It started in earnest after meeting a number of young University of Colorado students in the late 1970s who were attending a conference in the nation’s capitol. Where’s my helmet? I’m ready to go.”ĭavid is not of a generation that will live to be one of those destined to set foot on Mars.īut much of his life has been devoted to studying, reading, writing and talking about humanity’s possible journey to the fourth rock from the sun. We’re really doing this now … As a kid you’re like, okay, let’s make this happen. “Then, when Sputnik was launched, it was like, okay, the space age has really arrived. “You could see the Earth’s curvature,” David said. He was also inspired as a youth by some of the first photographs of Earth taken from an altitude of 65 miles by a 35-millimeter camera mounted on a V-2 missile launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reproduced memorably in fold-out spreads in National Geographic - by whom he is employed more than a half-century later. I had my own little communiques going out about space exploration, at a time when we hadn’t even launched the first satellite.”

I wrote it in pencil and sold it for a nickel in the neighborhood, and I wrote about space. “As a kid, even in the late ’50s, I had my own little newspaper. “I kept breaking my glasses, making telescopes out of the broken glasses I had.”

There’s a lot going on up there,” he recalled.

“Out in Texas, in Waco, it was just, look up. It’s a journey the 69-year-old space writer has prepared for since he was a small boy growing up under the wide-open skies of Waco, Texas. In Leonard’s case, though, it’s much deeper from bank to bank.”ĭavid, whose home is situated on a property he dubs “Black Hole Way,” has staked clear claim on a place in the spotlight as the Mars projects take off in the weeks ahead. “In the science-writing business, your knowledge base has to be as wide as the Mississippi but only a few feet deep. He’s a space journalist to be sure - with some 50-odd years of experience - but he’s also part-scientist himself,” Kanipe said in an email. “Leonard is very knowledgeable and can communicate on many levels, from novices to experts. National Geographic sees the multi-platform blitz as seizing on the public interest evidenced by the runaway success of the Andy Weir novel “The Martian,” which was translated to a film of the same name in 2015 to critical acclaim and a half-billion dollars in box-office revenues.ĭavid described himself to a recent visitor as “Nothing more than a rank amateur astronomer.”īut Boulder astronomy author Jeff Kanipe is among those who sings the praises of David and his knowledge of his subject matter. “I was talking to friend of mine at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and I said, ‘For God’s sake, do not discover life on Mars between those dates,'” David joked.

Mars by Leonard David