MSGT Journal - News and Views from the Mars Society at Georgia Tech

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0705/28edequal.html

The time has come for America to commit itself to the human exploration and settlement of Mars.

Despite the greater distance to Mars, we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to launch humans to the moon in 1961 when John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to achieve that goal. Given the will, we could have our first teams on Mars within 10 years.

It needn’t break the bank, either. Some previous NASA plans for human Mars missions were very expensive because they involved developing orbiting spaceports to construct giant interplanetary spaceships filled with all the supplies needed for a round trip to the red planet. But technology has now been demonstrated that would allow us to manufacture a rocket’s return propellant out of the Martian atmosphere. Our spacecraft can be dramatically smaller and cheaper if we don’t use them to ship to Mars things that can just as easily be made there.

If done in this way, the cost of the Mars program would be about $20 billion to develop all the hardware needed. After that, each mission by the copy would cost between $1 billion and $2 billion. It’s a sum this country can easily afford.

But why do it?

For the knowledge. This past summer NASA scientists revealed a rock ejected from Mars by meteoric impact, which showed strong evidence of life on Mars in the distant past. If this could be confirmed by actual finds of fossils on the Martian surface, it would show that the origin of life is not unique to the Earth, and thus by implication reveal a universe that is filled with life and probably intelligence as well. From the point of view of humanity learning its true place in the universe, this would be the most important scientific enlightenment since Copernicus.

Robotic probes can help in such a search, but by themselves they are completely insufficient. Fossil hunting requires the ability to travel long distances through unimproved terrain, to climb steep slopes, do heavy and delicate work, and exercise very subtle forms of perception and on-the-spot intuition.

For the future, Mars is not just a scientific curiosity, it is a world with a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, possessing all the elements that are needed to support not only life, but technological civilization.

With Discovery’s successful launch this week, the nation now has a chance to lift its eyes and accept the challenge of opening new frontiers of new worlds. It is a historic opportunity. We should seize the time.

Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer, is president of the Mars Society.

On Wednesday, July 27, the Mars Society at Georgia Tech will be selling SnoCones, sodas, and snacks outside the library from 10am to 6pm. If you’d like to help, beyond just buying SnoCones :), contact Erik Kabo (gte938u).

Reading, Massachusetts - The Mars Foundation ™ has completed a
comprehensive, 8-month, pre-design study of the first human settlement on
the planet Mars, an effort called the Mars Homestead ™Project. This study
verifies that a permanent settlement can be established early in the course
of human Mars exploration by using near-term technologies and local mars
resources. The unprecedented, unified Mars settlement design and vision
places the Mars Foundation at the forefront of understanding in this field.

The Mars Foundation’s global team of 21 scientists and engineers has
examined the needs of the proposed settlement, developed technical concepts
for Mars-based life support and resource utilization, and identified core
technologies. Detailed concepts have been generated for many technical
disciplines including agriculture, architecture, electrical distribution,
bulk gas, HVAC, instrumentation and controls, information technology,
medicine, psychology, nuclear power, waste recycling, polymer manufacturing,
and metals manufacturing systems.

The Mars Homestead team will present results of this study in various
peer-reviewed publications and conferences, beginning with the July SAE-ICES
(International Conference on Environmental Systems) in Rome. At this
conference, Georgi Petrov, team architect and recent graduate of the MIT
School of Architecture, presented a paper that describes the Homestead’s
architectural design. In August, at the Mars Society Convention in Boulder,
Colorado, the team will deliver a track of eight presentations covering
multiple technical areas. Additional presentations of study results and
technical concepts will be given at the Meridiani Base Workshop in August,
and at the ASCE Earth & Space, AIAA Habitation, NSS International Space
Development, and MIT Mars-Week conferences in the coming year.

The Mars Foundation’s scientific and technical team continues to refine and
expand upon these concepts. They have created a settlement technology
roadmap, and are establishing a series of special task forces that are
making more detailed investigations of specific technical areas not covered
in the initial study, including space suit design, Earth-Mars transport,
robotic automation and surface vehicle design. These efforts are being
pursued with the assistance of student groups at MIT, University of
Illinois, University of Central Florida, and University of Michigan.

More information about The Mars Foundation is available at www.MarsHome.org
“Mars Foundation”, “Mars Homestead”, “Mars Homestead Project” are trademarks
of the Mars Foundation.

The 2006 Georgia Tech crew to the Mars Desert Research Station will be in Utah from March 19 through April 2. This is the week of Spring Break (beginning Sunday) until the end of the week after (ending Sunday), so the crew will miss one week of class. The 2005 crew was able to return to campus in time for their Monday morning classes, albeit a bit short on sleep.

Applications (the components of which will be announced at a later date and posted here) will be due October 1, 2005.