Personally I only ever got through the first book (Red) - though I liked it quite a bit. There were just other more pressing things waiting on my to be read list.
I can definitely understand that, the first is certainly the most hard-scifi of the three as its about the how, over the reaction.
Perhaps I'll hit some of the colonization science next, I think the terraforming science deserves its own section.. I wouldn't even begin to think I could really compete with Mr Robinson on the possibilities to turning the elements found in the ground and the air of Mars into useful materials, he obviously did a great deal of research of which I'm unlikely to try and match. Everything he wrote about felt solid enough, though one could complain that it felt like nearly every process they used resulted in very generous amounts of material, with little to no waste, that seems improbable at best.
That was one curiosity, the first group of settlers was unusually successful in their colonization step (
not one died). Moving beyond that it was quite amazing to see how much one might obtain from the colonized world with only the initial habitats and then equipment to be able to construct the rest could provide. This reminds me in a vague way of using Arch Linux, you start off with just the tools needed to build whatever you desire, allowing you to truly build your own system.
Power is an essential element of any colonization effort and I found it intriguing that the original source was nuclear reactors that were launched from Earth and waiting for them there, its very logical but not what I'd first think, especially of a project that was partially US led, we are a bit off put by atomic energy in my opinion. And later on a fuel produced from the available called Tetrazine, which appears to be a real compound
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15403708. Later on we see some uses of solar energy but never is it a very major energy source.
This strikes me as odd since one of a big differences between this world and our own is the enormous efficacy of AI controlled equipment, considering this it seems rather odd that all the initial work was done by locally controlled machines once the colonists arrived, perhaps KSR simply preferred a hands on approach.
I think that's all for now, I've love to hear other thoughts on the science of Red Mars!
