New Earths: Restructuring Earth and Other Planets

by James Oberg

A space expert examines the challenges of planetary engineering.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

283 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book filled with entertaining ideas on how to terraform planets/moons. With that being said the book is old (from the early 1980's) so a lot of it is outdated. Several times the author refers to warming the earth up to prevent an ice age (my things have changed!). At that time, very little was known about Venus and the surface of Mars. The black and white photographs frequently are difficult to see and occasionally the text repeats items discussed a page earlier. Finally, the book has no math which I take as a negative since ideas, even very unrealistic ones, can be thrown around without any check with reality. It is very easy to discuss moving around whole moons and planets to make them more habitable or tap their resources when you don't have to calculate how difficult it really would be. Despite these issues, the book is entertaining and enjoyable and does a good job of relaying the excitement of terraforming. Oberg is definitely aware of these problems but chose to make this book more approachable for a general audience.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book shortly after it came out. Much sci-fi has referenced the idea of terraforming other planets for human habitation so when I saw this book, written by a NASA spaceflight operations engineer, that discussed the practicalities of terraforming I had to have it. It discusses the problems we must solve to make it happen and how we might solve them. Even though this was written 30 years ago and we've learned much about the planets and moons since then, the physics hasn't changed and it's still a good read.