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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating peek behind the NASA curtain..., 6 Sep 2005
If you're one of the countless thousands of people who rush home from work each day and go online right away to check out the latest pictures beamed back by the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, "Spirit" and "Opportunity", then this book is a Must Buy. You'll already be pretty familiar with the public MER program - the happy, relaxed press conferences, the smiling NASA techs describing the latest stunning panorama, etc - but if you want to know what inspired the building of the rovers, how huge a struggle it was to get them built, and learn about the unbelievable political and scientific street-brawling that goes on in the dark, hallowed halls of JPL and other NASA facilities, well, this book will be perfect. Names you've seen countless times on websites and .pdf documents will be revealed as real people, with real attitudes and real characters; engineers and scientists you thought of as placid, clipboard-carrying geeks will be revealed as passionate space advocates who live, eat, and sleep Mars. This is the definitive account of the missions of Spirit and Opportuinity - so far.The book isn't without its faults though: some sections are a little dry, and don't have as much emotional input by Steve Squyres as the others, but you can forgive him that - he was rather busy looking after an almost-a-billion-dollar project, after all. But the insights into the building, construction and testing of the rovers is every bit as emotional a rollercoaster as the sections describing the landings... ah, I remember those mornings... reading this book brought it all flooding back. Other books have prettier pictures, more flowery descriptions and more "space age" drama, but this was written by THE man behind the MERs, who first thought of them, fought like a mountain lion to get them funded and built, and kept fighting to get them sent to Mars. In the future, when people are on Mars, copies of this book will be carried with them, and placed beside the rovers themselves, I'm sure of that. Definitely worth buying if you've even a passing interest in Mars and space exploration.
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by Robert Zubrin
by Andrew Chaikin
by Olivier De Goursac
