Mars buffs seek federal funding for manned trips

Mars Society

By JAMES HANNAH, Associated Press

SILVERTON, Ohio (February 11, 2001 1:20 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Lyle Kelly greets a visitor to his suburban Cincinnati home with a button proclaiming "Mars or Bust" pinned to his tan cardigan.

As chairman of the Ohio chapter of the Mars Society, Kelly helps lead a drive to persuade the U.S. government to commit to human exploration and settlement of the red planet.

"We're really just chomping at the bit to see us make a start," Kelly said.

The society, founded in 1998, boasts 3,000 to 4,000 members who this month launched a lobbying effort to visit or provide materials to every lawmaker in Congress.

Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, said the United States could have humans on Mars in 10 years at a cost of $20 billion. He said his group's offensive has begun now, in part, to grab the attention of the incoming Bush administration.

"It is in the first year of a new administration that great initiatives are launched," he said.

Zubrin is the founder of Pioneer Astronautics, a Colorado-based space exploration research firm. He said he has spoken to some members of President Bush's transition team about a humans-to-Mars project and gotten a positive reception. However, he said, they raised concerns about whether Congress would fund it.

Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, a government-spending watchdog group, said the society should look to the private sector for help in getting to Mars.

"We would view it as a waste of federal tax dollars precisely because NASA doesn't have a clue how to get there cheaply," Sepp said. "If they pin their hopes on NASA, they're going to be waiting a long time before a man or woman ever sets foot on Mars."

NASA plans six missions to Mars this decade, using robots.

"NASA does not have an ambitious Mars program," Zubrin said. "There's no comparison between what humans can do and what robots can do."

Kelly said the humans-to-Mars project would take up only 25 percent of NASA's budget and 0.2 percent of the total U.S. budget.

"It's affordable," he said. "It isn't abandoning defense programs. It isn't robbing Social Security. It isn't denying anybody their welfare check. But we're just one contender for the money."

Developing a successor for the space shuttle and establishing a presence on the moon are other ideas competing for funding, along with the International Space Station, a 16-nation effort already under way.

Kelly said the society has taken some practical steps to demonstrate that human exploration of Mars is possible.

Last summer, the society built a research station on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. The station is designed to test Mars exploration equipment and procedures and what it would be like to live under conditions that would be similar to those on Mars.

"It's the most Mars-like place on Earth," Kelly said. "It's cold. It's rocky terrain."

The 59-year-old Kelly, who has engineering degrees from the University of Delaware and Cornell University, worked at Proctor & Gamble in computer database administration before retiring in August. He was bitten by the Mars bug two years ago while attending a science fiction convention.

Kelly said reasons to go to Mars are to search for life or past life, learn how to better take care of the Earth, and look for another place to live.

"Humanity does have one home at the moment. And if something were to happen to it, through our own doing or through some asteroid disaster, we'd be sunk as a species," he said. "Mars is our best neighbor. That would be the logical place to establish another branch of humanity."

Kelly said Mars would be more hospitable than the moon because it has an atmosphere and mineral resources.

With current technology, a trip to Mars would take six months. Hazards would include the physical and psychological effects of such a prolonged trip and the dangers of radiation, meteorites and having a major medical problem or an equipment breakdown that fellow crew members couldn't handle.

But Zubrin said the space program needs a goal that will focus efforts, spur new technologies and inspire the public as the man-to-the-moon program did four decades ago.

"We were storming heaven. We were doing the impossible," Zubrin said. "What the moon was in the 1960s, Mars can be in this decade."