The Martian race - Gregory Benford

NASA's rocket is on the launch pad, with four crewmen aboard, ready for the first manned voyage to Mars. Then disaster strikes. The rocket explodes, killing all aboard, and the US government abandons the project entirely.

But billionaire businessman John Axelrod doesn't give up as easily. He and a consortium of others want to win the $30 billion Mars Prize for the first private mission to return from the planet. He needs astronauts willing to join a mission that will take much longer, and involve far higher risks, than the one NASA had planned. Astronaut Julia Barth and several others take up the challenge, and then comes the news that a Chinese-European group are to launch a rival mission. The race for Mars begins.

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