by ERIC BENSON AND JUSTIN NOBEL
Launch at Cape Canaveral on July 24, 1950. © NASA.
While the aerospace community waits for February when President Obama will announce the 2011 budget, effectively setting NASA’s direction for the near future, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin agitates for a manned mission to Mars.
On a Saturday last August just outside the nation’s capital, Dr. Robert Zubrin saw his ambitions come crashing back to Earth—or, more accurately, back to the moon. Chris McKay, a NASA astrobiologist, had just delivered a speech to the Mars Society in which he proposed a human space exploration program based around a permanent lunar base. A trip to Mars, he said, should be delayed for several decades as humanity learns to live on our closest celestial body. “I grew up with Star Trek—the original series,” McKay said, “and the slogan was ‘to boldly go.’ Going is easy… we need to boldly stay.”
As soon as McKay finished, a dozen livid conference-goers—most wearing “Mars or Bust” pins—stormed the two audience microphones at the front of the hall. First in line was Zubrin, the Mars Society’s founder and president.
“The reason we didn’t stay on the moon is because there was nothing worth staying for!” howled Zubrin, whose unkempt comb-over, baggy eyelids, and impatient bark give the impression that he rarely gets more than three hours of sleep. “The prospect for agriculture on Mars is vastly superior. After we learn to live on Mars, we can use that as practice for living on the moon!”
“It’s about colonies,” cried a squat, shaggy man, “followed by the terraform mission.”
“I think one of the biggest flaws we have is to look at Mars and think there is no deadline,” said a mustached dandy in a felt beret. “There is a deadline. We have to do this before our environment goes belly up.”
“Why don’t we leave the moon to the Japs?” proposed a debonair European.
A few hours later, Zubrin ducked out of an eight-person panel on Space Art to hold an impromptu crisis-management meeting in the aftermath of McKay’s presentation.
“If Kennedy in ’61 had said we need to be on the moon by 2000, we never would have made it,” he said in an emphatic whisper to two followers, pitching his eyebrows at sharp angles for dramatic effect. Zubrin has intense, deep-set eyes that narrow into slits when he smiles (rarely) or gets excited (constantly). “On the moon, you find out if the Aristoteles crater is this old or that old, big fucking deal. The real question is, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’”
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