Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Robert Zubrin Says "Mars Now!"

Episode Date: September 21, 2009

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Brace yourselves, we've got Zubrin, and he's mad, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. We talked to his 22nd century alter ego last week. This time, Robert Zubrin is very much in the here and now. You'll hear what the head of the Mars Society and author of The Case for Mars has to say about getting people to the Red Planet soon, really soon. Bill Nye the science and planetary guy is pretty darn enthused about an inflatable space module

that might go to the International Space Station. While Emily Lakdawalla figures out why the landing space shuttle rattles windows and nerves not once, but twice. Then there's our friend Bruce Betts, who is on the History Channel this week. He'll give you another chance to win the universe in our What's Up segment. So much news that we don't have time for. Better read Emily's blog at planetary.org. Here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here,

vice president of the Planetary Society. And this week, I am excited about things that blow up. I'm not talking about explosions, destroying things. No, instead, I'm talking about spacecraft that blow up. I'm not talking about explosions, destroying things. No, instead, I'm talking about spacecraft that inflate. So Robert Bigelow, who's a hotel owner in Las Vegas, has had this company for many years, and he proposes that we make spacecraft that inflate. These would be balloons in space. And he's tested a few of them. NASA rejected him back in the 1990s, but he tested a few of them on some Russian rockets, sent up a few living things. It worked okay. In fact,

he claims that his inflatable spacecraft leak less than the International Space Station itself. Seems like an extraordinary claim, but I guess if the fabric's good and your O-rings, your seals are good, this kind of thing is possible. Now, no matter how well it works at some level, for me, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should try this just because it's novel. It's new. And they're better in two ways, or they have advantages in two ways. The first is they're just made of fabric instead of metal and exotic materials and joining techniques. So you can make them more cheaply, at least you

should be able to. Then the other thing is they weigh less. You don't make them into full-blown, pun intended, spacecraft until they're in orbit. So lifting them up into orbit is cheaper, or it should be. So no matter how well these things work, NASA should embrace this. They should try it because it's new and cool and it might open up a whole new world. This would be a direct spinoff. This isn't, well, you know, heat shield technology developed for the astronauts helps your coffee stay hotter. No, this is a direct spacecraft developed with citizens' money that may enhance the life of people everywhere by making space more accessible. So if you're a Planetary Society member, thanks for supporting this.

And if you're not a Planetary Society member, thanks for listening because you're indirectly supporting space exploration. Well, I've got to fly. Bill Nye the Planetary Guy. Robert Zubrin wants to go to Mars, and he thinks we can get there a lot sooner than NASA thinks we can. He is renowned for his passion and his ability to generate enthusiasm or resentment, depending on who you're talking to. He co-founded the Mars Society in 1998, not long after he wrote The Case for Mars, in 1998, not long after he wrote The Case for Mars, in which he laid out what he and collaborators believed was an ambitious but achievable plan for sending humans to the red planet. As you're about to hear, he's still very much a believer. He spoke to me from his engineering firm

Pioneer Astronautics in Colorado. Robert, welcome back, or I should just say welcome. I forgot that that was just your 22nd century namesake that we had on the show last week. Let's start with what's been most in the news lately about manned spaceflight. Everyone outside of NASA calls it the Augustine Commission, though the official name is the Review of Human Spaceflight Plans Committee. You testified before the group in August. The Commission has now released its summary report. Where does that leave you? Satisfied? Disgusted? Amused? I think this report was a major disservice to the Obama administration and to the nation, because basically what they laid before the president were a set of options, all of which

involved NASA's human spaceflight program, accomplishing nothing at a cost of over $100 billion for the next decade, which is incredible, frankly. To ask for $100 billion and deliver nothing and not have any provision for delivering anything, to me, is beyond belief. And frankly, I think it places the human spaceflight program in danger because the administration would be more than justified in looking at the options that they're being presented with to reject all of them and simply decide to wind the whole thing up. If, on the other hand, they decide to go with one of the commission's report, recommendations, then we get a spaceflight program

that spends $100 billion and doesn't do anything for another decade or two. The idea of continuing to spend $9 billion a year on a human space flight program, $18 billion for NASA as a whole, but here we're just talking about the human space flight program, which has no objectives, which has no intention of getting anywhere anytime soon, but is simply engaged in a random walk of simply sort of doing things because it's there. Well, let's go up and down to the space station. Why? Well, we don't know.

But as long as we built it, we might as well go to it. I mean, this is nonsense. What we need, first of all, in order to get anywhere, you have to have a definite goal. Otherwise, you're engaged in a random walk, which is what NASA's human spaceflight program has been doing since 1973. And secondly, you have to have a schedule that requires you to pay attention to your goal. You know, the Augustine Commission says our goal should be Mars, but they have no schedule or any provision for getting there for the next several decades. So this is not really a goal. It's a dream. Okay. A goal is something that if it's truly your goal, you direct your actions towards getting there. And there's no provision in this report for doing that.

They do recommend continuing with a heavy lift program, although one cannot understand why, given that there's no need for a heavy lift vehicle if we're not going anywhere beyond low earth orbit. So then you get into the idea of let's have a heavy lift program that goes on for 20 years because it's not needed for 20 years. So you spend $3 billion a year for 20 years, well that's $60 billion. I mean, which is ridiculous, whereas if you did what Kennedy did, which is what Obama needs to do, which is set a real goal and you set a schedule associated with that goal that forces people to pay attention to that goal. In Kennedy's case, it was by the end of the decade, reach the moon.

In Obama's case, it should be by the end of his second term, reach Mars. decade, reach the moon. Okay, in Obama's case, it should be by the end of his second term, reach Mars. And then instead of people, you know, engage in a random walk doing any number of programs because they feel like it, they engage in a concerted effort. You design a hardware set that is capable of fulfilling that mission. You issue requests for proposals for fixed price contracts to develop each element of that hardware set within a specified time, and then you go and get to Mars. That's what they need to do. Otherwise, I mean, this is a travesty.

So you would like to see, before the end of a second Obama administration less than eight years from now, you'd like to see humans walking on Mars? Yeah, sure. administration less than eight years from now, you'd like to see humans walking on Mars? Yes, sure. Look, despite all the problems that someone might raise, some of which are real and others of which are overdrawn, we're much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were able to send men to the moon in 1961 when Kennedy started the moon program, and we were there eight years later. If we, in fact, had leadership and commitment, we could be on Mars within eight years. For our day and age, it is a smaller technical challenge than going to the

moon was in 1961, a considerably smaller technical challenge, I might add. And so for us to say this is beyond our capability is basically us saying that we're no longer the people we used to be. And that is really something this country cannot afford. We're no longer the people we used to be. And that is really something this country cannot afford. You said Mars is in the Augustine summary report. In fact, here's the language. Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration, but it is not the best first destination.

And then, of course, they talk about first the moon or maybe someplace else. I don't know that it's named, but a lot of people talk about an asteroid. Do you see any value in that, or should we just go, if you'll pardon the expression, Mars direct? Mars direct. Look, if you want to go to Mars, you need to go to Mars. This is the same thing we had with the shuttle program, which is, let's just do this program, and it's true the shuttle doesn't actually go anywhere, but trust us, the capability we developed with the shuttle will stand us in good stead when at some time in the future we developed with the shuttle will stand us in good stead when at some time in the future we actually decide to go someplace. And then they said the same thing with the space station. Well, the space station doesn't actually go anywhere, but trust us,

the experience we get with the space station will be of great use when we actually decide to go somewhere. So now here's the Augustine report, or before then the Bush people, saying, well, we want to go to the moon, and the space station is of no use whatsoever for going to the moon, but do we disengage from it immediately and look really stupid for having spent all this money on a station that we're not going to use? Or do we use it for the hell of it to say that we have at least used what we built and then abandon it? No, if you want to go to Mars, you need to go to Mars. Now, if you say, look, we're going to go to Mars in eight years, and here's our hardware set, If you say, look, we're going to go to Mars in eight years, and here's our hardware set, and it is to our benefit in the course of a well-planned Mars program to exercise a subset of the Mars hardware by going first to Earth orbit with it and then going to a near-Earth asteroid with it, well risk associated with the asteroid mission itself, because after all, such a mission is not risk-free either, then you might decide to do that.

But you don't say, well, we'll see about going to an asteroid sometime in the mid-2020s, and that's a good thing for us to do next, and maybe sometime in the future someone will go to Mars. We're not going to get to Mars that way. You actually have to decide that Mars is the goal, and then you do the set of activities required to get to that goal, and that may or may not include an asteroid mission, but it's decided within that context. It's on the timeline, and that timeline ends at Mars. That's right.

Don't leave now. Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society will be back with me in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here. I hope you're enjoying Planetary Radio. We put a lot of work into this show and all our other great Planetary Society projects. I've been a member since the disco era. Now I'm the Society's Vice President.

And you may well ask, why do we go to all this trouble? Simple. We believe in the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy of space exploration. You probably do too, or you wouldn't be listening. Of course, you can do more than just listen. You can become part of the action, helping us fly solar sails, discover new planets, and search for extraterrestrial intelligence and life elsewhere in the universe. Here's how to find out more. You can learn more about the Planetary Society Transcription by CastingWords Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. No one wants to get humans to Mars more than

Robert Zubrin, and no one has worked harder or ruffled more feathers pushing for this goal. The nuclear and astronautics engineer has written many books, including The Case for Mars, and he remains the president of the Mars Society, a group he founded more than 10 years ago. He is not happy with the summary report by the so-called Augustine Commission, issued a couple of weeks ago, and he is even less happy with what he sees as NASA's lack of focus on meaningful goals for humans in space. Just one other reference to the Augustine Commission, because you wrote about three weeks ago now, as this is heard, that you had reviewed some of the figures, some of the cost estimates for heavy lift launch vehicles that were provided to the Commission by the

Aerospace Corporation, and you really take issue with those figures. Yeah, they're absurd. And you really take issue with those figures. Yeah, they're absurd. The cost estimates in the industry for developing a heavy lift launch system range between $2.5 and $5 billion. You know, Elon Musk, in fact, directly went to the commission and offered to develop a heavy lift system for $2.5 billion. I've seen Lockheed Martin presentations in which they say they could develop a heavy lift launch system for $4 billion. So instead, they get this estimate from the Aerospace Corporation, which is, well, a heavy lift vehicle, a program to develop that would

cost around $3 billion a year to run. And if we take 12 years to develop it, there's $36 billion. Well, you know, in other words, if you view this as, in other words, if you're buying a house, a house that has to be built as opposed to one that's already there, you say, okay, Mr. Builder, how much are you willing to build this house for me? And he comes in with a bid, and you check with some other people, and then you take a bid for a given house. You don't say, well, how much will you build this house? He says, well, bid for a given house. You don't say, well, how much will you build this house? He says, well, I charge $100,000 a year, and I'm not exactly sure when we'll finish, but maybe in a decade,

maybe in two decades. So it'll be a million, two million, three million, depending upon when you decide to stop our building program, okay? And look, the proof of what I'm saying can be arrived at immediately. All NASA has to do to get a heavy lift vehicle for under $5 billion is put out a request for proposals to industry. Who will build a heavy lift system for us within five years for $5 billion or less? Gentlemen, place your bids. And they would get bids from every major and minor aerospace contractor, and they'd be able to select among those. And award a fixed price contract to develop a heavy lift vehicle. That $36 billion number is totally off the chart. And it was either simply accepted mindlessly or it was accepted with intent of having an excuse to kill, well, in this case, the moon program. These guys did want to decouple from the moon program

the Bush people had, which I would have done so too, but not to simply say, let's go nowhere, but rather to say, okay, let's embrace a real objective for the space program, which is Mars. So much more to talk about. I always have been very proud that I was there when you made the first public presentation of what you and your colleagues called the Mars Direct Plan. What's the status? Still alive and kicking? Well, the Mars Direct Plan still stands there as a challenge. If you want to go to Mars, this is how you could do it with present-day technology, with a transportation system that is of the same magnitude and complexity as a lunar transportation system. It is not an order of magnitude greater.

It has a few extra elements. It also has a couple of fewer elements that the moon needs that it doesn't. But it's basically the same kind of thing. So it really puts Mars in our age of engineering, not in some future age. In other words, humans to Mars is a task for our time. If you're going to go to Mars, you plan it for us to do it within 8 to 10 years and for the mission to be flown by people who are in the astronaut corps today, not by people who haven't been born yet. You and about 700 other would-be Martians put the Mars Society together in 1998.

And we've talked about this. We've talked about you passionate folks for Mars. I hope I can count myself among them. With Andrew Chaikin, who wrote about you and other Mars pioneers in his recent book, A Passion for Mars. I wonder, do you find in that group that you are still among the most passionate? Well, I think there's plenty of people, both in the Mars Society and not in the Mars Society, who are passionate about reaching for the red planet because we know this is where we will discover whether life is unique to the Earth

or a general phenomenon in the universe, and whether life as we know it on Earth is the pattern for all life everywhere, or just one particular example from a much vaster tapestry of possibilities. And this is where we will discover whether we are capable of becoming a multi-planet species, because Mars is the planet that has the resources to support life and therefore potentially civilization. So Mars is the challenge before us. It holds the secret of the nature of life in the universe and it holds the secret of our future in the universe. And that is where we need to go. And to take any other objective of, you know,

returning to the moon on the half-century anniversary of when we were there last, great nostalgia trip, or going to a Lagrange point where there is, after all, nothing. These are not embracing challenge. These are avoiding challenge. And the space program was not set up to avoid challenge. You know, Kennedy said we choose to go to the moon and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. So we need a space program that embraces challenge. That's the kind of space program that's going to inspire our youth to want to enter science in millions. And that's the kind of space program that will actually accomplish something.

If the American people want to get a return for their space dollar, we have to have a space program with objectives. The Augustine Commission, by saying, well, why don't you give NASA $3 billion extra a year, but, you know, lay off on actually demanding that it accomplish anything within your two terms, Mr. Obama, assuming you have them, plus the term or two after that, it's just such a disservice. Robert, we are out of time. I hope we can talk to you again. It's always enjoyable and inspiring to talk to someone who speaks with such passion about a goal that I think most of the listeners to this radio show share. Right. If people want to know more about Mars exploration, I've got a book called The Case

for Mars. And if people want to have a humorous take on Mars settlement, I have a newer book called How to Live on Mars. In fact, listen to this little bio that I'm going to close with. Robert Zubern is the co-developer of the Mars Direct Plan and the author of that bestseller, 1996, The Case for Mars, still out there. He's founder and president of the Mars Society and president of Pioneer Astronautics based in Colorado, which is where we are speaking to him today. Dr. Zubrin is a recipient of the National Space Society's Robert A. Heinlein Award, but he has no provable relationship with another Robert Zubrin, who will be born on Mars in the year 2071, later to write How to Live on Mars,

a trusty guidebook to surviving and thriving on the Red Planet. That book is available in our century from Three Rivers Press, and I highly recommend it. And I highly recommend that you stick around for this week's edition of What's Up. That's right after we hear from Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. This time, I'm answering my own question. When Space Shuttle Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base, I stood outside to listen for its boom.

I was surprised to hear a boom boom. The reason for there being any sonic boom is because the shuttle is outrunning its own noise. Sound travels through the air as pressure waves. When an aircraft moves faster than the expansion speed of those waves, the wavefronts pile up in a cone shape that expands afterward, much like the wake of a speedboat. The overlapping wave fronts reinforce each other and manifest as a big sharp pressure wave resulting in the boom sound. Supersonic aircraft actually create many bow waves from all of their little protuberances, but all the little waves usually merge to form two big ones. One sonic boom forms at the nose of the aircraft. The second boom is created

behind the aircraft, where air rushes in to fill the void left by the aircraft's passage. The air can only flow in so fast. The faster the aircraft is traveling, the farther behind it the second boom is. If the aircraft is moving, the farther behind it the second boom is. If the aircraft is moving relatively slowly, just over the speed of sound, we usually hear only one bang. But if the aircraft is moving more quickly and the two sonic booms are separated by more than a tenth of a second, we'll hear it as two separate booms. Got a question about the universe?

Send it to us at planetaryradioatplanetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Got Bruce Betts on the cell phone. No opportunity for Skype this week. He's on the road, obviously. It's time for What's Up. He's going to tell us about the night sky and another great prize that we have for the Space Trivia Contest this week. Hello, and

tell us where you are. I'm standing in a theater on stage right now and performing this live in front of a lot of chairs. Not exactly your dream, but I hope it's just a rehearsal. Yes, indeed it is. These two radio hosts walk into a bar. I've heard that one. Oh, and we'll move on to the night sky. In the night sky, we've got Jupiter in the evening, the seriously bright-looking thing over there in the western sky after sunset. And in the pre-dawn, Venus still for a little bit longer looking extremely bright. Up above it, high in the sky right now, is Mars looking reddish.

It'll keep getting brighter as it heads towards opposition in a couple months. Other hosts of planets coming up in the low in the morning sky, but wait another week, I think, and then fill you in on that as they get closer. Jupiter is just looking outstanding. I pointed it out to my wife while we were driving yesterday, and I'm not even sure she looked up, actually, but I was impressed. Probably she just stares at it so frequently that it, well, I don't know. I got nothing.

Let's go on to this week in space history. 35 years ago, in 1974, if I've done my math right, Mariner 10 had its second flyby out of three past Mercury. Particularly appropriate because the Messenger spacecraft in another week and a half here will do its third flyby of Mercury, giving us more views and all sorts of other data. Rather exciting, its last flyby as it gets ready to go into orbit 2011 and give us our first Mercury orbiter. We'll check back in on that mission as we have in the past. On to random Space Max!

You know, it really is a shame that this is on the cell phone because we only got just the lightest taste of the ambience there in that theater that you're in. Did you hear the applause? In my head, yes. That's where I heard it! So we're talking destruction. Destruction, destruction.

We'll talk more about it in a moment. Four and a half billion years ago. You remember that time, right? Like yesterday. Yeah. And you're hanging out on the proto-Earth, and this big Mars-sized object comes slamming into Earth, and what comes spewing out?

But the material that forms the moon. Yes, that's right, folks. That's where we think the moon formed, and here's a bonus. It also then, as it accreted all the chunks that came flying off that didn't come back and accreted into the moon, the moon went molten, and you had the light stuff floating up and the heavy stuff floating down, and it was a whole formation of the Earth-moon system.

And it happened this week. It's an episode. This week in history. Speaking of history, we're going to get into that, aren't we, with the trivia contest? We are indeed. Why don't we do the last trivia contest first? Sure. And then we'll move on.

See, we played one of my favorite games because it's my rules. Where in the solar system, we asked you where in the solar system, not on Earth, can you find a planetary feature called Hamlet? You know, we got a terrific response. The response had been down a little bit. It really bounced back with this one. Must be a lot of Shakespeare fans out there. Everybody got it right, and that's pretty amazing with so many responses. Lindsay Dawson, who could always be counted on for something interesting, mentioned that Oberon to the west of Sydney, Australia, near where he lives, is in the Blue Mountains,

and it's quite possible that someone named Hamlet once lived there. But he and our winner both also provided the correct answer, the one that we were looking for. Our winner is Walt Sherry of Mile Ranch, 108 Mile Ranch, British Columbia. I bet that's a pretty place. And Walt said, Hamlet is the largest crater on

the moon Oberon that orbits Uranus. Yay! So Walt, we're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt and an Oceanside Photo and Telescope rewards card. Bruce, I guess everything out there is very Shakespearean. It is.

It's the major naming theme for the satellite there. So, yeah, to be or not to be, Oberon is the answer. Okay, now on to the history part, really more of the History Channel part. Yes, indeed. So the History Channel series, The Universe, has an episode, starts airing this week on Tuesday night at 9 Pacific and Eastern on 10 ways to destroy the Earth. Who did they go to, pray tell, to provide this cataclysmic information? Clearly that would be something that they would go to experts for, and if they can't get them, they came to me.

So our man Bruce, this week on the History Channel, and yeah, you know the History Channel. They'll repeat it unendingly, infinitely almost, throughout the week and probably beyond, so you probably still have a chance to see it. But we have another first season, entire collection of the first season episodes on DVD. No,

I'm sorry, on Blu-ray, to give away. And all you have to do is answer this question that Bruce is about to pose. I'm going thematic. And going to challenge people a little bit. What would be your favorite way to destroy the Earth?

As usual, it's highly professional, so try to make us laugh. Try to make us laugh, exactly. So probably the ten that are identified in the episode of the universe will not be a win. Well, it depends on how you phrase them. Some of them are out there. It's interesting. The good news, by the way, for those worrying at home, is that the ten discussed really have so very little possibility of happening. But what's interesting is the cool physics that comes out of looking at those wacky things. Get to us with cool physics or just wacky.

And go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter, and compete for your chance to win a Blu-ray season one of the universe. And do that by the 28th of September at 2 p.m. Pacific time. That's Monday, September 28th. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about all those lights hanging over your head in theaters and whether they're really firm or not. Thank you, and good night.

This is one of my worst nightmares, you know, because I've spent a lot of time in television studios, and I always had this fear that this is how my life would end, with one of those 2K spots coming down on my head. Take heart, there's still time. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He comes crashing down on us every week here for What's Up. Is it the heat shield that will get humans to Mars? We'll ask its creators on our next show. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

Keep looking up. Thank you.