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!
Thanks for the story. Very interesting. I agree with you that the private sector could get it done. Zubrin has said in an interview (saw it on youtube) that politics makes it difficult because administrations change every 4/8 years so you need to complete the mission in that time frame. That is what we’ve seen between the different administrations and Congress changing sides as well. A little off topic, I have a feeling that LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) will be proven very soon and could have an impact on the economics of energy as well as space travel. We did research in the 60’s on nuclear thermal rockets. Looks like LENR would fit nicely.