I was asleep on the couch facing the TV. I woke up and the explosion was literally the first thing I saw. Still in a bit of a fog I thought, WTF is that? That does not look good.

Hello u/This_Foundation_7970, your submission "Can you kindly suggest me decent science fiction books regarding space? (More details below)" has been removed from r/space because:

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Hello u/TheGreatestOutdoorz, your submission "What is a realistic timeframe for landing the first human on Mars? I have seen predictions for the next few years, but that seems almost impossible." has been removed from r/space because:

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The sequel Children of Ruin is also fantastic.

A lot will depend on whether a suicide mission is sanctioned or not. If that happens, then end of the decade early 30s.

To do it with more safely involved, maybe late 30s or even the 40s. Trial runs need to happen to see if we can land and take off again, even equipment left there for arrival.

NASA is looking at landing a short manned mission on Mars in the late 2030s or the 2040s. They have been very successful in missions involving humans and in missions involving landings, so I'd say that is a pretty realistic timeframe.

Proxima b

Only 4 light years and in the habitable zone.

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Andy. Fucking. Weir. My favorite author of recent space sci-fi

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I thought the earliest, realistic date that people are shooting for is in the 2030s, but I can't remember.

If the resources are there, I'd say mid-to-late 30s wouldn't be an unreasonable guess.

I was in 5th grade and the launch was at recess. We had indoor recess that day, typical Pennsylvania rain snow mess so Mr. Rule brought in a TV so we could watch the launch. A few friends and I were playing on the state of the art Apple II C or E when it happened. The room went silent for an eternity and one kid in my class, call him Mike, started laughing. Mr. Rule smacked him so hard he fell out of his chair.

Funny the details you remember

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We did the same thing. My science class was last period. Mr. Haskins wheeled in the TV and just watched the news. 8th grade also. Very cool teacher.

It is going to wake the Neverbeast…or Gruff if you know him.

I was vacuuming the living room waiting to go coach my 7th-8th grade basketball team.

Watched it with a pilot and fellow space buff of mine at work. We were both stunned into total silence.
We did a weekly call in TV show and threw out the nights topic and just gave folks a place to call and vent their feelings. Luckily we had a psychologist on as a guest and he stepped in to help people cope. I think we ran over by like 2 hours before the lines stopped ringing.
NASA has a bad track record with the cold, with the anniversary of Apollo One happening just a day or so ago, Challenger and then Columbia in a weeks time. Apollo wasn't necessarily the cold as a cause but the other two definitely were.

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I enjoyed Frederik Pohl series of books starting with Gateway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)

Dune, of course

More fantasy but worth mentioning, Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern series

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I recommend r/HFY. The subreddit is full of stories built off the concept of 'what if humans, when compared to other species (typically aliens and sci Fi, but can happen in many other genres as well) are super weird/unique?' there's a lot of Mary Sues and the like, but there's some really good stuff to be found.

Nightfall by Asmiov, Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, 3 body problem by Cixin Liu.

It's hard to swallow at some times, not easily comparable to western sci-fi (especially with the many characters with hard to distinguish names). Still a masterwork. I'm not the biggest fan of Netflix, but they sure know which stories to pick. I had the exact same experience with Game of Thrones: listened to the audiobook, then read the books, watched the show, read the books again... I'm already sure I will read this trilogy again, there's just so much in it.