Startups are eyeing the market for space tourism, and NASA is discovering habitable planets. On this edition of River to River, host Ben Kieffer talks with the co-authors of Vacation Guide to the Solar System, a book that imagines an interplanetary vacation.
In the book, co-authors Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich take real data from NASA and other sources to create a whimsical and accurate picture of what it would really be like to travel our solar system.
Destination Mars: "Who hasn't dreamt of setting foot on the red planet? With butterscotch skies, colossal canyons, and the tallest volcano in the solar system, Mars in an oasis for romantics and adventurers alike. The vast, frigid deserts are exotic, yet strangely familiar. It's like a smaller version of Earth in some apocalyptic parallel universe, where the oceans have dried up and the atmosphere has drifted away to almost nothing. What's left is dust, rock, and a plethora of luxury resorts where you can escape the weight of all that gravity and heavy air of Earth."
Koski is one of the creators of the Guerilla Science collective, and Grcevich is an astronomer who worked at the American Museum of Natural History.
