Heidi Link
Robert Zubrin came to the PPCC Centennial Campus last week to speak about his plan to get humans on Mars in 10 years. Zubrin’s idea is very possible. He uses the technology of today to boost us into tomorrow, not to mention Zubrin’s comical twists he added to keep us amused.
One of the first plans for a Mars mission would have the space ship actually constructed in space. Six launches would be needed to get all the parts into outer space for construction. If one of the launches failed, the whole mission would be dismissed. When this ship is assembled, it would be about the length of a foot ball field and 100 feet wide, not to mention weighing 1,000 tons. Three-quarters of its weight was return fuel from Mars. Zubrin nicknamed it “The Death Star”.
Zubrin has the idea of using what is on Mars as our resources. Zubrin’s plan is to send a small unmanned pay load rocket to Mars where it will land and deploy a robotic vehicle and a machine to start creating propellant from hydrogen and Mars’ atmosphere of carbon dioxide
(CO2).
In two more years two more rockets will be sent up one with four astronauts and the other an identical unmanned payload to be setup for the next set of astronauts in another two years. While on Mars the astronauts are expected to cover an area of Mars equal to the size of Texas.
The reason for going to Mars is to look for past life that may have lived there seeing as it is the only other planet in our solar system that could possibly support life. They are not looking for present life because the Martian surface is too cold to support life, and water beds have dried up on the surface. The astronauts will drill to find underground aqueducts to see if organism life is still present.
If life is found, then we will look to see if it is made up of the same carbon as we are. If it is the same, we will know that there could be other life in other solar systems and that we probably aren’t alone. If we do not find any life, then we may be the 1 in a trillion natural phenomena.
Zubrin has created the Mars society to raise awareness about his plan to Mars. This society started with 700 people and now has 7,000 members spread among 40 different countries.
This plan to Mars is completely doable. The cost is about $2 billion per year, and that’s only 13 percent of NASA’s budget. The biggest barrier for the mission may be politics.
To learn more about this mission, visit www.marssociety.org or read Robert Zubrin’s book The Case for Mars.
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