The New World on Mars

What We Can Create on the Red Planet

By: Robert Zubrin

Narrated by: Lee Goettl

Brought to you by Penguin.

Within a few years, humans will be able to voyage to Mars. SpaceX is at the forefront of companies already building fleets of spaceships to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America – to the then New World. We will settle the red planet, transforming its raw materials into resources and tackling the challenges that await us, creating a new frontier for humankind.

Dr Robert Zubrin explains how populous Martian city-states will emerge, producing their own air, water, food, power and more. How they must be beautiful to attract settlers, and what that might look like. How the primary exports are unlikely to be material goods but intellectual products, created by a technically adept population in a frontier environment where people will be forced to innovate – including GMOs, robotics, AI and power production. Zubrin even predicts the red planet’s 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 talented Earth immigrants.

In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again’. Zubrin inspires us to embrace another magnificent future today. With the right pieces in place, his red planet will become a pressure cooker for invention, benefiting humans on Earth, Mars and beyond. The New World on Mars proves that there is no point killing each other over provinces on Earth when, together, we can create planets.

©2024 Robert Zubrin (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

'Dr Zubrin has written a magnificent book which will set the gold standard for all future books about Mars. He is a pioneer and a visionary, but his conjectures are always based on solid science. His book takes us one step closer to the day when we can live and thrive on another planet.' (Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and author of The God Equation and Quantum Supremacy)

'Zubrin's vibrant, colorful, and stimulating narrative of how to get to, modify, settle, and prosper on Mars makes me a believer. For the sake of our civilization and our place in the cosmos as important beings, we can (and should and must) do this!' (Homer Hickam, author of Rocket Boys, adapted into the film October Sky)

'Robert Zubrin has thought long and hard about traveling to Mars, so we should welcome his latest thoughts. In this highly readable book, he notes how technical advances, especially reduced launch costs, render such projects more feasible. He offers a fascinating and enticing vision of the utopian New World that he believes could and should be created on the Red Planet' (Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and author of On the Future)

Making humanity multiplanetary is one of the grandest adventures of all time. The Red Planet is the key. If you want to understand why, start by reading The New World On Mars (Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator and author of Escaping Gravity)

'Robert Zubrin's The New World On Mars confirms the author's stature as one of the high priests of American techno-optimism...The book should be read by all those who reject the discredited ideas of Malthus and his degrowth disciples and embrace Zubrin's vision of a superabundant, pro-human future' (Marian Tupy, Founder and editor of HumanProgress.org and author of Superabundance)