A noted space expert explains the current revolution in spaceflight, where it leads, and why we need it.A new space race has begun. But the rivals in this case are not superpowers but competing entrepreneurs. These daring pioneers are creating a revolution in spaceflight that promises to transform the near future. Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin spells out the potential of these new developments in an engrossing narrative that is visionary yet grounded by a deep understanding of the practical challenges.Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars.Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this--to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn't enough for all.

There was a time when humanity looked in the mirror and saw something precious, worth protecting and fighting for--indeed, worth liberating. But now we are beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint. According to this idea, human beings are a cancer upon the Earth, a species whose aspirations and appetites are endangering the natural order. This is the core of antihumanism. Merchants of Despair traces the pedigree of this ideology and exposes its deadly consequences in startling and horrifying detail. The book names the chief prophets and promoters of antihumanism over the last two centuries, from Thomas Malthus through Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore. It exposes the worst crimes perpetrated by the antihumanist movement, including eugenics campaigns in the United States and genocidal anti-development and population-control programs around the world. Combining riveting tales from history with powerful policy arguments, Merchants of Despair provides scientific refutations to antihumanism's major pseudo-scientific claims, including its modern tirades against nuclear power, pesticides, population growth, biotech foods, resource depletion, industrial development, and, most recently, fear-mongering about global warming. Merchants of Despair exposes this dangerous agenda and makes the definitive scientific and moral case against it.

Robert Zubrin, world-renowned space authority and founding president of the Mars Society, taps today’s newest science and most dogged research to foretell in astounding detail the brave, new Martian civilization we will achieve when (not if!) humankind colonizes Mars  When Robert Zubrin published his classic book The Case for Mars a quarter century ago, setting foot on the Red Planet seemed a fantasy. Today, manned exploration is certain, and as Zubrin affirms in The New World on Mars, so too is colonization. From the astronautical engineer venerated by NASA and today’s space entrepreneurs, here is what we will achieve on Mars and how. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are building fleets of space vehicles to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America. We will settle on Mars, and with our knowledge of the planet, analyzed in depth by Dr. Zubrin, we will utilize the resources and tackle the challenges that await us. What we will we build? Populous Martian city-states producing air, water, food, power, and more. Zubrin’s Martian economy will pay for necessary imports and generate income from varied enterprises, such as real estate sales—homes that are airtight and protect against cosmic space radiation, with fish-farm aquariums positioned overhead, letting in sunlight and blocking cosmic rays while providing fascinating views. Zubrin even predicts the Red Planet customs, social relations, and government—of the people, by the people, for the people, with inalienable individual rights—that will overcome traditional forms of oppression to draw Earth immigrants. After all, Mars needs talent.  With all of this in place, Zubrin’s Red Planet will become a pressure cooker for invention, benefiting humans on Earth, Mars, and beyond. We can create this magnificent future, making life better, less fatalistic. The New World on Mars proves that there is no point killing each other over provinces and limited resources when, together, we can create planets.

A noted space expert explains the current revolution in spaceflight, where it leads, and why we need it. A new space race has begun. But the rivals in this case are not superpowers but competing entrepreneurs. These daring pioneers are creating a revolution in spaceflight that promises to transform the near future. Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin spells out the potential of these new developments in an engrossing narrative that is visionary yet grounded by a deep understanding of the practical challenges. Fueled by the combined expertise of the old aerospace industry and the talents of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, spaceflight is becoming cheaper. The new generation of space explorers has already achieved a major breakthrough by creating reusable rockets. Zubrin foresees more rapid innovation, including global travel from any point on Earth to another in an hour or less; orbital hotels; moon bases with incredible space observatories; human settlements on Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of the outer planets; and then, breaking all limits, pushing onward to the stars. Zubrin shows how projects that sound like science fiction can actually become reality. But beyond the how, he makes an even more compelling case for why we need to do this--to increase our knowledge of the universe, to make unforeseen discoveries on new frontiers, to harness the natural resources of other planets, to safeguard Earth from stray asteroids, to ensure the future of humanity by expanding beyond its home base, and to protect us from being catastrophically set against each other by the false belief that there isn't enough for all.

In this compelling argument for a new direction in US energy policy, the author lays out a bold plan for breaking the economic stranglehold that the OPEC oil cartel has on the country and the world. It is suggested that the US relationship with OPEC has resulted in the looting of the American economy, corruption of the political system and has helped fund terrorist units dedicated to the destruction of the US. The book offers an exciting vision for a dynamic new energy policy which will not only help safeguard US security in the future but will also provide solutions for global warming and Third World development.

The exploration and colonization of Mars, as discussed in the more than 130 papers and essays from the Mars Society's annual conferences, is presented in this second volume of the On to Mars series. Formed in 1998 to support the exploration and settlement of Mars, the Mars Society seeks to educate and convince political powers, industry leaders, and the public about the necessity of committing resources to the development of a Mars settlement program. Covering recent technological and planning advances, these essays cover the last three years of Mars Society meetings and discuss such topics as habitat infrastructure, exploration technique, and colony organization as they have been explored at the Mars Society's Analog Research Stations at Devon Island, Nunavuit in Canada and in Hanksville, Utah. Two short videos, "Stepping Stones to Mars" and Robert Zubrin's testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce at the Hearings on the Future of the U.S. Space Program, are featured on the included CD-ROM.

"Today, there is growing and increasingly unmistakable evidence of the existence of a nexus between energy and security. The latter should be properly understood to include economic and environmental security, as well as the more traditional aspects of national security. And each is being threatened by serious vulnerabilities associated with America's dependence on foreign supplies of oil." (From Frank Gaffney's "The Perilous Nexus)

Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts Benedict Arnold was the greatest combat soldier of the American Revolution. Yet, in September 1780, in collusion with the beautiful Tory agent Peggy Shippen and British spymaster John Andre, he attempted to betray George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton, and the critical fortress of West Point into Royal hands. This devastating plot came within a hair's breath of succeeding, and the fragile infant American cause was only saved by the chance intervention of three of the humblest and most improbable heroes ever to grace the annals of history. Exciting and dramatic, the tale of the Arnold conspiracy recounts the most perilous moment in the birth of the new nation, and plumbs the depths and the heights of human nature. Now, in the historically accurate play, Benedict Arnold, noted scientist and author Robert Zubrin brings this incredible and still meaningful story back to life.

What if Americans were the terrorists, and a more civilized superpower found it necessary to put us down? What if contemporary Christian ministers preached salvation through murder of non-believing foreigners, and the US government recruited child suicide-assassins for this purpose? If you were an American living in such a crazed society, what would you do? If you were a civilized outsider, how would you deal with these insane savages? The Holy Land poses such predicaments, and more. In an attempt to save the Minervans from oppression in the central galaxy, the liberal Western Galactic Empire has relocated the sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington. The fundamentalist fanatics ruling the USA find the presence of pagans in the holy city intolerable, however, and they launch an interstellar campaign of mass destruction in protest. Now, cast in a universe gone mad, the primitive Earthling POW Sergeant Hamilton and his case officer, the sophisticated Minervan priestess (3rd class) Aurora, must find the way out, or neither side will survive. In this madcap role-reversed science-fiction satire on the Mideast crisis and the War on Terrorism, the gloves come off. Written with wit and verve by Heinlein Award winner Robert Zubrin, the author of The Case for Mars, Entering Space, and First Landing, The Holy Land takes science fiction back to its Swiftian roots. Rarely since Czech humanist Karel Capek aimed his 1936 War with the Newts at fascism and appeasement has the medium been mobilized to such pointed effect. "A satiric tour de force" - School Library Journal "The duplicity, mendacity, and hypocrisy that characterize the present predicament in the Middle East are laid bare in Zubrin's engaing romp, with verve and biting wit." - National Review Online "Nothing is spared from Zubrin's satiric pen: religion, politics, economics, sex, war, psychology, philosophy - all are the objects of his barbs....The Holy Land is a surprisingly fine follow-up to Zubrin's other fictional and non-fiction works." - The Rocky Mountain News "It's a hoot." - The San Diego Union-Tribune.

"Robert Zubrin is a true engineering genius like the heroic engineers of the past."
--Frederick Turner, American Enterprise

Using nuts-and-bolts engineering and a unique grasp of human history, Robert Zubrin takes us to the not-very-distant future, when our global society will branch out into the universe. From the current-day prospect of lunar bases and Mars settlements to the outer reaches of other galaxies, Zubrin delivers the most important and forward-looking work on space and the true possibilities of human exploration since Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

Sagan himself said of Zubrin's humans-to-Mars plan, "Bob Zubrin really, nearly alone, changed our thinking on this issue." With Entering Space, he takes us further, into the prospect of human expansion to the outer planets of our own solar system--and beyond.

Thinking about moving to mars?
Well, why not? Mars, after all, is the planet that holds the greatest promise for human colonization. But why speculate about the possibilities when you can get the real scientific scoop from someone who's been happily living and working there for years? Straight from the not-so-distant future, this intrepid pioneer's tips for physical, financial, and social survival on the Red Planet cover:
- How to get to Mars (Cycling spacecraft offer cheap rides, but the smell is not for everyone.)
- Choosing a spacesuit (The old-fashioned but reliable pneumatic Neil Armstrong style versus the sleek new--but anatomically unforgiving--elastic "skinsuit.")
- Selecting a habitat (Just like on Earth: location, location, location.)
- Finding a job that pays well and doesn't kill you (This is not a metaphor on Mars.)
- How to meet the opposite sex (Master more than forty Mars-centric pickup lines.)
With more than twenty original illustrations by Michael Carroll, Robert Murray, and other renowned space artists, "How to Live on Mars" seamlessly blends humor and real science, and is a practical and exhilarating guide to life on our first extraterrestrial home.

"Let the meek inherit the earth—the rest of us are going to the stars! Here's how it's going to be done." — Robert Zubrin

"These articles are not 'just science fiction.' They are things we can do—and with any luck at all, and vision and determination, we will." — Stanley Schmidt

Take off on a thrilling journey of space exploration and speculation—to the realm where science fiction becomes science fact—as leading writers, researchers, and astronautic engineers describe a not-too-distant future of interstellar travel and colonization. From cable cars that ride "skyhooks" into space to rockets that can refuel out of Martian air, from "terraforming" planets (a process that makes them habitable for human life) to faster-than-light propulsion systems, Islands in the Sky offers an astonishing collection of challenging—and plausible—ideas and proposals from the pages of Analog magazine. Brilliant and provocative, here is fun-filled reading for everyone interested in science, technology, and the future.