Terraforming: The Creating of Habitable Worlds (Astronomers' Universe) 2009th Edition

I found this book to be an insightful look into humanity's future as a spacefaring civilization. Many of the spectacular proposals, such as converting Jupiter into a star, or refueling the burnt out Sun, are explainable by current physics, if not our current technology.

The constant nagging that we must solve all our problems such as poverty and become angels before we can leave this planet gets a little old.Our ability to synthesize edible oils and fats from Carbon, oxygen. and water, plus the recent Chinese discovery of a way to manufacture carbohydrates, means that the exploration and settlement of the solar system should be much cheaper and faster.Combine that with fission powered rockets using water for reaction mass, and suddenly the future gets a lot closer.

I enjoyed this scientific book very much. It is full of futuristic, yet useful, terraforming ideas. Very forward-thinking philosophically too.

I knew next to nothing about terraforming. I am an economist so do not know much about the much of the science in the book. Yet I understood everything (almost) perfectly well and was much more knowledgeable about terraforming after reading the book than when Is tarted it. My only complaint is that the book pays scant attention to "biological" terraforming - creating lifeforms to do transform environments. The book is much more about "engineering" terraforming. Nevertheless, a great book.

This book would be very good for someone who knew very little about physics and chemistry, but for anyone who has taken high school sciences and knows a little bit about astronomy this book will surely lack and be quite annoying. The author goes into great detail on the simpler common knowledge topics but tells you close to nothing about the slightly harder topics. Overall i thought it was a huge waste of time with maybe 2 or 3 bits of useful information (i am a college freshmen with very little scientific background)if the book was shortened to maybe 50 or less pages it might be worthwhile.

I purchased this book thinking it was part of a series for science fiction writers and fans. I was wrong, of course, as it actually belongs to a series on academical discussions on cosmology and space science. If you are not into this kind of topic, the reading will be sure to put you to sleep in seconds. If, on the contrary, you enjoy learning about the science behind the possible engineering of planets in order to make them habitable by humans, this book will provide an excellent introduction to the subject. Even though the author (Martin Beech) tries very hard to make the book accessible to a wider audience, and even attempts to produce some fragments of literature, I must say he fails, though not terribly so. The average reader will not enjoy it, and only a handful will read through till the end, but if you take your science seriously, it is worth the effort.--JAO

The book is reprinted by Amazon which makes the cover very blurry, inside looks good but this one is reprinted by Amazon which truly lower the quality, especially when you know Springer you can be surprised.

I bought this book for two of my students who were working on a project on terraforming.They told me it was very useful!