The story of Beagle 2 is so extraordinary that even a bad book about the adventure would be worth reviewing, and this is not a bad book. Consider the initial conditions. In the 1960s, the British were as excited as anybody else by the Apollo programme and the slow exploration of the distant planets. But in 1971 one British satellite went up on one British rocket (Black Arrow) and that was the end of the adventure. British university scientists clung on to space research in deals with the military, or contracts from Nasa, or by joining European Space Agency teams, and even these connections looked precarious during the years of Thatcherism, when ministers slashed science budgets, closed laboratories and picked fights with Europe.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University, an unapologetic member of the Awkward Squad, began promoting a British lander that would piggyback on a European orbiter, parachute to Mars, spring open, burrow into the Martian rock, sniff for evidence of bygone life and relay its discoveries back to Britain.
Beagle 2 (the echo of Darwin's great voyage was deliberate) had to be pretty small to stowaway on Mars Express. Camera, microscope, robot arms, drill, communications and power source had to fit inside the space occupied by a pair of dustbin lids banged together and still leave a shoe-box worth of room for the mass spectrometer and gas chromatograph.
The necessary initial millions had to be generated from private sources (at this stage the UK government still behaved as if there could be nothing of value for Britain in space) and the reluctant European hierarchy had to be persuaded to fly the impertinent little passenger. Pillinger made it happen through a mix of doggedness, personality, show-business flair and scientific imagination. He involved the band Blur (who composed the call sign) and the artist Damian Hirst (the spots on the instrument's camera calibration card), and manipulated the media with considerable verve. He also co-opted industry, invigorated his scientific colleagues, persuaded politicians that they should change their minds, and met a phenomenally tight timetable. And everything about Beagle 2 worked, right up to that poignant silence on Christmas Day 2003 when the small dog on Mars failed to bark its arrival signal.
It's a long story, but you could probably say the idea for Beagle 2 was born in a clash six years earlier at an Esa meeting in Paris when someone from the "impenetrable clique" turned to Pillinger (who had more or less gatecrashed the meeting) and said "Who's going to build a lander? Not you. Who is going to pay for it? Not the Brits." That challenge was probably all it took: on the way back Colin and his wife Judith had decided on the mission and begun the hard work of making it happen.
What followed were incessant meetings and showdowns with doubtful academics, reluctant bureaucrats, dismissive civil servants, disbelieving ministers, dubious industrialists and unhelpful Europeans, all of whom had to be persuaded. Of course, there were also wistful and even enthusiastic allies, and these were sometimes the same people. One key figure in the space community told him flatly there was no money for a Mars mission before adding: "I can't tell you to go ahead, but then I can't tell you not to."
People who didn't know had to be persuaded to care, people who didn't care had to be made to believe, and people who wanted to contribute had to be kept from skewing the project. A European bureaucracy had to be pushed into finding space aboard Mars Express, and then Beagle scientists and engineers had to find ways to meet ever more ruthless constraints on mass and space, and then work out how to land the mission safely, all against desperate deadlines.
Right at the end there was disappointment. More than half of all Mars missions have been lost either on the launch pad or in orbit or on reaching Mars. Had Beagle 2 survived the landing, Pillinger would have been a national hero. Had he found chemical evidence of Martian life (and Beagle 2 remains potentially the best shot so far) he would have become an international superstar.
He remains a hero anyway. He had a go. He put Mars on the map for millions. Yes, it was an expensive loss, but not expensive measured in bankers' bonuses, let alone bankers' blunders. And now he has written a book that tells the whole story, naming "the really bad guys" and the good guys who helped him all the way. Is it a book to rush out and buy? Oh yes, if you are a space buff, a member of the British space science community, a Beagle 2 supporter, or if you were there at the time.
Is it a good book? It is well written, and droll. "Space agencies like paper missions: they don't crash, all the instruments work, there are no computer glitches, they're cheap, politicians don't scrap the programme, etc. etc …" The sentence is vintage Pillinger: crisp, sardonic and brilliantly clear. What lets it down are the et ceteras. And it is these that may discourage some readers. My Life on Mars is family memoir, biography, a window on the class war, a chronicle of space science, and a blow-by-blow account of a terrific campaign, and sometimes the strands of narrative fray against each other. The who-said-what- to-whom chapters provide a startling glimpse of the exhausting realities of getting a mission beyond the atmosphere, but they could be exhausting for the reader too.
Nor can the author resist distracting detail. On page 40 his colleague James "had a bushy 'Viva Zapata' and smoked a lot." Yes? And? On page 42, our hero visits James Lovelock on Salisbury Plain and learns that "to get to fly an instrument on a mission to Mars you had to be clever and simple" but surrenders the impetus and direction of such a sentence with a detour on the difficulties of getting home again in a fog. I'm all for telling detail (that the young Pillinger "not surprisingly" preferred the television serial Maverick to Wagon Train is a pleasing augury of the scientist to come) but at times the asides threaten to overwhelm the story.
The last chapter (entitled "God protect me from my friends") details the infighting, backbiting and bitterness that followed the loss of Beagle 2. It is combative and unapologetically partisan, but it is illuminating testimony.
This is a book that tells all. As literature, its weakness is that it does tell all. But, of course, for historians of the British space effort, for people interested in the crazy dynamics of bureaucracy, for connoisseurs of the art of making things happen, and for people who were thrilled by Beagle 2, that is exactly what will make it so valuable.
Our next Science Book Club choice is Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan, which Tim will review on Friday 4 February