“The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicle the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately, more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

It’s inspiring stuff – and although I’m not qualified to judge Zubrin’s plan on its technical merits, it seems to make a lot of sense too. His mission timeline is a depressing read, though, as many of the key dates are in the past decade, and you realize that this is one of the things that didn’t come to pass – plus the chances it’ll happen anytime soon seem to be on the slim side.

Longer term – barring global disasters and resource exhaustion – I’m cautiously optimistic, like you.

The book is written in a tour-guide way and some of the time Zubrin’s bitterness is just plain funny – my favorite part is when he describes how to make money on sending feces to Luna since the moon guys are so desperate for any kind of fertilizer… and the energy transfer requirements makes it much cheaper to send it from Mars than from the Earth.