We need a new frontier to reinvigorate civilization, says Robert Zubrin, and that frontier is Mars. In his book The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Zubrin describes how to put the first humans on the Red Planet within a decade, using present-day technology. The cost? About US$20 billion, or 10 percent of NASA's budget spread out over 20 years (developing hardware the first decade, flying missions the next). NASA has a long-range goal to send people to Mars someday, but the agency has scheduled only a series of orbiters and robotic landers, the first of which should touch down on July 4, 1997.
Zubrin, at the request of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has also worked out a proposal for a federally financed $20 billion award payable to the first private organization to put people on the Red Planet and return them safely to Earth.
He's no mere wild-eyed schemer, however: Zubrin designed interplanetary missions as a senior engineer at Lockheed Martin and now is president of Pioneer Astronautics of Indian Hills, Colorado, doing space technology research for NASA. His book, with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke, is written for a general audience but doesn't skimp on the details about how to get to Mars, find water, grow food, and, eventually, terraform the planet to create Earth-like conditions.
Indeed, a central point of The Case for Mars is that human settlers will live off the land, rather than bring all their necessities from Earth. Before the pioneers set foot on the Red Planet, a robotic spacecraft will have already arrived to produce fuel from indigenous resources for surface exploration and the return trip. Zubrin details how to build habitats from Martian bricks and techniques to extract materials such as copper for electrical wiring and silicon for solar power panels.
Humans to Mars in 10 years? My bags are packed.
##### The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, by Robert Zubrin: US$25. The Free Press: (800) 223 2348. "The Significance of the Martian Frontier" and other papers by Robert Zubrin: on the Web at www.magick.net/mars/.
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