Dr. Zubrin is a very smart guy. I’ve known him for about 20 years now.
hey cool
I been boosting this podcast on Twitter, does he have a twitter handle?
He's quite a visionary, loved the Mars Direct research, but his politics started out very Soviet.
I have a Zubrin story, heheh. I went to some Silicon Valley libertarian symposium in '98 or '99 where I ended up at the same banquet table as Zubrin, Mitch Kapor , some other like-minded folks who I can't quite recall now (Dennis Tito maybe?). I recall having a heated conversation with Zubrin as to whether private capital would be able to fund "the case for Mars" with Zubrin saying it was impossible, only governments could afford to blow capital at the scale required, it was equivalent to building pyramids and no one would be interested in the ROI. I argued it was already happening and he wasn't paying attention. I predicted the convergence of all sorts of efficiencies would make it feasible for billionaires to indulge their space addictions, their suppliers would get plenty of ROI giving the customers what they wanted.
I think Zubrin came around eventually, but man, he was so fixated on "how to convince governments to do it". Given that he had just founded a non-profit on the same premise (the Mars Society) I suppose it was the rational position, but at a libertarian conference? C'mon!