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Having borrowed it from the library, I've just finished Robert Zubrin's 1996 book: The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must.
It's an interesting read.
Zubrin, rightly appalled by the likely 450G$ pricetag of any Mars' mission which followed NASA's 1989 90-day study, realised that there had to be a cheaper way to get footprints on the regolith. He came up with some neat ideas for this way, called it Mars Direct, estimates a mere 20-40G$ cost, and this book is the easily-digested manual of how to do it.
The problem (and I'm writing this as a pro-Mars fanatic who, I suspect, would have lapped up this sort of talk thirty years' ago) is in the title - he makes no Case for Mars.
He quietly proposes long-duration stays (as part of three-year missions and in a formidably hostile environment) by a crew of four, a good year away from any physical support and aid. Psychological issues? Medical emergencies? No problem, says Zubrin.
He lightly glosses over some tremendously difficult engineering problems. In particular, how to aerobrake-for-orbit multiple-tonne modules in an atmosphere which changes density and scale height depending on the local weather. He doesn't mention that it's never been done. Might, indeed, be forever undoable in such a tenuous atmosphere.
But far worse than any of the practical pitfalls, while Zubrin clearly and passionately wants Mars exploration as a precursor to settlement and colonisation, he sadly can't sell us why this should be. The book details building methods that might be useful on the surface of Mars, how to extract resources from the atmosphere of Mars, but the fundamental economic arguments raised in the book simply make no sense.
"Mars has metals" Zubrin states. Well, of course it does. And so do any number of Lunar rocks, Earth-crossing asteroids and, hell, I suspect even my local dump could be satisfactorily mined for copper. Not only do we not need to go to Mars to export metals, it would be madness to do so.
Zubrin argues "Mars has deuterium, essential for the nuclear industry." Any fusion processes that might be developed that might need deuterium might well find their deuterium needs met almost indefinitely by sticking a hose in any nearby ocean. Now the last time I looked, Earth's got 'em, Mars hasn't.
Finally, it appears, Zubrin flips - perhaps his Case for Mars is his apparent desire for terraforming. There's a swathe of terraforming info in the book. Now I'd've thought the first explorers would be keen to Stay Alive and Get Back Safely - but terraforming is, clearly, The Thing. And this seems to be the nub of the issue. I'm paraphrasing, but Zubrin apparently believes that since the end of the Old West and the closing of the US frontiers, in 1890, the US has lost its way. In Zubrin's mind, the only method to regain some semblance of this golden age of US history (a time including, I note, a hideous Civil War, segregation & slavery, few rights for women, etc...) is To Build A New US on Mars.
It might take centuries, will certainly never pay you back and will, no doubt, declare independence sooner rather than later, but this is his case.
Frankly it's not good enough.
I'd have taken a different approach to a book like this. Detail the technologies required, for sure, explain the benefits that ISRU can bring you. But why not cut out the padding, the false economic and morally dubious arguments and declare - simply, and honestly - that travelling to Mars would just be a cool thing for our species to do?
(And I'll trade you one War in Iraq for twenty Mars Direct flights).
It's an interesting read.
Zubrin, rightly appalled by the likely 450G$ pricetag of any Mars' mission which followed NASA's 1989 90-day study, realised that there had to be a cheaper way to get footprints on the regolith. He came up with some neat ideas for this way, called it Mars Direct, estimates a mere 20-40G$ cost, and this book is the easily-digested manual of how to do it.
The problem (and I'm writing this as a pro-Mars fanatic who, I suspect, would have lapped up this sort of talk thirty years' ago) is in the title - he makes no Case for Mars.
He quietly proposes long-duration stays (as part of three-year missions and in a formidably hostile environment) by a crew of four, a good year away from any physical support and aid. Psychological issues? Medical emergencies? No problem, says Zubrin.
He lightly glosses over some tremendously difficult engineering problems. In particular, how to aerobrake-for-orbit multiple-tonne modules in an atmosphere which changes density and scale height depending on the local weather. He doesn't mention that it's never been done. Might, indeed, be forever undoable in such a tenuous atmosphere.
But far worse than any of the practical pitfalls, while Zubrin clearly and passionately wants Mars exploration as a precursor to settlement and colonisation, he sadly can't sell us why this should be. The book details building methods that might be useful on the surface of Mars, how to extract resources from the atmosphere of Mars, but the fundamental economic arguments raised in the book simply make no sense.
"Mars has metals" Zubrin states. Well, of course it does. And so do any number of Lunar rocks, Earth-crossing asteroids and, hell, I suspect even my local dump could be satisfactorily mined for copper. Not only do we not need to go to Mars to export metals, it would be madness to do so.
Zubrin argues "Mars has deuterium, essential for the nuclear industry." Any fusion processes that might be developed that might need deuterium might well find their deuterium needs met almost indefinitely by sticking a hose in any nearby ocean. Now the last time I looked, Earth's got 'em, Mars hasn't.
Finally, it appears, Zubrin flips - perhaps his Case for Mars is his apparent desire for terraforming. There's a swathe of terraforming info in the book. Now I'd've thought the first explorers would be keen to Stay Alive and Get Back Safely - but terraforming is, clearly, The Thing. And this seems to be the nub of the issue. I'm paraphrasing, but Zubrin apparently believes that since the end of the Old West and the closing of the US frontiers, in 1890, the US has lost its way. In Zubrin's mind, the only method to regain some semblance of this golden age of US history (a time including, I note, a hideous Civil War, segregation & slavery, few rights for women, etc...) is To Build A New US on Mars.
It might take centuries, will certainly never pay you back and will, no doubt, declare independence sooner rather than later, but this is his case.
Frankly it's not good enough.
I'd have taken a different approach to a book like this. Detail the technologies required, for sure, explain the benefits that ISRU can bring you. But why not cut out the padding, the false economic and morally dubious arguments and declare - simply, and honestly - that travelling to Mars would just be a cool thing for our species to do?
(And I'll trade you one War in Iraq for twenty Mars Direct flights).
Hey! What about the rest of the planet?
To be fair, Zubrin does raise the "Sagan model" (international co-operation, multiple flags on the lander, all switches marked in English, Russian, Manx and Tagalog) but dismisses it as "liable to have cost over-runs and the need to bale out nations who can't deliver the technology or cough up the cash."
He clearly prefers a Conservative, free enterprise and - dare I whisper it? - Libertarian model, where some Heinleinesquian D. D. Harriman
is willing to bankroll the adventure.
In this case, of course, the only conceivable benefactor's benefit is that rather Viking-like one (and maybe that's appropriate, given that this is Mars) of being remembered in the sagas long after death.