Aside from SpaceX’s Elon Musk, arguably the greatest in human exploration of Mars has long been Mars Society President Robert Zubrin. Zubrin, an aerospace engineer by training, has been preaching the gospel of colonization and the advertising use of the Red Planet for decades.
Unfortunately, since the era of NASA’s Apollo program, human astronauts have ventured beyond Earth’s orbit. Zubrin hopes this will be replaced soon. He remains convinced that the key to humanity’s long-term lies in the exploration and eventual colonization, or even terraforming, of Mars.
If someone had told me in 1969 that I would be 72 years old and that there would be no colonies on the Moon or Mars, I would have thought they were crazy,” said Zubrin, of The Case for Mars and The New World on Mars. I was last week here in Copenhagen, where he was a guest speaker at a convention on astrobiology.
It would be as if Christopher Columbus had returned from the New World for the first time and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain had said, “So what?Jump into the lake; that doesn’t interest us,” said Zubrin. Yo in the exhibition Unique Species on a Single Planet?We have experienced a gigantic failure of political leadership in the United States with the Nixon administration; They threw [the Apollo] and we didn’t recover,” he said.
But Zubrin hopes that with a possible new Harris tenure in the White House, that can change. If Kamala Harris wanted to make room, she would have the merit of being president for two terms, Zubrin believes. If SpaceX puts the spacecraft into orbit this year or early next year, Harris could use a direct-to-Mars technique to surprise the world, just as John F. did. Kennedy in 1961, he says.
The idea is to surpass NASA’s recently planned Artemis return to the Moon and send Starship on a robotic project to Mars.
“We could send an expedition of a dozen giant rovers, 20 medium-sized rovers and a dozen helicopters and have a well-equipped laboratory within the shipment itself,” says Zubrin.
Instead of sending 2 kg of samples from Mars to Earth, 1,000 kg of samples from Mars can be brought to the spacecraft, where they can be subjected to microscopes, Zubrin says. We could do a hundred times more with a $10 billion robot expedition to Mars, the Starship, he adds.
Zubrin’s is next.
You train the Starship transport system, conduct a primary exploration of Mars while demonstrating the ability to produce propellant on Mars, Zubrin explains. At the same time, human systems are emerging: spacesuits, a human-class Mars rover, and a nuclear reactor that can be placed on the surface and has at least a hundred kilowatts of power, he says.
NASA now says its Artemis III project will take astronauts to the lunar surface until September 2026.
Artemis is a vendor-driven program, as opposed to a purpose-driven program; a vendor-driven program is when you do things for the purpose of spending cash, Zubrin says. A purpose-oriented program is when you spend cash to get things done, he says. “I think NASA’s leadership on Artemis has been weak,” he says. Adds.
The contrast between the supply era and the beginnings of the American space program is palpable, especially when you think about President Kennedy’s now famous speech in May 1961 at Rice University in Houston.
We didn’t know how to get to the moon; “We had 15 minutes of experience in human spaceflight,” Zubrin explains. When Kennedy gave that speech, we didn’t even know that other people could just eat in space, he said. But Kennedy knew the United States can do anything, Zubrin said.
Among those who grew up with the Apollo program, there remains a deep sense of bitterness about the United States’ lack of commitment to returning to the Moon and Mars as soon as possible.
Although mainstream historians view the Apollo program as a narrow Cold War strategy intended to demonstrate American air superiority over the former Soviet Union, Zubrin more broadly views Apollo as proof of what “free peoples” can do to amaze to the world.
The SpaceX spacecraft and booster point on the launch pad of the Boca Chica Launch Complex in Boca Chica, Array. . [ ] Texas
When Armstrong and Aldrin first set foot on the lunar surface, Zubrin, ironically, visited the former Soviet Union.
In July 1969, I was in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, because I was a 17-year-old chess player and I had to learn Russian to be able to read Soviet chess texts,” says Zubrin. Even though the Soviet leaders “”had kittens,” the Russians I dated even said the Apollo moon landing was amazing, he says.
Fast forward to the current era of public-private business partnerships in spaceflight, and Zubrin remains optimistic.
The amount of money needed to send humans to Mars is surely insignificant compared to the amount that was spent on Covid-19 or the bank bailout, or on any number of projects that political elegance has approved in the blink of an eye. “Keep an eye on the past,” Zubrine said.
As he emphasized in his speech in Copenhagen, humans will not only give life to Mars, but they will also give life to Mars. No one will be able to look at this new world and feel prouder than being human, Zubrin said.
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