David
An unlikely candidate shaped more by construction, endurance and practical experience than by a conventional astronaut career. His path asks whether someone can become indispensable without having been prepared from childhood to join an elite.
Research-led companion pages
Looking for a direct answer about Mars colonization?
The English Mars hub explains the public questions independently—why go, how to survive, where to build, how to govern and how a base could become a city—before offering the books as a deeper continuation.
Essential answer
What this book explains
The first novel in David Salvan’s realistic Mars quadrilogy: international selection, demanding training, human relationships and the irreversible departure of the first settlers.
The book develops these questions in particular: What The Great Departure is about, A short passage from the novel, Main characters, without spoilers.
Questions this book addresses
What The Great Departure is about
The first book follows the phase that many stories of space conquest rush through: recruiting future settlers, medical and psychological examinations, interviews, emergency procedures, team formation and the gradual realization that this is not an ordinary expedition. The candidates are preparing to leave the only world they have ever known and to become the first link in a permanent human presence on Mars.
As the tests move the group closer to launch, they also reveal what each person will have to abandon on Earth. Departure becomes a technical objective, a personal rupture and a collective experience. The novel therefore brings together three strands: realistic anticipation, a human adventure and a love story that develops under the watch of Hermes, the artificial intelligence assigned to study candidates and identify forms of resilience that ordinary recruitment procedures may overlook.
An intentionally ordinary protagonistDavid is not introduced as a born astronaut. His practical experience, endurance and ability to learn allow readers without specialist knowledge to enter the mission through his eyes.
A crew before a spacecraftBefore launch, people must learn to trust one another. Procedures matter, but the decisive question is whether the group can remain united when procedures are no longer enough.
Leaving is already a trialThe story treats selection and training as part of the adventure itself: isolation, pressure, renunciation and relationships begin reshaping the future settlers long before Mars.
A short passage from the novel
Before departure and before Mars, the novel lingers on the quiet gestures through which a team becomes a community. During a Christmas scene on the training campus, Stella gives David an object from her family history.
“I opened it. It was an old Texas silk scarf, brown with geometric patterns, soft between my fingers, smooth and warm. Her voice dropped to a whisper: ‘It is old. But it is clean. And it carries a little of where I come from. Keep it.’ I unfolded it for a moment. I folded it again. I slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket, against my shirt.”
Passage from I Walked on Mars — Book 1: The Great Departure.
Main characters, without spoilers
Stella Mercer
An American nurse who brings medical expertise and a capacity to protect, heal and preserve human bonds. Her relationship with David grows through details, training sessions and slowly earned trust.
Hermes
The artificial intelligence analysing applications and team dynamics. Hermes does not replace human decisions; it detects complementarities, vulnerabilities and forms of resilience that standard procedures do not always reveal.
The complete I Walked on Mars series
Available editions
English / United States
I Walked on Mars — Book 1: The Great Departure
Paperback - colour cover, black-and-white interior
ASIN: B0H3H9D1DQ
French edition
J’ai marché sur Mars — Tome 1 : Le grand départ
Paperback and hardcover - colour covers, black-and-white interiors
ASIN: B0H3H12SRJ
Spanish edition
He caminado sobre Marte — Tomo 1
Paperback - colour cover, black-and-white interior
ASIN: B0H3TMTF79
Only identifiers confirmed in the supplied publishing catalogue are displayed. An unreadable Kindle ASIN has not been invented.
Back-cover presentation
How far can an ordinary life be overturned when an extraordinary project comes knocking?
David is neither an astronaut, nor a celebrated scientist, nor a hero designed for adventure. Yet he is drawn into an international selection program created to recruit the women and men who will found the first permanent human settlement on Mars.
Then come the examinations, interviews, training, procedures, encounters with the other candidates and bonds that no one had planned. Every step brings the group closer to departure, while revealing what they will have to leave behind on Earth.
Blending realistic anticipation, human adventure and a love story, this first volume follows the recruitment, transformation and great departure of people who must learn to survive together before they ever set foot on the Red Planet.
Who is this book for?
- readers of science fiction and anticipation looking for a credible progression toward Mars
- spaceflight enthusiasts interested in autonomous bases and crewed exploration
- readers drawn to selection, crew psychology and the birth of an isolated community
- those who enjoy sagas in which technical challenges remain inseparable from human relationships
Realistic anticipation without pretending to predict the future
The series uses concrete constraints—travel time, crew training, redundancy, isolation, life-support systems, local resources and delayed communication—to make the human consequences of a Mars mission tangible. It does not claim to reproduce the exact mission that will eventually occur. It asks what such an undertaking would demand from the people, institutions and technologies involved.
The public programs and concepts linked below provide context for the anticipation. They do not endorse the novel.
From Wernher von Braun to Starship: an ambition becoming concrete again
In 1952, Wernher von Braun published Das Marsprojekt in Germany; its English translation, The Mars Project, appeared in 1953, one of the earliest detailed engineering studies of a human expedition to Mars. It was not conceived as a symbolic flight. It described a large collective undertaking involving several vehicles, substantial crews and a complete interplanetary logistics system.
After Apollo, major American projects extending human exploration beyond the Moon were sharply reduced by political and budgetary decisions. Von Braun moved to strategic planning at NASA Headquarters in 1970 and left the agency in 1972. It would be historically inaccurate to claim that NASA simply “refused Mars” and that this single refusal caused his departure: the retreat from post-Apollo ambitions resulted from a wider combination of public priorities, funding constraints and institutional choices.
More than half a century later, Elon Musk and SpaceX have placed permanent human settlement on Mars at the centre of an industrial programme. Starship is presented as a system intended to carry crews and large quantities of cargo, with the stated long-term objective of enabling a self-sustaining Martian city.
This transition — from an engineering concept to the possibility that our generation may witness the first departures — helped shape I Walked on Mars. The series imagines how the first women and men would be recruited, selected and trained; how they would travel; how Arcadia would be built; and how a society separated from Earth would make political choices of its own.
Historical note: this intellectual lineage is not a tribute without qualification. Von Braun’s role in the German V-2 programme, his membership in the Nazi Party and the SS, and the use of forced labour in missile production must be stated plainly. The references below are included to explain the history of Mars planning without erasing its darkest dimensions.
NASA — The Mars Project · NASA — Wernher von Braun biography · SpaceX — Mars programme
Frequently asked questions
Do I need technical knowledge to read the novel?
No. Technical constraints serve the story and are explained in context. The companion book Arcadia goes further into the engineering of the settlement.
Does Book 1 already take place on Mars?
It is mainly devoted to selection, training and departure. Permanent settlement on the planet becomes the heart of Book 2.
In what order should the series be read?
Read the four novels in order: The Great Departure, Deployment, They Are Coming, then Enough Is Enough!. Arcadia can be read as a technical companion.
Is the novel available in other languages?
Yes. The first novel is available in French, English and Spanish.