Defending Mars Direct

Over Memorial Day weekend, I attended the 29th annual International Space Development Conference, a National Space Society event described officially as one where those who “look forward to the opening of the ‘final frontier’ gather each year to discover the future of space exploration.”

Although the conference featured many speakers who discussed fascinating topics, the most interesting aspect of the whole event was the intriguing (and, at times, frustrating) interplay between Mars Society President Robert Zubrin and those who find his single-minded enthusiasm for human Mars exploration amusing and, occasionally, exasperating.

Zubrin, whose organization has been advocating Mars exploration and demonstrating its feasibility since its founding in 1998, is the author of what he calls the Mars Direct approach, a plan he believes can allow us to put men on Mars in 10 years at a fraction of the commonly quoted cost, which is usually somewhere north of $50 billion.

After hearing Zubrin discuss the merits of his positions and the flaws of his detractors’ claims, it is clear that he is no more crazy or off-base than are those few members of Congress who have the gall to insist their colleagues abide by the Constitution and respect their constituents’ liberties.

That is, it’s clear that one should not assume Zubrin and his cadre of followers are wrong simply because the majority disagrees with them or just because powerful people have yet to take them seriously.

Over the course of just two days and three presentations, Zubrin convincingly made the case for his positions on issues ranging from NASA’s long-term focus to specific technical aspects of his proposed Mars mission.

He explained why NASA needs a mission-oriented approach, one that focuses on a particular goal the agency wants to accomplish (for example, returning to the moon), instead of a technology-based approach — which it has effectively adopted — that places emphasis on the capabilities various researchers want to develop, whether they are necessary for achieving the agency’s long-term goals or not.

After establishing that a mission-oriented approach is superior, he laid out the case for making a manned mission to Mars our next focus. His primary reasons are that Mars is the planet most like Earth in several important ways and that it is thus the most likely potential home for future human settlements.

He then made an important point about why, contrary to the conventional wisdom, “you can’t get to Mars in 30 years” or even 20 years. You can only do it in 10 years or less, he said, because any program with a longer timeline would be far too vulnerable to being axed and would lend far too little urgency to the effort — because anyone who promises to get humans to Mars in 20 or 30 years will be long out of office once the deadline rolls around.

This, of course, means those who make the initial promise will have a ready-made excuse for a lack of progress during their tenure if they are ineffective and that they will also lack the leverage to prevent the program from being scuttled if future leaders lack the courage to see it through.

Once he turned to the question of getting to Mars, Zubrin pointed out that notions of building a base on the moon from which to launch Mars missions are pure folly because, while launching from the moon to Mars would be cheaper than launching from Earth to Mars, you have to get to the moon first. This, of course, wouldn’t make the Earth to moon to Mars plan a good idea “even if there were already a Cape Canaveral on the moon that was offering free rocket fuel to anyone who could come and pick it up,” he noted.

He went on to illustrate the reason why a conjunction-class flight — one launched when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides on the sun — makes more sense than an opposition-class flight — one launched when Earth and Mars are on the same side of the sun. The reason is that flying conjunction allows the crew to spend 18 months out of a 30-month round-trip time on the Martian surface, giving them ample time to conduct research, whereas flying opposition allows the crew to spend just one month out of a 21-month round trip on the surface.

Despite the snide remarks and dismissiveness of his critics, I found Zubrin to be not only extremely knowledgeable but also a first-rate communicator of complex scientific and engineering concepts.

I was glad to have had the opportunity to hear his side of the story and can unequivocally say I’m convinced that, if  we are going to have a space program, it should make Mars its target and adopt Zubrin’s plan in order to get there.

Because Zubrin addressed numerous other critiques of his ideas, I plan to devote my next column to discussing Zubrin’s responses to additional, more specific criticisms of the Mars Direct plan, including those that deal with the dangers that may face the members of the crew on a Mars mission of his design during both their flights to and from the planet and their stay on the surface.


E-mail: jarlower@indiana.edu