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244 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2021
“Such is Mars. We acknowledge its mysteries and move on.”
“Olympus Mons rises 21 kilometres above datum, and because it sits on a below-datum plain to the west of the Tharsis Rise, we can add another kilometre to its actual height. East to west, it’s 640 kilometres across. North to south, it measures 840 kilometres. As we’ll discover, it used to be even larger.”
The size of that 21 km high volcano, by the way, is close to that of Italy, France, or the state of Arizona. Everest who??? Puh-lease.
“Our view of Mars as cold, airless and dead is in need of serious revision. Its heart may be slowing, its lungs barely inflating, its blood sluggish, but there are planetary-scale systems still in motion. It might not be exactly what we want to see. For our own selfish reasons, we crave the idea of a second Earth – and to have one so close and yet so far is tantalising – but we know that Mars was never that. It was never ours. It is its own and we have to accept it for what it is.”