Exploring Mars by Scott Hubbard (a book review)

I looked forward to reading this book after the publisher asked me if I wanted a review copy, and eagerly tore into the package when it arrived last week. As you know, I don't usually read or write much about planets or Solar System exploration, but this seemed like a good story, told by the "Mars Czar", Scott Hubbard himself, and I couldn't wait to read it.

I was wrong.

This book should have been titled Exploring the Boring, Navigating the Administrative Guts of the Bloated Bureaucracy that is NASA. This is not the story of exploring Mars, it is the self congratulatory story of Scott Hubbard navigating the financial, political and cultural obstacles that stood in the way of Hubbard in his mission to bring the Mars Program out of the toilet and into the future.

Based on the jacket cover I expected this to be a fascinating story "filled with outsized egos, under-sized budgets and nail-biting tension". Pffft. Compelling? Not.

Yes, it is a great historical document providing insight into the whole excruciatingly painful process of launching successful missions to the Red Planet, and it needed to be told. It was just boring. If you really want to read it, you can have my copy.