Welcome: The picture above is the martian surface — its a billion pixel image viewer of images stitched together, all taken by the Curiosity Rover on Mars and gives one a feeling of being there. My view is that humans will have to be there someday — to not go there means we live within the psychological and physical limit of one fragile world subject to its whims and ours. Two worlds create a positive future. But it is also my view that someday better be soon — otherwise we will lose the space race to the robots and artificial intelligence, virtually exploring. That’s good enough for the rest of the universe beyond Mars — technology advances are huge for robots and small for human life support, but for Mars we need to physically be there. So Mars is not just our next destination — it is our only destination. I think we have started on the path. Let’s go. Discuss the future of human space exploration, and see my new book published Nov 2015 by the University of Arizona Press:
Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the Stars 
by Louis Friedman
A story (future speculation) published in the Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery, Becoming a Multi-Planet Species – ACM (pdf)
KPCC “Air Talk” Radio Interview, 14 Dec 2015
Video Interview by Scientific American
Radio Interview on Planetary Radio
Book review by Jeff Foust in The Space Review
Review from Houston Examiner (on-line) – by Mark Whitington – rather negative
Review by Michael Michaud in Centauri Dreams— rather comprehensive
Interview in DiscoverMagazine.com conducted by Dr. David Warmsflash Excerpted from a longer interview — Warmflash Interview [pdf]
2nd Printing now be planned by University of Arizona Press
Breakthrough Initiatives announce “Starshot” – an interstellar flight objective. Louis Friedman is on the Advisory Board with notables such as Freeman Dyson, Saul Perlmutter, Roald Sagdeev, Martin Rees and others.
Canopus Award won by Louis Friedman and Slava Turyshev for our essay on the idea of a Solar Gravity Lens Mission – Finding Earth 2.0 at the Solar Gravity Lens Focus [pdf]
- Questioning NASA’s Mars Sample Return strategy
- Historical Reflections at The Planetary Society’s 35th Anniversary Celebration
- Op-Ed about NASA’s Evolutionary Mars Campaign
- Statement on the Flight of LightSail-A
