Mars is Hard

Okay, so you're an enthusiast with a technical background, and you're interested in getting involved in the defining challenge of humanity; increasing our planet number to more than one. Or you're a journalist who wants to do some fact checking. Or a high school kid who saw The Martian and wants to know more.

How to get to Mars to Earth, and from Earth from Mars

This is my first book on human Mars exploration (now available on Amazon) covering some of the unsolved problems around the humans-to-Mars-and-back problem. It was written to (successfully) anticipate the SpaceX Mars exploration architecture unveiled in September 2016. It also covers some related topics focused on the exploration phase of Mars settlement. Please feel free to provide feedback in the Google doc itself.

How to rapidly industrialize Mars

This is my second book on human Mars exploration, now undergoing a series of edits and illustrations. It attempts to construct useful questions and some answers focused on an extended program to industrialize the surface of Mars. For instance, how should one think about ranking products in order of local manufacture priority? The principles are almost identically applicable to asteroids, moon, or deep space.

Where does the water go when you terraform Mars?

Handmer, C J. Waterfront on the Martian Planitia: Algorithmic emergent catchments on disordered terrain. arXiv:1606.05224

Pythonized algorithm designed for full MOLA data on GitHub.

Public outreach and commentary on Mars exploration

Commentary on SpaceX Mars Architecture =D.

SpaceX architecture 2017 update.

The Martian technical commentary.

Mars Society 2016 speech: Confronting the Credibility Gap

Does Lunar resource exploitation make sense?

Atmospheres and Terraforming

Answers to Mars related questions on Quora.

Common misconceptions in space journalism.