When ex-president Bush proclaimed crewed missions to Mars as NASA’s next goal, his vision thing went out of focus because of a $450 billion price tag. But according to aerospace engineer Zubrin, America needn’t spend a tenth of its GNP to get there; $40 billion will suffice. His Mars Direct proposal economizes by bypassing the space station boondoggle and sending straight to Mars spacecraft that can make their own rocket fuel right there, out of the carbon dioxide atmosphere. That simple concept, based on 1890s chemical technology, unlocks a breathtaking vista sure to dazzle any space enthusiast. Zubrin begins with the design of the spacecraft and the possible profiles for the mission, then proposes strengthening the initial base by mining water and building brick houses; eventually, Mars might be terraformed by evaporating its southern ice cap. An articulate expositor of achievable futurism, Zubrin strives marvelously to ignite interest in the exploration of Mars, interest certain to increase when the next spacecraft to Mars is launched in upcoming months. Gilbert Taylor

Zubrin is an aeronautical engineer at Martin Marietta, Wagner the former editor of the National Space Society’s magazine, Ad Astra, and together they make a forceful argument for the exploration and settlement of Mars. Zubrin has long advocated the “Mars Direct” plan, which could get off the ground for $30 billion, in contrast to the $450- billion Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) timidly proposed by President Bush and quickly torpedoed in Congress. SEI was to take 30 years and make use of a space station (where components of the mission would be assembled), and it featured elaborate safety plans. But this is the frontier, Zubrin says, and risk is inherent when we venture forth. The most radical feature of the Mars Direct plan is the manufacture of propellants (for getting around while there and for getting back) on the surface of Mars by an unmanned module before the arrival of astronauts. But Zubrin and Wagner’s discussion makes this idea, and the plan in general, seem reasonable rather than radical, and their plan would clearly save money. A mission that doesn’t have to carry return fuel could use rockets that already exist, such as the Russian Energia. Mars Direct would also utilize conjunction trajectories (that is, launches when Mars is in line with Earth outward from the sun), avoiding the opposition trajectories the SEI plan advocated, and it allows for much more time to be spent exploring the surface of Mars. The authors are propagandists, so dismissive of NASA’s plans that they call them “silly,” but they are persuasive and even demonstrate a shrewd grasp of political realities, going so far as to incorporate Newt Gingrich’s thinking with regard to privatizing the Mars Direct mission. With exposure on CNN, a vigorous presence on the Internet, and a new groundswell of support at NASA, this plan may well prove to be the one, at long last, to fly. — Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Part history, part call to arms, part technical manual, part wishful thinking, The Case for Mars … lays out an ingenious plan. — The New York Times Book Review, Dennis Overbye

Since the beginning of human history Mars has been an alluring dream — the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, the planet where life may have once existed, but a planet thought to be impossible to reach and even more impossible to explore and inhabit. Now with the advent of a revolutionary new plan, all this has changed.

Leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin has crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct, that experts are hailing as the most visionary and pragmatic step toward expanding human activity in space since the Apollo Moon landings. Presented here with illustrations, photographs, and engaging anecdotes, Dr. Zubrin’s plan will revive our hopes and dreams and convince us that other worlds can be reached — affordably and within our lifetime.

Unlike the dead world of the Moon, the Martian landscape abounds with ancient canyons, dried river beds, the remains of frozen polar oceans, and enormous ice caps. The possibilities for exploration and discovery are nearly limitless; but significant exploration of Mars can only occur on her surface, and in order to do that we must be able to survive there. In the great tradition of human exploration, Dr. Zubrin’s plan calls for a travel-light and live-off-the-land approach. He explains step-by-step how we can use present-day technology to send humans to Mars within ten years; actually produce fuel and oxygen on the planet’s surface with Martian natural resources; how we can build bases and settlements; and how we can one day “terraform” Mars — a process that can alter the atmosphere of planets and pave the way for sustainable life.

Under Dr. Zubrin’s program, a human mission is only the first step toward a day when research bases and eventual colonies can be developed on Mars’ surface. Mars possesses enormous chemical and mineral resources, all of which can be put to use in pursuit of travel, exploration, structures, and a variety of human activities on a planet that is neither as harsh nor as unreachable as we popularly believe.

The Case For Mars is not a vision for the far future or one that will cost us impossible billions. It is a plan that can be put into action today if we are willing to rethink our traditional methods and costs. Zubrin maps out how the use of Martian resources, innovations, streamlined approaches, and a series of manageable government grants coupled with the efforts of private enterprise can make repeated humans-to-Mars missions possible.

Our nation was born in dreams of exploration, and so must it continue if we are to vault into our next chapter of history. Mars presents us with a new world of questions, hopes, and possibilities; and the stirring vision of The Case For Mars will take us directly to its threshold and beyond.

Robert Zubrin, formerly a senior engineer at Lockheed Martin, is the founder of Pioneer Astronautics, a space-exploration research and development firm.

The Case for Mars

The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We MustBy Robert Zubrin

Free Press

Copyright © 1996 Robert Zubrin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780684827575

From the Preface

We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, nor because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win…. This is in some measures an act of faith and vision, for we do not know what benefits await us…. But space is there and we are going to climb it.

-John F. Kennedy, 1962

The time has come for America to set itself a bold new goal in space. The recent celebrations of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings have reminded us of what we as nation once accomplished, and by so doing have put the question to us: Are we still a nation of pioneers? Do we choose to make the efforts required to continue as the vanguard of human progress, a people of the future, or will we allow ourselves to be a people of the past, one whose accomplishments are celebrated only in museums? When the fiftieth anniversary arrives, will our posterity honor it as the touchstone of a frontier pushing tradition that they continue? Or will they look upon it much as a seventh century Roman may have once gazed upon the aqueducts and other magnificent feats of classical architecture still visible among the ruins, saying to himself in amazement, “We once built that?”

There can be no progress without a goal. The American space program, begun so brilliantly with Apollo and its associated programs, has spent most of the subsequent twenty years floundering without direction. We need a central overriding purpose to drive our space program forward. At this point in history, that focus can only be the human exploration and settlement of Mars.

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, about 50 percent farther out than Earth, making it a colder place than our home planet. While daytime temperatures on Mars sometimes get up to 17? centigrade (about 63? Fahrenheit), at night the thermometer drops to –90?C (-130?F). Because the average temperature on Mars is below the freezing point, there is no liquid water today on its surface. But this was not always the case. Photographs of dry riverbeds on the Martian surface taken from orbital spacecraft show that in its distant past Mars was much warmer and wetter than it is today. For this reason, Mars is the most important target for the search for extraterrestrial life, past or present, in our solar system. The Martian day is very similar to that of Earth-24 hours and 37 minutes?and the planet rotates on an axis with a 24? tilt virtually equal to that of Earth, and thus has four seasons of similar relative severity to our own. Because the Martian year is 669 Martian days (or 686 Earth days), however, each of these seasons is nearly twice as long as those on Earth. Mars is a big place; although its diameter is only half that of Earth, the fact that it is not covered with oceans gives the Red Planet a solid surface area equal to that of all of Earth’s continents combined. At its closest, Mars comes within 60 million kilometers of our world; at its farthest, about 400 million kilometers. Using present day space propulsion systems, a one-way voyage to Mars would take about six months?much longer than the three-day trip required by the Apollo missions to reach the Moon, but hardly beyond human experience. In the nineteenth century immigrants from Europe frequently took an equal time to sail to Australia. And, as we’ll see, the technology required for such a journey is well within our reach.

In fact, as this book goes to press, NASA scientists have announced a startling discovery revealing strong circumstantial evidence of past microbial life within Antarctic rock samples that had previously been ejected from Mars by meteoric impact. The evidence includes complex organic molecules, magnetite, and other typical bacterial mineralogical residues, and ovoid structures consistent with bacterial forms. NASA calls this evidence compelling but not conclusive. If it is the remains of life, it may well be evidence of only the most modest representatives of an ancient Martian biosphere, whose more interesting and complex manifestations are still preserved in fossil beds on Mars. To find them though, it will take more than robotic eyes and remote control. To find them, we’ll need human hands and human eyes roving the Red Planet.

WHY MARS?

The question of taking on Mars as an interplanetary goal is not simply one of aerospace accomplishment, but one of reaffirming the pioneering character of our society. Unique among the extraterrestrial bodies of our solar system, Mars is endowed with all the resources needed to support not only life but the actual development of a technological civilization. In contrast to the comparative desert of the Earth’s moon, Mars possesses veritable oceans of water frozen into its soil as permafrost, as well as vast quantities of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, all in forms readily accessible to those inventive enough to use them. These four elements are not only the basis of food and water, but of plastics, wood, paper, clothing, and?most importantly?rocket fuel. Additionally, Mars has experienced the same sorts of volcanic and hydrologic processes that produced a multitude of mineral ores on Earth. Virtually every element of significant interest to industry is known to exist on the Red Planet. While no liquid water exists on the surface, below ground is a different matter, and there is every reason to believe that geothermal heat sources could be maintaining hot liquid reservoirs beneath the Martian surface today. Such hydrothermal reservoirs may be refuges in which microbial survivors of ancient Martian life continue to persist; they would also represent oases providing abundant water supplies and geothermal power to future human pioneers. With its twenty-four-hour day-night cycle and an atmosphere thick enough to shield its surface against solar flares, Mars is the only extraterrestrial planet that will accommodate large-scale greenhouses lit by natural sunlight. Even at this early date in its exploration, Mars is already known to possess a vital resource that could someday represent a commercial export. Deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen currently valued at $10,000 per kilogram, is five times more common on Mars than it is on Earth.

Mars can be settled. For our generation and many that will follow, Mars is the New World.

Copyright © 1996 by Robert Zubrin

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