I’ve yet to get my grubby, ink-stained hands on a copy of Stephen Petranek How We’ll Live on Mars, which argues that we’ll establish a human presence on our neighboring planet within the next 20 years. It’s not just theory but reportage also, featuring interviews with numerous figures at the heart of the new Space Race, a welter of public and private interests. An excerpt from the book via the TED site:

These first explorers, alone on a seemingly lifeless planet as much as 250 million miles away from home, represent the greatest achievement of human intelligence.

Anyone who watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969 can tell you that, for a moment, the Earth stood still. The wonder and awe of that achievement was so incomprehensible that some people still believe it was staged on a Hollywood set. When astronauts stepped onto the moon, people started saying, “If we can get to the moon, we can do anything.” They meant that we could do anything on or near Earth. Getting to Mars will have an entirely different meaning: If we can get to Mars, we can go anywhere.

The achievement will make dreamy science fiction like Star Wars and Star Trek begin to look real. It will make the moons of Saturn and Jupiter seem like reasonable places to explore. It will, for better or worse, create a wave of fortune seekers to rival those of the California gold rush. Most important, it will expand our vision past the bounds of Earth’s gravity. When the first humans set foot on Mars, the moment will be more significant in terms of technology, philosophy, history, and exploration than any that have come before it. We will no longer be a one-planet species.

These explorers are the beginning of an ambitious plan not just to visit Mars and establish a settlement but to reengineer, or terraform, the planet — to make its thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide rich enough in oxygen for humans to breathe, to raise its temperature from an average of –81 degrees Fahrenheit to a more tolerable 20 degrees, to fill its dry stream beds and empty lakes with water again, and to plant foliage that can flourish in its temperate zone on a diet rich in CO2. These astronauts will set in motion a process that might not be complete for a thousand years but will result in a second home for humans, an outpost on the farthest frontier. Like many frontier outposts before it, this one may eventually rival the home planet in resources, standard of living and desirability.•