubrin

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zubrin, Robert.
How to live on Mars : a trusty guidebook to surviving and thriving
on the red planet / Robert Zubrin.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Mars (Planet)Humor. I. Title.
PN6231.M32Z83 2008
813.4dc22

eISBN: 978-0-307-45011-1

v3.1_r1

To Jamie Caitlin West Lutton:

Sage, Wit, and Muse;

Proprietor of Seattles Twice Sold Tales, the greatest,
wildest, and weirdest used bookstore in the world;

Spreader of light and laughter;

Original character;

And the truest of friends;

This book is cheerfully dedicated.

Cover artwork by Robert Murray

Martian dust storm. Art by Michael Carroll

Mir, the green-slime-filled space station. Photo courtesy NASA

A Nukey ship out of control. Art courtesy NASA

Ancient NASA diagram showing bad Mars mission plan. Courtesy NASA

Elastic spacesuits: how you will really look. Art by Michael Carroll

Spacesuit Waste Entrainment Temporary Cachement System. Courtesy NASA

Biker gals salvaging NASA vehicle. Art by Michael Carroll

Dusting solar panels can expose you to ridicule. Art by Michael Carroll

Coming home to a deflated hab. Art by Michael Carroll

Finding the Celestial Pole. Art by Michael Carroll

The Martian dunce corner. Art by Michael Carroll

Used parachutes can provide valuable brick-making material. Art by Michael Carroll

The efficient technique for making aluminum. Art by Michael Carroll

Putting the Lunar Base to good use. Art by Michael Carroll

A growing Martian exploration base. Art by Pat Rawlings, courtesy NASA

Be sure you know the launch schedule. Art by Robert Murray

Ancient NASA Mars airplane design with stuck propeller. Art by NASA

Ares Asteroidal offers unlimited profits. Art by Michael Carroll

Becky Sherman; immortalized for showing Martians the way to fame. Art by Michael Carroll

Preparing a fossil for discovery. Art by Michael Carroll

Terraforming will create valuable beachfront property. Art by Michael Carroll

The mathematics of terraforming. Data courtesy MATD

Rate of outgassing of atmosphere from Martian regolith. Data courtesy MATD

Scientific projection of the future Mars. Art by Daein Ballard

On Mars, families still exist. Art by Pat Rawlings

You can meet your soul mate on Mars. Art by Robert Murray

Flying with the chickens. Art by Michael Carroll

If your child is well-behaved, home schooling is a good low-budget option. Art by Robert Murray

The founding of the Free Martian Republic. Art by Michael Carroll

So youve made the decision to break the surly bounds of Earth and head on out to the Martian frontier. Good move! Mars is where the future is. Its wide-open spaces are waiting for folks like you with guts and gumption to go out and make your mark. Its a new world, ready for a young civilization to be born, and rife with history raring to be made. Now that you have signed up, you can be one of those on the make.

Yet you mustnt kid yourself. Mars is a great place, but its no picnic. Many people have gone to Mars with high hopes and dreams of making it big, only to fall flat on their faces. The Red Planet can be very harsh to those who come unprepared. Youve sold your house and liquidated all your savings for a one-way ticket; do you really want to risk ending up dead broke, forced to accept a seven-year contract cleaning sewage recyclers, spending your nights hot-bunking with two other guys who stink as bad asor God forbid, even worse thanyou do? No? I thought not.

And thats the least that can happen to you. With an unbreathable atmosphere less than 1 percent as thick as Earths, and nighttime temperatures that fall to 90C, Mars is loaded with perils for the careless or unwary. Make one slip on Mars and you can wind up very, very, very dead.

Fortunately, theres no reason to worry. Because now, thanks to many contributions from the smartest and most battle-tested Mars pioneers from every walk of life (including yours truly, a person who has been working on Mars for so long that people sometimes confuse me with my twentieth-century namesake), a treasury of priceless experience has been compiled to offer you everything you need to know not only to survive, but to thriveindeed, to succeed beyond your wildest dreams in everything you do on the Red Planet.

Look no further; this book has all the answers. All you have to do is study and absorb its kernels of wisdom. After reading How to Live on Mars, you will prevail over any obstacle that Mars presents you.

In this invaluable compendium, you will learn every trick of the successful Martian pioneer, including:

How to get to Mars.

How to choose a hab. (Remember three things: location, location, location.)

How to choose a life-support system. Which is the right recycling system for you? (Bioregenerative or physical-chemical? Going green may be stylish, but the smell is not for everyone.)