Zubrin Does D.C.

Zubrin DC Tour a Major Success
February 11, 2004

For further information about the
Mars Society, visit our website at www.marssociety.org

On February 5-6, Mars Society president Robert Zubrin visited Washington DC, meeting with numerous influential people and participating in two public events.

Among those meeting with Dr. Zubrin were Senator Sam Brownback (R- KS), the Chairman of the Senate Space Subcommittee, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), the leading Democratic Party space advocate [whose website has a somewhat misleading headline — TLJ], aides to Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Representative Mark Udall (D-CO) [who seems to have accepted the $1T pricetag as a given — TLJ], and several other staffers. In addition, Dr. Zubrin met with Presidential Science Advisor Dr. John Marburger and members of his staff, as well as with a representative of the White House Office of the President.

In all his meetings, Zubrin stressed the need to put the new space initiative on an accelerated cost-effective track leading to human Mars landings no later than 2020. This can be done by designing the initiative not as a sequence of uncoordinated projects – first CEV, then Moonbase, then Mars – but as a coherent set of hardware to designed to enable Mars exploration, with Earth orbital ferry functions and Lunar excursions enabled by a modular subset of the Mars flight systems. NASA, Zubrin said, should be instructed by Congress to develop a cost and schedule constrained end-to-end plan for the program of this type this year, so that the plan could be placed on the desks of the President and Congress- whoever they might be – in January 2005, and the entire enterprise then be considered in the cool light of reason outside of the political free-fire zone of the election year. “Don’t say `no,’ say `show me,'” Zubrin said.

In addition, Zubrin discussed the need to reverse NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe’s horrible decision to desert the Hubble Space Telescope program. Zubrin pointed out that the decision to abort the most successful science program in human history was irrational from both the fiscal and risk analysis point of view, and presented a document containing data provided by Shuttle program engineers that showed strong evidence that Hubble missions are not more dangerous than ISS missions. In addition, Zubrin argued forcefully that the decision to flee from Hubble completely undermines the President’s new space initiative, as clearly, if we are too risk-adverse to send a Shuttle mission to Hubble, then human missions to the Moon or Mars are completely ruled out.

Virtually everyone Zubrin met with was highly receptive to most or all of these arguments. A member of Dr. Marburger’s staff kept Zubrin for a full hour after the thirty-minute official meeting ended to ask for more details, and took a copy of the comparative risk document to pass on the Admiral Hal Gehman, who is currently reviewing O’Keefe’s decision from that point of view. The meetings with Senators Brownback and Nelson were especially exciting, as both of these gentlemen made clear the level of their interest in the Mars Society’s ideas by rescheduling their meetings with Dr. Zubrin to alternative premises after their offices had to be evacuated due to the ricin attack on the Senate, and both extended their meetings with the Mars Society president well beyond the originally scheduled time.

In addition to the paper on Hubble risk, Zubrin also gave every person he met with a copy of Robbin Kerrod’s magnificent book “Hubble: Mirror of the Universe,” which presents the space telescopes great discoveries in spectacular form, with well- written prose and incredible images. The publisher, Firefly Books, was kind enough to donate 30 copies to the Mars Society for this purpose, and every one of them was given out to someone powerful.

On the night of Thursday, Feb 5, Zubrin also debated Dr. Robert Park, the nation’s most vocal opponent of human space exploration, to a packed house containing many congressional staffers and other government officials at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC. By most accounts, Zubrin won hands down. But you can decide for yourself, as there is a complete transcript of the debate posted at the EPPC website at:

http://www.eppc.org/conferences/pubID.2029,eventID.70/transcript.asp

Media wishing to obtain digital video of the debate can also do so by contacting the EPPC.

On Friday night, February 6, Zubrin concluded his DC tour by giving a public talk to an audience of several hundred people at the National Geographic Society. In his talk, Zubrin discussed how we can get humans to Mars in our time, and then presented the work the Mars Society is doing at its Arctic and Desert stations to advance that cause.

Overall, the trip dramatically demonstrated the increasing influence of the Mars Society in Washington DC, made possible by the ongoing work of members operating on the grass-roots level nationwide. So keep it up, Mars Society, we are starting to break through.

In depth discussions of the Mars Society’s political work to advance the new space policy, make it cost-effective by focusing it on Mars, and to make it real by rejecting the decision to desert Hubble will take place at the 7th International Mars Society Convention, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago IL, Aug 19-22, 2004.