I've been enjoying your and Juli's review of Red Mars so far, even though the book isn't up my alley in terms of Mars colonisation stories.
What I wanted to point out is something minor: Juli mentions that, in the novel, there's some fictional future company from Germany that builds the large blimps for the Mars settlement expedition. It's referred to as Friedrichshafen Noch Einmal ("Friedrichshafen Once More"). It might sound nonsensical, but I think KSR is making an in-joke here: Friedrichshafen used to house some of the zeppelin production in the first half of the 20th century, and is still home to the official museum of zeppelin airships, one of the biggest aviation museums in the world. I don't remember clearly whether there are any surviving airship hangars near the city, but some might have been preserved or moved to the museum.
The "Once More" seems to imply that the fictional company is starting up airship production again, in near-future Germany, in Friedrichshafen (per the local airship-building tradition). In the real world, the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH company was founded in the 1990s (not long after Red Mars was published, IIRC) and they've built a few semi-rigid Zeppelin NT airships since 1997. I suppose the FNE is meant to be a fictional (predicted) counterpart to the real ZLT.
What I wanted to point out is something minor: Juli mentions that, in the novel, there's some fictional future company from Germany that builds the large blimps for the Mars settlement expedition. It's referred to as Friedrichshafen Noch Einmal ("Friedrichshafen Once More"). It might sound nonsensical, but I think KSR is making an in-joke here: Friedrichshafen used to house some of the zeppelin production in the first half of the 20th century, and is still home to the official museum of zeppelin airships, one of the biggest aviation museums in the world. I don't remember clearly whether there are any surviving airship hangars near the city, but some might have been preserved or moved to the museum.
The "Once More" seems to imply that the fictional company is starting up airship production again, in near-future Germany, in Friedrichshafen (per the local airship-building tradition). In the real world, the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH company was founded in the 1990s (not long after Red Mars was published, IIRC) and they've built a few semi-rigid Zeppelin NT airships since 1997. I suppose the FNE is meant to be a fictional (predicted) counterpart to the real ZLT.