A DISCUSSION OF PRESIDENT BUSH'S NEW VISION FOR SPACE EXPLORATION - Event Transcript

THE ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER ^ | FEBRUARY 5, 2004 | ADAM KEIPER

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Event Transcript

THE ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER

WORLDS BEYOND OUR OWN: A DISCUSSION OF PRESIDENT BUSH'S NEW VISION FOR SPACE EXPLORATION

FEBRUARY 5, 2004

WASHINGTON, D.C.

[NOTE: This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. Excerpts from this event will appear in the Winter 2004 issue of The New Atlantis.]

MR. ADAM KEIPER: We’ll be starting in about a minute, so if everybody who’s out in the hallway can keep on coming in.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Ethics and Public Policy Center. My name is Adam Keiper and I am the managing editor of the Center’s journal about the social and political and ethical implications of advancing technology. It’s called The New Atlantis. You may have seen copies of it out there. If you didn’t, please feel free to grab one on your way out.

You can also find out more about the journal by visiting its Web page, where you can also subscribe -- and I hope you all do -- www.TheNewAtlantis.com. You can also find out more about the Center by visiting its Web page, which is EPPC.org.

Before we start, a few words on questions of comfort and etiquette. The bathrooms, if you need them, are down the hall behind the elevator. I’d love it if you’d all turn off your cell phones now so as to prevent noisy interruptions with your creative rings. And because it’ll probably get warm in this room, you’re all welcome to take off your jackets. None of us will feel insulted; most of us will feel more comfortable. So, that would be great.

There will be a question and answer period later, and there is a microphone that will be going around the room during the question and answer period. If you have a question, you’ll raise your hand, you’ll get called on. Just wait for the mike to come to you, and then state your name and affiliation before stating your question. And speak clearly into the mike because we’re recording this for posterity.

The recent history that precipitated this event, of course, is a speech delivered by President Bush at NASA headquarters on January 14th. I think a goodly number of people in the room actually work at NASA headquarters. I’d love to see by a show of hands who here does. That’s -- all right! Well. That’s good enough. Good to see all of you. Welcome to the Center.

In his speech, he laid out a -- what he described as a new vision for NASA, which involved several specifics. The space shuttle would be phased out by the year 2010 and the space station would also be completed by that date. The shuttle would be replaced by a crew exploration vehicle, a capsule more along the lines of the capsule used in the era of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. We’d also see a return to sending robotic missions to the moon, followed by manned missions to the moon no later than 2020.

In the press, on the Internet, on talk radio, President Bush’s plan raised a number of questions relating to the cost, whether it was realistic; relating to the feasibility of the entire plan, whether we ought to be doing it as a fundamental question; relating to whether we ought to be doing it now when we’ve got a deficit of, what is it, half a trillion dollars now; and when we’re fighting a war on terrorism.

And finally, questions relating to the necessity. Why should we do it at all? Why should we bother to send humans out into space? This is something that President Bush answered in one sentence in his speech: "We have undertaken space travel because the desire to explore and understand is part of our character."

And it’s that matter, the question of character, the question of the American character, what is it that impels us to explore space, that is at the heart of what we’ll be discussing here tonight.

And these two gentlemen have very different views on that subject, as most of you probably already know. We’ve invited them to talk here tonight about President Bush’s new plan but, of course, they’ll also speak more broadly about their views and their disagreements, which go back some ways.

The order for the night will be, first, Professor Park will speak. He’s Robert Park. He’s with the American Physical Society. He is their Director of Public Information, a job that he took first in 1982. He’s the publisher of their "What’s New" electronic newsletter, which you can read online at APS.org.

And, he’s the author of, in 2000, this book, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, in which he debunks all kinds of pseudo-science, fake science, everything from perpetual motion machines to UFO landings to power lines causing cancer and questions relating to cold fusion.

A valuable book in which he also has some critical things to say about our second speaker, Robert Zubrin. Robert Zubrin is the president of the Mars Society, founded in 1998. In 1989, actually, he -- after President Bush’s -- the first President Bush’s space announcement was made, Dr. Zubrin helped come up with a plan called the Mars Direct Plan, which he will, I think, during his section tonight, discuss at some length.

Dr. Zubrin has written his own -- several books, one of which is The Case for Mars. That came out in -- what was that, ’86 -- I mean ’96?

DR. ZUBRIN: -- ’96 --.

MR. KEIPER: -- ’96, in which he lays out his plan in some detail. And most recently he’s the author of Mars on Earth, which is a book describing the activities of Mars Society and, in particular, its "Mars analogue" research in the desert of Utah and in the Arctic. And I hope he’ll also talk about that.

Then, after each of them gives opening comments -- about 10 to 15 minutes, or thereabouts -- we’ll have brief periods of rebuttal, about three to five minutes, and then some discussion prompted by questions from me and from the Internet that were submitted over the past week.

Then finally, we will open it up for questions from the audience. Then I guess we’ll actually close with closing comments in the reverse order from that in which we started. And that will finish us out for the night.

So, without further ado, I’d like you to have some applause now for the wonderful Dr. Robert Park.

DR. ROBERT PARK: Well, when the -- when the president delivered his Moon-Mars speech, it was interesting that it was almost the anniversary of the Columbia disaster. And if you remember, within hours of the Columbia disintegration, the president went on the -- on the air to declare it a -- "Our journey into space will go on." And that’s what he should’ve done.

Of course, the exploration of space is -- is important and I’m a fan of that, as is the other speaker tonight. We have a different idea about how we should go about doing that.

The -- the president in his speech, his Moon-Mars speech, called for a base on the moon, from which an expedition could be launched to explore our nearest neighbor. If that sounds familiar, it should. I was there in 1989 when his father stood on the steps of the Air and Space Museum and made exactly the same call. This president seems destined to forever finish his father’s unfinished business.

The -- he invoked in -- this George Bush -- in his speech, invoked Lewis and Clark. The difference was his father invoked Columbus. And I thought it might be good to point out that half-way across the Atlantic, Columbus had a crisis of confidence in which he locked himself in his cabin fearing mutiny. And if he had had a drone that he could send to find out whether there was something over there besides the edge of the Earth, I’m sure he would have done so, but he didn’t. That’s a technology we have now. And to be going back and talking about Lewis and Clark and Christopher Columbus in the 21st Century is bizarre.

At any rate, the -- the image of explorers facing the unknown dangers of a strange planet a hundred million miles from Earth is certainly heroic, but it’s hopelessly old-fashioned. You know, if you -- if you want romance, read somebody like Steel. She -- she writes good romance novels, so I understand. I don’t usually read them.

At any rate, this -- this was romance. The -- the great adventure worthy of the 21st Century is to explore where no human can ever set foot. And we can do that now. In all of the history of humanity, we never could do that before. We can go places where no human being can ever set foot and explore. This is the -- you know, this is the exciting future we have in space exploration.

In fact, if we insist on exploring Mars with human beings, that’s the end. There’s no place else to go. In our solar system, every place else is -- the gravity is too great. It would crush a human. The temperatures are too high. The -- Mars is just about it. The radiation levels throughout the solar system in certain places are terribly high.

That’s pretty limited. I mean, we’re gonna launch an exploration of the universe that can only go to Mars? I mean, what are we talking about? But, we can in fact explore these places quite nicely and we explore them with a telescope, for example.

But also, it was ironic that when the president made this speech, we already were on Mars. We’re there now. We -- we have two rovers that -- that are mere extensions of a scientist back on Earth. And it’s the scientists that operate the rovers. I hesitate to call them "robots"; they’re telerobots. They are -- they are just an extension of the scientist’s senses to a place where it’s inconvenient for him to go.

In fact, we judge the success of society by the extent to which tasks that are dangerous or menial are done by machines. And space travel, I have to tell you, I -- astronauts in the audience, I apologize, but I have to tell you -- this space travel is both menial and dangerous. Dangerous for obvious reasons. Menial because they don’t really fly that ship. The robots fly the ship. They’re just expensive passengers. Terribly expensive.

The cost of doing anything with human beings is vastly greater than doing it with robots. And it’s not clear that the robots don’t do it better. The robots that are on Mars right now -- I mean, this is just the second generation. The first generation was Sojourner seven years ago. And now we have Spirit and Opportunity. I love the names.

And -- but, a scientist back on Earth sees Mars through their eyes. And they have better eyes than any human. They can -- they can focus from a grain of sand to a distant mountain, telescopically or microscopically. That’s -- that’s amazing. We can’t do that.

The -- in fact, if a human were on Mars, what else could he do? On Mars, he would be locked in his spacesuit. They would have no sense of touch. There’s nothing -- no sense of smell. There’s nothing much to hear on Mars. I think a very low rumble from the wind. The -- so the -- the only -- the only sense that that astronaut has is the sense of sight. And as I say, the robot’s sight is much better.

And not only that, it’s more democratic. I mean, we’re all there. I can every day go to the NASA Web sites and look at the latest pictures. Sometimes I see them live. I mean, it’s -- I feel like I’m along on the mission. And this is, in fact, the way I think that exploration will be done in the future and it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Now, how common is life on the -- in the -- in the universe? Well, that’s what we long to know and that’s what those robots are up for right now. They’re looking to see if they can find evidence that there has been, or still is, water on Mars and, particularly, if there is liquid water.

That -- that’s kind of fascinating. They’re not looking for water in order to make fuel for the return flight. They’re looking for water because, if there is water, evolutionary biologists believe that, if there is liquid water for long periods of time, there’s a good likelihood that there is life.

Now, it may mean something else that we might go to Mars -- I mean, why have we had colonies in the past? We have colonies to rape a region of the Earth and bring those riches back to the home country. And well -- you know, point out some of the riches on Mars to me if you would. I -- I’m at a loss as to know what we could bring back that would begin to compensate for the cost of going to get it.

Well, six days after his call for a return to the moon and Mars, the president delivered his State of the Union speech. His ambitious plan for space exploration was not mentioned. Perhaps, like his father’s plan, the space exploration plan of George W. Bush has already been dropped.

Thank you.

MR. KEIPER: Thank you, Dr. Park.

And Dr. Zubrin.

DR. ROBERT ZUBRIN: Okay. Thank you.

I’m here to make the case for the human exploration of space. And I must say, you know, that I have read a number of Dr. Park’s writings, critiques of the existing human space flight program. And I am not in disagreement with him on a number of points that he has made, for instance about the inefficiency of the shuttle program as an engine for scientific exploration, in most cases.

But nevertheless, I am in strong disagreement with him on the idea that the human activity in space, not only the -- that it has little value in principle and not just in particular instances that can in fact be cited.

Now, President Bush has called for a human exploration program. He has called for changing the nature of the American Manned Space Flight Program from one of basically observing and gaining data on the human experience in space, the medical effects of zero-g and so forth, to the idea of not going into space to experience it, but going into space to travel across it to explore worlds on the other side of space. And indeed, I think this is a much more productive way in general to use humans in space. There is a great deal for them to do.

I think that, at this point, the goals of this new initiative have not yet been adequately focused on the correct objective for humans in space, which is Mars. I think that that can evolve over time as serious planning for this initiative actually commences.

So, what’s NASA’s method of operation under those conditions? You design a plan to achieve this goal. You design a coherent set of hardware that can actually achieve that plan. You build that hardware, you fly the mission. Okay?

Under that impetus, NASA not only did Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab, they also did a host of robotic missions. I think -- believe a total of 40 robotic missions to the moon and the planets during that period.

They developed all the space technologies virtually that we have today that you could name, all the major institutional supports, the Deep Space Network, JPL in the sense that we know it today, JSC, the Cape. They inspired a generation of youth to enter science.

In the more recent period, for instance say between 1990 and today, NASA’s budget in real dollars has only been about 10 percent more than the average NASA budget in real inflation adjusted dollars from ’61 to ’73.

But, the level of achievement has been much less because, in the absence of a goal, the method that NASA has proceeded is essentially by polling the different field centers and major aerospace corporations for different projects that they would like to engage in, approving a subset of those and basically engage in a random assortment of constituency-driven program, some of which have merit; others don’t. Some of which could have merit if there were other programs to go along with them, but they didn’t, and so on.

So, this is why NASA needs a goal. This is why I think Bush’s move is a step in the right direction. I think it needs to take more steps in the right direction. I think the goal needs to be much more imperative than trying to reach the moon by -- in 16 years. I mean, it only took eight the last time. And I think it has to be a goal that forces us to learn how to do things that we do not know how to do. To force us to create new capabilities and humans to Mars would do that.

But, the main reason why we need to go to Mars then, in addition to the fact that we need to go in the first place -- why is Mars the right goal? There’s three reasons. It’s because Mars is where the science is, Mars is where the challenge is, and Mars is where the future is.

Now, Professor Park in his critique of NASA’s activity, basically only addresses the first of those issues, the issues of how one can most effectively accomplish science. I think there are -- I think science is a very important objective of activity in space, but it’s only one of three. Okay?

But first, let’s talk about science. The important science that there is to be done on Mars is -- I mean, while there’s a multitude of issues of planetary geology and meteorology and seismology and so forth and so on, the central issue involves the issue of life. Was there, is there life on Mars and what is the nature of that life?

The reason why these issues are the critical issues, as compared to a whole assortment of issues of people in different academic disciplines, is because the issue of whether life evolved from chemistry on Mars is the critical experiment that lets us know whether the evolution and development of life from chemistry is a general phenomenon in the universe, wherever appropriate physical and chemical conditions pertain.

Since we do know that Mars did once have liquid water, it appears to have had liquid water for a longer period of time than there was -- than it took for life to appear in the fossil record on Earth after there as liquid water here. So, it’s the Rosetta Stone for letting us know the answer to this question.

And it’s also the key for letting us know the answer to this question: does life have to have the same form as Earth life, since all Earth life is the same at the biochemical level. It all uses the same biochemistry. It all uses the same RNA, DNA methods of replicating information and so forth. It didn’t necessarily have to do that. Well, we think, but we’ll know if we go to Mars.

Now, on Earth, fossil hunting involves hiking long distances through unimproved terrain, climbing up steep hillsides, doing digging and pickax work. And doing delicate work, like carefully splitting open fossil shells edgewise to reveal the fossils that have been trapped between the pages of rocks pasted together. This is way beyond the ability of robotic rovers like Spirit and Opportunity.

I live in Colorado. I live in the Rocky Mountains, not far from Morrison, Colorado. Those of you who follow paleontology will have heard of the Morrison Formation. It is famous as the mother lode of dinosaur fossils; in the world virtually. You could parachute 100 Spirits and Opportunities into the Rocky Mountains. You would not find a dinosaur fossil. Okay?

If you took one of these robots to a paleontological dig on Earth, they might use it as a platform for putting coffee cups on, or something of that sort. But indeed, these things do not remotely compare to robotic rovers.

Up on Devon Island, which -- where the Mars Society has a simulated human Mars exploration station, which is discussed at length in this book [Mars on Earth] which, by the way, we have copies of here. I would’ve also brought copies of Voodoo Science, but I was out of stock.

Anyway, if you do want to find out about this human analog activity on Devon, we have people go out in spacesuit simulators that limit their activity, in many ways similar to that which an actual spacesuit would, and look for stromatolites, which is a form of bacterial fossil that you would be searching for on Mars.

The -- you want to pull that off? We’ll get a random assortment --. The -- I’ll just let the screensaver run and you’ll see various pictures of activity on Devon Island.

Just looking for these things involve walking back and forth, back and forth, looking down at rocks. Occasionally -- I mean, taking with our eyes the equivalent of millions of high resolution images. Occasionally looking down saying, well that looks -- no, that’s not one. Walk on, see another one. Bend down enough, dust it off, pick it up, look at it closely. No, throw it away. Looking at hundreds and hundreds of rocks.

Okay, then taking one over to the geologist on the traverse. What do you think? No. Throw it away. Taking another one. Well, maybe. Let’s take this one and put it in a sample bag, bring it back to the hab where we can examine it closely. We can cut it open. We can thin section it. We can look at it under a microscope. Okay?

So, human beings on Mars indeed would have a sense of -- of not only unimpaired vision using microscopes, but the ability to manipulate samples in a way that a robot simply cannot do. And not only that, but take the samples, if you wish, and but them in bacterial culture medium and attempt to grow them. And then sample them. Do biochemical testing of them.

There are things going on here --.

Oh, the gun? Yes, okay. Human beings are better marksmen than robots.

All right. No, I mean seriously. You mentioned Lewis and Clark. Okay, here we are, 200 years after Lewis and Clark. There is not a robot on this planet that you can send to the grocery store and pick up a bag of unbruised apples, let alone perform the Lewis and Clark expedition. So, if they can’t do a trip to the grocery store, how’s it going to explore a planet?

Now, I’m not putting down the robots. I think that it is excellent to do robotic missions. But, I completely contest the notion as fantastical that a robot explorer on the surface of a planet can duplicate what a human explorer can do.

If we really want to look for life on Mars -- and that’s the real question, looking for extant life? We’re gonna have to set up drilling rigs on the surface of Mars and drill down a kilometer to sample the groundwater, which is down there half a kilometer or a kilometer under ground. Bring that water up. That’s the real habitat for life on Mars today. Then, bring that into the lab and the habitat on Mars, examine that. This is the kind of science that you want to do. This is what humans can do on Mars.

Now, furthermore, it has been shown when the space program has chosen proper objectives for human activity in space, that they can outperform robots on a science-per-dollar basis greatly. And the proof of this of course is the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope, if you include both its cost and the cost of the four shuttle missions required to launch it, repair it and then upgrade it twice? The cost of that program is $4 billion. The cost of the Galileo Probe is $2 billion.

Okay, Hubble cost a factor two more. It’s produced at least a hundred times the science and that’s just in volume. If you look at the quality of the science, Hubble has proven that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. That proves the existence of a new force of nature. This -- no robot probe has ever done that.

The ability to continue to upgrade the Hubble, and put on new instruments on it by having humans go up there, take off old instruments, put on new instruments: This can be done much cheaper than creating whole new space telescopes and launching them again.

So -- and by the way, in that sense, just to make it clear than I am not an uncritical supporter of the current space policy, in case there was an understanding there -- the -- I think the decision not to continue upgrading Hubble is wrong, at least for as long as we continue to fly shuttles.

If we continue to fly shuttles through 2010, we should do shuttle mission four to put on the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph and the Widefield Camera 3? That only adds $100 million to the cost of the shuttle program in a year that we’re flying shuttles anyway to do ISS. And we should do a final reboost of the Hubble in 2010 so we can operate it through 2015. That’s the proof of the scientific superiority of humans in space.

Now, there’s another issue, though. There are issues that go beyond the issue of scientific return per dollar. And this is -- has to do with values; it has to do with challenge, if you wish. Put simply, a humans-to-Mars program would be a challenge to our society and, most particularly, to the most important part of our society, which is the youth. It would be an invitation to adventure to every young person in this country: learn your science and you can become part of pioneering a new world.

That is the challenge that the youth of my day, the 1960s, got from the Apollo program. As a result of that challenge, I’m an engineer. As a result of that challenge, the number of scientists and engineering graduates in this country doubled in that period, at every level: high school, college, Ph.D.

And what did those people end up doing? Well, a couple of them ended up doing what I’m doing, doing aerospace. Most of them went off and they did other scientific activities; they engaged in medical research, they built Silicon Valley, they created the economic boom of the 1990s. Those 40-year old techno-nerd billionaires of the 1990s are the 12-year old boy scientists of the 1960s. That’s the investment.

And it is a question of values, of societal values, conveyed to youth. The chance to do something -- yes, heroic. To advance humanity on the frontier of humanity. This is a question of basic values of society.

And once again, this another reason why a Hubble decision -- decision to abandon Hubble on the basis of fear of risk is unacceptable. Because the values of our society needs to be that, when there is something extremely valuable to do and it does involve risk, you find a way to address the risk, you face the risk and you do what has to be done. And that is what is necessary for a healthy society.

And finally, there is the issue of the future. I wonder what Dr. Park would have said if he had lived about 50,000 years ago in Kenya, along with the rest of the human race, which lived in Kenya at that time, and received a proposal from someone who thought maybe humans should colonize Europe or Asia. "Those places are impossible to live there. It’s much too cold." The -- you know, if they had robotic probes, "our robotic probes show you could not survive a single winter night in Europe."

Well, people were able to colonize Europe by technology: clothing, houses, fire. That’s why people can live where I live right now, Colorado, which no one could survive a single winter night in without such technology.

It is on the basis of our technological ingenuity that humans have left our native, our natural habitat, the Kenyan Rift Valley, and transformed ourselves into a global species with whatever, 150 nations, 100 languages, hundreds of literary traditions, traditions of heroic deeds to inspire the future, technological contributions, ideas on human social organization.

There has been a vastly richer human experience as a result of the human willingness to leave the known, go to the unknown and master the unknown. And this is the challenge that Mars holds us today.

Mars is not just an object of scientific inquiry. It is a world. It is a planet with a surface area equal to all the continents of the Earth put together, and that has on it all the resources needed to support not only life, but technological civilization should we choose to exercise our creativity sufficiently to make that possible. Okay?

And if we do what we can do in our day, which is establish that first human foothold on Mars, that first human base on Mars, then 500 years from now there will be a new branch of human civilization on Mars. Perhaps many new branches of human civilization on Mars with their own cultures, their own languages yet unspoken. Their own novel ideas on human social organization; their own tradition of heroic deeds; their manifest contributions to technology and invention.

And that is something wonderful. That is something enormously valuable. I wonder if one can put a price tag on how valuable it is to humanity to have a new branch of human civilization that is making contributions to human progress and the human story.

And not only that, whose development is showing us that we have the capability to do such things and making possible greater ventures, more daring ventures, further out; an unlimited future. And that is the reason why humans should go into space.

Thank you.

MR. KEIPER: If we can get the table mikes on, we’ll just stay here for the rebuttals. I would love to have just two minutes, and I’ll be strict with the clock so that we have time for all the Q&A later.

So, Dr. Park, two minutes if you’d like to respond to Dr. Zubrin. And please do speak into the mike. Are you on?

DR. PARK: Hello?

MR. KEIPER: All right.

DR. PARK: Well, I -- we obviously do not assess things exactly the same. As I look around at the benefits to the space program and I see communication satellites, global positioning systems, the fastest growing technology on Earth, spy satellites to find out what the -- what’s going on in the world, weather satellites, all of these, these were products of the unmanned space program. There were no humans involved in any of these.

This was strictly the result -- in fact, it’s difficult to point to anything that has come out of the man in space program. Now, I don’t mean to insult the human beings that went up in space. They -- they risked their lives and they -- and they were well trained and courageous and all of that. That’s not the point.

But, the point is that, you know, in 2001 if you remember, it starts off with a satellite and the idea was that the satellite was up there to relay communications. And the reason they needed a satellite to do that and had to have people on board was so the people could change the vacuum tubes when they burned out. Now, they don’t burn out any more.

And they -- so each year that goes by -- you know, the future is not in spacesuits. The future’s in robots. Our robots get better every day. Human beings haven’t changed in 35,000 years.

MR. KEIPER: Thank you very much.

And Dr. Zubrin, two minutes.

DR. ZUBRIN: -- Add some points. You know, once again, you know, we don’t need humans to go into space to be telephone operators on communication satellites. I fully agree with Dr. Park on that.

I don’t know how many robotic spacecraft have lasted as long as Hubble, which is 14 years now due to the fact that it was serviced by humans, and which has the capability of going another 14 years. I don’t believe there’s any robotic spacecraft that has gone 30 years. Certainly not of the complexity of the Hubble. And not only that, to be continually upgraded with more modern instruments so as to continually be able to make new discoveries in new areas.

Similarly, if we go to Mars -- well, look. You’re gonna find unexpected things. And in fact, the most important things you find are those that you don’t expect to find. That’s what exploration is all about.

You send a robot -- you know, we sent Viking and did a battery of four tests on the Martian soil to determine if there was life there. Three suggested there might be life. The other was negative. The conclusions of those set of experiments is still being debated. Viking asked Mars, "Do you have life?" Mars says, "Maybe. Please rephrase the question."

If there was a human there, they could immediately have resolved the questions by performing an additional set of experiments to divide the data between hypothesis one and hypothesis two. This is the superiority.

The ability -- I mean -- but even -- all sorts of things. You know, on some of these charts here. Okay, here one you see a rock formation, some people climbing it. There isn’t a robot in the world that could climb that rock formation and discover what is up there. Okay?

Frequently -- okay, simple example. The most interesting data in paleontology are on faces of -- of geology that have been bared, in other words, that are a bit above the grade. Okay, to simply climb up a cliff or to scramble up a rock face 10 feet and that’s where the discovery is to be made, when the robot is restricted to the ground level below it. I mean, it really is crazy to go 200 million miles to Mars and stop 10 feet short of where you can make the relevant discovery.

MR. KEIPER: We’ll stop you there and let’s get some questions back and forth.

First actually, I’ve got a question for Dr. Park. I’d like to get you on the record speaking about Hubble and this decision that is part of the president’s current plan, that Hubble is -- that the plan to upgrade for Hubble won’t happen. As I understand it, it’s not a question of cost but, according to various statements by Sean O’Keefe it’s because of the risk inherent in sending the shuttle up as per --.

DR. PARK: -- Sean O’Keefe isn’t the only one that says it --.

MR. KEIPER: -- As per the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

DR. PARK: -- It’s a safety problem that they’re talking about.

And the real problem there is that Hubble was designed to be serviced. NASA required that. So, the reason was they were trying to justify the shuttle. And the idea was that we’ll put this telescope up there and you can -- you can call up AAA and get a jump-start anytime you want.

And that’s -- it’s turned out to be a disaster because it has never worked out that way. The -- at that time, the shuttle was supposed to fly every week. The highest number we ever got in one year I believe was seven, if I’m not mistaken, and usually not nearly that many.

If you take the cost of the shuttle program, divide it by the number of shuttle flights, you get somewhere between $1 and $2 billion per flight. Don’t give me the NASA figures. They do it like calculating the cost of a coast-to-coast airline trip by the cost of the in-flight meals. I mean, their accounting is nuts. All you have to do is count the number of flights and the dollars that go into that program. And -- and it’s expensive because you’ve got human beings there.

MR. KEIPER: So, would you not send humans up to fix Hubble?

DR. PARK: Oh, I would because we’ve designed it -- designed it to be built that way. Hubble is an enormous resource. Talk about inspiration. I mean, the amount of inspiration that comes from Hubble -- I mean, you know, who could argue with that. So, yeah. I think we should.

But of course, what we should be working on as our next project is not some screwball mission to put men on Mars. It should be to build a better telescope. We know how to do that. That’s a very old telescope. I mean, the tragedy is that we’re not already well along to designing its replacement. We know how to build telescopes far, far better than Hubble.

MR. KEIPER: And there are more in the works and more will go up in the next few years.

Question for Dr. Zubrin. One of the big bugbears about the Mars Direct plan is the question of radiation. And I know this is something that you feel very passionately about because you feel it’s been misrepresented in the press, including a major article a few months ago in the New York Times, which said that basically we can’t get to Mars because of the question of radiation. I’d love to hear you speak on that subject tonight for a moment.

DR. ZUBRIN: Okay. Yeah, I mean, aside from the question of, you know, that we should go to Mars, obviously there is a question of can we go to Mars if this is to be a practical discussion.

I think we can go to Mars. We can get people to Mars right now with chemical propulsion. You could do the -- a trip to Mars in six months then you’re there for a year and a half and six months coming back.

The objection to that mission plan by some is that the cosmic radiation dose would be too dangerous if you did a Mars mission that way. And it’s been calculated, for instance by Brookhaven, that the total radiation dose from both solar particle events -- or solar flares as they’re called -- in cosmic rays for such a dose -- for such a mission, giving minimal shielding, would be about 130 rem over the two and a half year period. And you probably could get it down to 60 or 70 rem if you made intelligent use of your consumables, such as food, water, propellants and so forth to provide a certain degree of shielding.

And for instance, there was an article that appeared in the New York Times on December 9th by Matthew Wald, in which he pointed to this 130 rem dose, compared it to the 18 gram experienced on Skylab, which was an 87 day mission, and he said, gee, this -- here it is. It’s a factor of eight more than Skylab. Okay, there were no radiation health effects observed on Skylab, but they were probably right up under the limit. And now you want to go from 18 to 130.

And the data that was omitted from this article was that there have been much longer missions than Skylab -- since Skylab. There have been many people that have flown 180 days. There have -- Carl Walz has done 230 days. Mike Foale has done 260 days. And there are four Russians who have done over 600 days. And those four Russians have all received over 130 rem of cosmic ray doses and no radiation health effects have been observed among this population. Nor, based on ICRP, International Committee on Radiation Protection data, would any be expected.

A 130 rem dose, delivered over a long period of time such as this, that is time longer than the body’s repair cycles, would represent about a 2 percent risk of getting a fatal cancer at some time later in your life, to a 35 year old male. With some differences for different ages and genders.

The -- now, you might say, well gee, that’s a 2 percent risk of getting cancer. You should put that in perspective. The average smoker incurs a 20 percent additional risk of getting cancer. So, we’re talking about, yes, the concentration not to be recommended, but in no way should it be considered a major portion of overall mission risk, and in no way should it be considered a show-stopper for human Mars exploration.

MR. KEIPER: Cosmic rays are not to be recommended. Thank you.

Another question for you, Dr. Zubrin. A follow up question specific to the president’s plan.

The president’s plan calls for missions eventually to Mars at some, you know, unstated date. But, that the moon would be used as a -- as a halfway point. That you might assemble perhaps ships that you could then send on to Mars, but you’d stop at the moon first.

Now, obviously your plan is called Mars Direct and you call for going to Mars directly. What’s your view of stopping halfway, the detour at the moon?

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, it is a detour. The real science to be done is to be done on Mars. You know, there would not be a great deal of interest in the activity of Spirit and Opportunity right now if they were on the moon. Since we have been there six times, we have 700 pounds of lunar samples at JSC available for examination by anyone right now.

Now, that is not to say that lunar activity could conceivably, within the context of a well planned Mars program, be done as preliminary exercises for going to Mars, in the same sense as we went into lunar orbit with Apollo 8 before we went to the lunar surface with Apollo 11.

So conceivably, that is, if you designed your hardware set in a modular fashion so that a subset of your Mars mission hardware could perform lunar missions, or a modified subset of the Mars mission hardware could do lunar missions, then you would, in fact, be flight testing your Mars hardware on the moon. And that might be a rational thing to do, within limits, because these missions are expensive and there are other ways to make the mission safer, too, besides lunar missions and you have a finite budget.

But, the idea of going to the moon and building a lunar base and conducting activities for 20 years, with the assurance that this experience will prove very useful for us when someday we decide to go to Mars, that would be a massive diversion, an incredibly costly diversion. And also, what was included in the president’s speech about the idea of refueling on the moon to go to Mars, is simply technically ridiculous.

The -- it is quite true that the gravity of the moon is much less than Mars, and it would be easier to go to Mars from the moon than from the Earth. But, before the spacecraft gets to the moon, it has to be launched from Earth. And the delta-v, to go from low Earth orbit to the surface of the moon, is six kilometers a second. The delta-v to go from low Earth orbit to the surface of Mars is 4.5 kilometers a second.

And so, even if there were rocket fuel sitting on the moon today, available for free, for anyone to come and pick it up and refuel, it would still make no sense to go to the moon and refuel in order to go to Mars.

It would be like, if there was free fuel available in San Francisco and you wanted to fly from Washington to Chicago, should you fly to San Francisco to refuel and then go to Chicago? No. Because you’re paying for the fuel to go to San Francisco, which is more than to go to Chicago. So that’s my opinion on that matter.

MR. KEIPER: Okay. Another question for Dr. Park. In Voodoo Science you discuss Dr. Zubrin’s Mars Direct plan and you compare it to the Biosphere, which was -- or Biosphere II, excuse me, which was this project that not too many people --.

DR. PARK: -- Well there we’re referring to the construction of a colony perhaps, yes.

MR. KEIPER: And do you feel that applies? Would you -- would you still compare Dr. Zubrin’s plan to Biosphere? I’d love to get a little discussion back and forth.

DR. PARK: Well, yeah, obviously he wasn’t proposing to do it the way they did it in on -- at the Biosphere.

MR. KEIPER: Because that was entirely enclosed.

DR. PARK: It was entirely enclosed. But, as a matter of fact, you know, you’re not gonna be sitting out on the beach when you’re on Mars. You’ve got to build. Whatever you build has got to be enclosed. If -- if you’re gonna have a self-sustaining colony, I mean, that’s quite a demand. It’s not easy to build a self-sustaining colony.

And they put, hell, I don’t remember the number of people that were in the Biosphere II, but a small number of people. And here they have the benefit of this elaborate structure being created here on Earth with all the machinery, all the heavy machinery we need to build something like that, and they still couldn’t make it. And that’s, you know, we -- we at least on Earth don’t have to bring in all the air and everything else that we use.

MR. KEIPER: Dr. Zubrin, would you want to respond to the comparison?

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, I don’t think there’s any relationship between Biosphere II and Mars Direct. Biosphere II was basically an attempt to realize an aesthetic ideal of a self-contained human biosphere, that included the rain forests and the coral reefs, and various other things that no one would include in the practical design of either a human Mars mission, as in Mars Direct, or a Mars colony for that matter. You wouldn’t put a rain forest in your greenhouse on Mars. You would put a farm, you know. So, I just don’t think there’s any basis for comparison and --.

MR. KEIPER: Okay. Before we get to questions from the audience, I’ve got a couple of questions that were submitted over the Internet, which I’d like to ask.

First, from MSNBC, Alan Boyle asked the following question for Dr. Park. He’d like to see if you agree that at some point that there must be some cosmic manifest destiny for the human species? If someday we must learn about how to do human space travel, how do we make a start other than just setting our sails for those beginning space voyages and going farther?

In other words, if I could add my own question, would you, if you -- if you had your druthers, would you basically repeal all manned space flying at this point, just cut it all off? Or do you think that we ought to keep taking at least the first tentative steps toward some eventual destiny in space?

DR. PARK: At most, I think we should preserve some capability in case -- and I can’t imagine what it would be -- in case something arises where we really need to send a human being. I cannot for the life of me imagine what that would be. But, it -- it might be worth while to keep that option open.

MR. KEIPER: Okay. Another question for Dr. Park, also over the Internet. This comes from N.E. Barry Hofstetter, a Professor of Theological and Biblical Studies at the Center for Urban Theological Studies. He asks the following question: "It is a commonplace that technological advance results from two main sources, competition and the desire to accomplish goals, which require the development of new technologies and the refinement of old. Would there not be a greater impetus toward technological advance if we actually send human beings into space instead of robots, with concomitantly greater benefits to the general population?"

And an additional note, it’s worth pointing out, of course, that in addition to this new U.S. plan to send humans back into space, into going places in space, China, of course, has put its first man into orbit and is discussing a possible mission some day to the moon. Europe has just recently made some sort of vague announcement.

What are your thoughts on the question of competition between different countries and moving forward in terms of technological benefit?

DR. PARK: The technological benefit things are, you know -- there are three kinds of liars. There are ordinary liars, damned liars and spin-off claimers. I mean, the -- the spin-off is the biggest pile of crap that you can possibly imagine. Of course, when you spend billions of dollars on a program, you’re gonna get some spin-offs.

There was a -- there was a study done for NASA for Dan Goldin several years back in which he asked them, you know, what about the spin-offs? And he named this whole list of spin-offs that are claimed for NASA.

None of them, it turns out, were in fact developed by NASA for NASA programs. They were developed quite independently by industry and NASA was good advertising. NASA loved it, because they could play that in front of Congress and it looked like they were doing something useful. But -- but spin-offs, well, that’s total bullshit.

DR. ZUBRIN: I’d like to respond to that for a minute. One of the noteworthy spin-offs of the Christopher Columbus mission was the United States of America.

MR. KEIPER: All right.

A question for Dr. Zubrin. One last question before we go to audience questions. This is from the Internet and the question goes as follows: Dr. Zubrin, "a writer at the National Review, named Stanley Kurtz" -- whom I happen to know is in the audience -- "a writer at the National Review named Stanley Kurtz asserted that Mars is more like Mount Everest than" -- as this anonymous writer thinks, and as you maintain -- "than California."

So, is Mars more like Mount Everest or California? Is Mars a place where people should go to explore, but not settle? How would you respond to what this writer describes as Stanley Kurtz’s assertion? And maybe later we’ll get Stanley to respond.

DR. ZUBRIN: Mars is a world. And in the coming age of space exploration, Mars compares to the moon, for example, as North America compared to Greenland in the last age of space exploration -- in the last age of oceanic exploration. The -- Mars is a place where we can go and explore.

I mean, people certainly learned a great deal. There was a great deal of science generated in the exploration of North America. You know, there’s no way we would have known about the Anasazi ruins in the Four Corners if humans hadn’t settled North America.

All sorts of new animals and plants were discovered. Many new things were discovered which had actually great value, frankly. New races of peoples were discovered who weren’t in the Bible and that opened people’s eyes as to the possibilities of greater realities than they had suspected existed before --.

DR. PARK: -- But if I could butt in. Nobody’s against exploration --.

DR. ZUBRIN: -- No, no, no. I’d like to answer --.

DR. PARK: -- I haven’t opposed exploration at all.

DR. ZUBRIN: Sir, I have not interrupted you once.

DR. PARK: Okay, you get one.

DR. ZUBRIN: All right. So -- but, nevertheless -- okay, so the exploration of America in terms of what it did for human knowledge was tremendous in terms of opening up the Western concept of what reality was.

But ultimately, in the longer term? The greater significance of the advent of Westerners -- Western civilization in the Americas was the creation of new branches of Western civilization, which, in the frontier environment, where they were free from the constraints of the old world in everything from political forums to methods of manufacture, being free from clerical control, being freed from guilt control, you name it. Okay, being free from the constraints of the old, being under the practical imperatives of the new, of a new environment where new advances were needed under conditions of severe labor shortage, you had a new form of society develop, which has proven to be one of the most productive agents of human progress in history.

The -- you had a society developed, which valued the development of the individual human, because it needed the maximum productivity innovation from the individual human.

You had a society developed, which produced magazines for mechanics to learn about inventions of other people so they could make inventions, too. You know, you had all sorts of things.

So, I think, you know, talk about Mars. Yes, we’re initially going to go to Mars to explore. That’s why we’re gonna go to Mars. But, when you start getting human settlement on Mars, and you have people there under conditions where, for instance, they need to absolutely maximize the production of their greenhouses, because they’re limited in their agricultural acreage, their greenhouse acreage, much less than we have here on Earth with open farming. They will look at genetic engineering solutions to increase crop yields, and they will not let cranks with lawsuits stop them from creating new and more productive crops.

Those crops will allow their colonies to exist. Those crops will have tremendous benefits to society back on Earth. Just as any number of inventions made in America propagated back to the old world and has changed life throughout the world in every respect.

MR. KEIPER: Dr. Park, did you want to respond?

DR. PARK: No, I don’t need to respond to that.

MR. KEIPER: Okay, questions from the audience. Wait for the microphone to come up and, when it does come, speak right into it. And whatever you do, don’t gesture with it. Right here. And state your name and affiliation first, if you would.

MR. EDWARD HUDGINS: I’m Ed Hudgins from the Objectivist Center. It seems, given the almost limitless human -- capacity of the human mind and our capacity for productive efforts, isn’t it inevitable that in centuries in the future human beings -- hopefully not a government program, but perhaps privately -- will terraform Mars, give it an atmosphere and make it another habitat for humanity?

Why is that so unimaginable? It seems inevitable if human beings act according to their true nature. Another habitat for humanity.

DR. PARK: I love the question. I mean, here we are unable right now to maintain our atmosphere the way it should be maintained and these guys want to build a new one on a planet that doesn’t have one. I mean, this is insanity. The -- no, you know, terraform Mars, hell. Give me a break.

MR. KEIPER: Dr. Zubrin.

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, obviously, terraforming Mars is a great challenge and it’s beyond our own time. I believe that someday humans will terraform Mars, because it’s where life -- and it’s the nature of life to transform environments from barren environments to those that are friendly to the development and propagation of life. That is why life on Earth has been a success.

But, the -- with respect to this issue of the environment, I think it’s quite interesting if you think about it, if you give a teenager a car, they will destroy the car. If you make them earn the money to buy the car, they might take care of the car. If you make them buy a piece of junk and then build it into a functioning car, they will treat it as a treasure.

The reason why humans perhaps have been somewhat carefree in terms of their treatment of the environment on Earth is that it has been given to us. I believe that the experience of creating a viable environment on Mars, first in enclosed spaces and perhaps someday ultimately on a global basis, will teach us the value of a living biosphere. And it is only this way that we will develop both the expertise and the values required to take proper care of the environment on Earth.

MR. KEIPER: Okay, next question. Name and affiliation.

MR. RICH ROBINS: Rich Robins with NASAWATCH.info. Not to be confused with NASAWATCH.com, which as we know has been insulting Dr. Zubrin a lot lately, while preparing to sell a book this summer about Bush's decision to explore the moon. You could make that obsolete. But, I have nothing to do with that --.

DR. ZUBRIN: -- Okay --.

MR. ROBINS: -- So please keep that in mind. This has to do with Dr. Park’s observation that it costs a lot to explore space through governmental central planners. But, NASA has inspirationally announced this week that it wants to offer, for the first time in history I believe, competitive prizes --.

MR. KEIPER: -- Twenty million dollars, right.

MR. ROBINS: Okay. Whereby entrepreneurs who don’t produce won’t get paid. And imagine this, ladies and gentlemen: cutting costs is actually going to be rewarded instead of our seeing this cost-plus scheme that you’ve commented on in Entering Space [a 1999 book by Dr. Zubrin].

So those who say that Mars is too expensive to explore, perhaps they should reevaluate in light of the potential to see much larger competitive prizes offered. And could you please comment on why that would be the case.

MR. KEIPER: I’ll take the mike over here.

DR. ZUBRIN: Okay. So, in The Case for Mars -- available on sale here after the talk -- there is a discussion of one option for funding human Mars exploration, which would be by posting prizes. Now, $20 million would not in any way be adequate for this. We would need prizes in the tens of billions, perhaps 30 billion for the first human mission to Mars, done in the private sector with similar -- well, multi-billion dollar prizes for certain technological achievements, such as a heavy lift booster and so forth, that would have to be done along the way.

The notion of using prizes is not, obviously, unique to me. It was done in the past for various feats, such as of course Lindbergh’s exploit was done for prize. And the advantage of that approach is that the cost of the program to the taxpayers is absolutely capped, you know. No money is paid at all unless the mission is actually done. You could -- potentially, if the prizes were large enough, create a private space race that would be tremendously creative, perhaps much more so than if it was done through the government.

I believe that a human Mars mission could be done much cheaper if it was done strictly privately than done by the government. It could probably be done for under $10 billion if it was done strictly in the private sector.

That would mean, however, that you would need to have prizes that were a serious multiple of that because, if private money is gonna go after this, they’re not gonna just want to get their money back, if they hopefully win the prize. So there has to be a severe multiplier.

So it might cost about the same amount to do the money through prizes as done through a government program. On the other hand, there would in fact, going into it, be very clear to the taxpayer exactly how much they were paying and that they were only paying for accomplishment.

So, that’s one option that could be considered. I would support that. I would also support a NASA program to send humans to Mars, one driven on a tight schedule so it really means that it’s going to Mars and it’s not just using the vague goal of humans to Mars as an excuse for engaging in a plethora of technological activities of interest to various people at various places. In other words, I want it to be goal oriented, not use Mars as a vision to sort of excuse random activity.

I would support either.

MR. KEIPER: Okay, next question.

DR. KEVIN MARVEL: Kevin Marvel, from the American Astronomical Society. I usually judge whether or not I enjoy debates by how much I disagree with one of the speakers and agree with the other. And I have to say, I have to reassess my ranking scheme this evening because I disagree a little bit with both and agree a little bit with both. But, I guess that just means you put together a good debate.

My question is, aren’t we trying to justify both things for the reasons for the opposite? In other words, shouldn’t we be doing science to do science and doing exploration to do exploration? And if we have the money and the will, we should go do some exploration and not try and justify it by scientific means?

And since we already can do science and build robotic probes that can do almost everything, and I believe robots are actually responsible for building microcomputers, which would challenge most astronauts and certainly people in the audience tonight.

So, shouldn’t we do exploration to do exploration and shouldn’t we do science to do science, and not try and cross the justification for both?

MR. KEIPER: And is that directed to anyone in particular?

DR. MARVEL: Anybody.

MR. KEIPER: Either of you want to take that?

DR. PARK: I’m in favor of exploration and I’m in favor of science.

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, I’m in favor of both, but I don’t draw that sharp a distinction between the two. I mean, I don’t think science is the employment of scientists to produce papers that are published in journals. I don’t think that’s what science is about. You know, that’s sort of the day-to-day activity of the scientific profession.

I think what science is about is defining critical hypotheses that potentially advance human knowledge through their resolution, and going and answering the question of whether those hypotheses are true or false. Okay?

In the case of the issue of life on Mars, is -- was there, is there? What forms did it develop into? I think this really can only be answered by sending humans to Mars.

MR. KEIPER: We have two more questions in the front, then we’ll get some questions from the back.

MR. ROBERT TERRY: I’m Robert Terry, Naval Research Laboratory.

For Dr. Park, I would love to send a robot to Mars if it was Commander Data. But, when I look at what’s needed to solve the mind/body problem, which I think it still a very outstanding problem, I don't think that we’re anywhere close to coming to that level.

And so, how much effort in terms of money and time and man years does it take to get us to the level where we solve the mind/body problem and one of these robots can climb up a rock, and these robots can make intelligent decisions about data taking and interpretation and bring to bear all that a human could do? So that’s my question.

MR. KEIPER: Did you hear the question in the back? It was a question about the -- okay, great.

DR. PARK: If we took the money that we’ve squandered on the Man in Space program and use that to develop robots, I think it might be --. You know, some years ago, when we were doing a flyby of Neptune, I took my class out to NASA Goddard and we sat there on the big screen, huge screen, and watched the image of Neptune being built up one line at a time.

And I turned around and I looked at my students and they were doing the same thing that I did when Armstrong stepped off on the moon. They were holding their breath. They were as excited by that as I had been seeing a man step off on the moon. It -- yeah, you know, well, that’s it.

MR. KEIPER: All right. Fred Singer.

DR. S. FRED SINGER: Fred Singer. That was very stimulating discussion and I think I see agreement between the speakers, that Mars is a very important scientific target. And I also see agreement that a moon base doesn’t add much to obtaining that kind of a target and is, in fact, a detour or dead-end, depending on which one you want to call it.

My question is about cost. I’ve seen numbers from Bob Zubrin low-balling a manned mission to about $10 billion. And I’ve read a piece by Jim Oberg in which he reports that some people put the cost of the total initiative up at a trillion. That’s a factor of 100 difference. That's a big factor.

Now, having said that, I would also like to point out to Bob Park that unmanned missions are not cheap either. In fact, in order to solve the problem of origin of life on Mars, which could be done in principle by bringing back samples without man, just bring -- involves bringing back many samples at different times, over the next decades, and probably will involve cost of the order of $50 billion. Because each of these missions, a unmanned mission to bring a sample back, probably runs of the order of $2 or $3 billion. So these are not cheap either.

So, would you both discuss the comparative costs and give us some information on that?

DR. PARK: Well, I don’t know quite where to start on that. The usual factor that’s used to do anything in space is that it costs at least ten times as much to do it with a human as it does to do the same thing robotically. That’s just kind of a standard figure. I think it’s closer to 100.

But you know, the main thing is, I want to get it done. And if we sit around waiting for human beings to pilot a spacecraft to Neptune -- and it’s not gonna happen in my lifetime. And I’m selfish. I’d like to see it happen.

DR. SINGER: Well, I mean, that’s a red herring. Nobody wants to go to Neptune.

DR. PARK: No. True.

DR. SINGER: And also, I believe the first sample returned from an unmanned mission is something like 15 years from now. That’s a long time away.

DR. PARK: Well, if you remember -- if you remember, at the time of the Apollo program, the -- ironically, the Soviet scientists had managed to convince their government that they should do it robotically. And they did. And they brought back samples every bit as good as the samples we brought back. In fact, they drilled nine feet down to extract samples on the moon. Something that was beyond us with men on the moon.

They had a rover that went great distances on the moon, collected the samples and brought them back to the ship. They did that robotically. I don’t -- you know, put a little money in robots -- yeah, sure.

DR. SINGER: Any comment --?

MR. KEIPER: -- Quick response, Dr. Zubrin.

DR. ZUBRIN: Yeah, look, there are different tools for different jobs? And some jobs require robots or can best be done with robots, some jobs can best be done with people. If you want to image a planet from orbit, you don’t need people to do that. There are robotic or automatic orbiters -- it’s really science fictional to call them robots. But, automated instruments and orbit around a planet doing remote sensing is a perfectly good application of that technology. Fossil hunting on Earth, to do in situ geology, the human vastly outclasses the robot.

This is why I am not really -- I’m rather ambivalent about robotic Mars sample return missions. Because, if you think about it, you spend say $3-$4 billion to go to Mars and collect a kilogram of samples from near the lander and return it to Earth. And you do that ten times and now, you know, you’re talking -- well, the recurring mission cost is less, but maybe you’re talking $20 billion. You’re talking costs that are comparable to human Mars exploration.

But, if you then -- if you were to send humans, human Mars mission, they’re on Mars for a year and a half. They’re doing, you know, maybe --.

MR. KEIPER: In your plan.

DR. ZUBRIN: Yes. You’re doing maybe 300 traverses, traveling kilometers away from the lander in all directions. You’re examining immediately with your eyes, hundreds of thousands of rocks. You’re examining close up perhaps in the hab -- I mean, if you do 300 traverses and you bring back 10 samples, you’re examining 3,000 samples in the hab, under microscope, subjecting them to the various tests over that period of time. And then you’re bringing back 300 of them to Earth? So you’re bringing back 300 times the mass, selected out of 3,000 times the mass of samples from a much wider array of locations, and all sorts of other things that could be done to augment their scientific value.

So, I would say that the idea of doing the sample return campaign with robots is sort of taking a tool that we have now, namely robotic exploration, and applying it to a problem where it is no longer cost effective compared to humans.

I think we’ll send robotic orbiters to Mars after we’ve landed people there, after we’ve terraformed it. I mean we send robotic orbiters in orbit around the Earth right now. But the -- so there’ll always be a place for robotic systems and, clearly, if we’re going to Pluto or somewhere like that for the foreseeable future, those are going to be robots.

But, there is a class of problems that can best be addressed by people. And to try to address them with robots is using the wrong tool for the job.

MR. KEIPER: Okay, I’d like to get three more questions from the audience, if that’s all right. That means we’ll go a little bit over tonight, but we started a little late, so that’s okay.

And I’d ideally like the next question to be from a staffer from the House of Representatives, since we have several of them here. If any of you have a question, please raise your hand. If not, if you’re not that inquisitive, we’ll just go to somebody from NASA.

There’s one House staffer back there. There you go. Name and position.

DR. MARTIN SOKOLOSKI: Hi, I’m Marty Sokoloski. I’m a Science Fellow on Rush Holt’s House of Representative staff.

I think that if you’re gonna put a man on Mars, you have to quantitatively come up with a plan, some money, where the money’s gonna come from --.

MR. KEIPER: -- It’s gonna come from you!

DR. SOKOLOSKI: -- Who’s gonna do the job. As a matter of fact, we have the Japanese, we’ve got the Chinese, they have a space program. We have the Russians. We have the European Space Agency. How come we keep talking about the U.S.? This seems to me it’s a -- should be a stepping stone for humankind and not just the U.S.

MR. KEIPER: So international cooperation. This is something that has been talked about for years. That was part of the justification for moving the space station from Space Station Freedom to the International Space Station.

DR. PARK: In fact, that of course, was the Clinton rationale.

MR. KEIPER: And how’s it worked out? Would you say, Dr. Park, it’s been a success?

DR. PARK: No, it’s been a disaster. And -- but the biggest disaster has been in areas like fusion research, where that was also to be done internationally. And it’s been a total disaster. Nothing has happened.

MR. KEIPER: Dr. Zubrin, should we --?

DR. PARK: -- The reason is that Congress -- and I’m sure it works pretty much the same way in other countries -- they understand the argument that this is for the improvement of the United States. They don’t understand the argument that this is for the improvement of the world and they never will. They’re going to vote on a closer interest.

MR. KEIPER: Dr. Zubrin, international cooperation or go it alone?

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, actually, I’m pretty close to Dr. Park’s opinion on this issue. The -- and I’m acquainted with the problems that occurred in the fusion program after it was internationalized in this way and he’s dead right.

There was a much more vibrant fusion program when we were competing with the Russians in the 1970s and early ’80s, and to some extent with the Europeans, with different varieties of approaches being conducted and, you know, stellarators and tokamaks and various kinds of machines that different people were arguing for. Depending upon who was stronger in differently countries, different approaches were being followed and it was a much more healthy program. The world was collaborating in advancing fusion because the data was being published, but there was a much more colorful and creative program under way.

I think that Mars, humans-to-Mars should be an international program, but of the bring your own ship, make your own contribution variety. I think it would be great if we sent our ship to Mars in convoy with a European ship, and so either one could rescue the other if they got into trouble. And there would be different scientific priorities to each of the two missions and so forth. And Russians and Japanese, sure, same thing. Bring your own ship, let’s all go.

But, to created a convoluted program where gigantic international committees have to agree on the next step, and they’re still arguing over where they’re gonna put this tokamak -- or have they settled it? I don’t know?

DR. PARK: No, they haven’t settled it.

DR. ZUBRIN: Okay. This has gone on for 20 years now with INTOR, right? The -- and you know, and furthermore, you create a situation where if the government of Italy should change your program collapsed because they were making the guidance system and they’re pulling out of the program. Okay?

The -- so really, I don’t think this should be done in a Cold War attitude of hostile competition, but perhaps an attitude of Olympic contribution -- competition, of see who can do the most to advance the scientific goals of human Mars exploration. And of course, to be willing to help out, what we call Arctic courtesy. In the Arctic, if somebody gets in trouble, you just go and help them. You don’t even have to have an agreement or anything, you just do it. And I think this would be very healthy.

With respect to the issue of money, which you led with your question, I think the money’s there in the space program right now. The reason why I’m adamant about saving Hubble is because, as long as they’re flying the shuttles, that’s the most important thing they can do.

But, if someone was to give me a choice today, can we take that $4 billion a year and reprogram that for humans-to-Mars, we could have humans on Mars in ten years by reprogramming that shuttle budget straightaway. They’re keeping the shuttle going in order to fulfill the commitments on the International Space Station program which, because it’s an international treaty -- so we’re doing this thing that we don’t even want to do because we have treaty agreements to do it. It’s really a diplomatic program, it should be really funded by the State Department, not by NASA. Colin Powell and Dominique de Villepin can go up and they could meet and they could work out their differences.

DR. PARK: I have a whole list of people they could send up.

DR. ZUBRIN: But the money is there. What Bush has basically said, if you want to know, is he’s not going to make "Shuttle Two" the priority policy of the space agency, as some people had wanted. So they’re going to phase out the shuttle, replace it with a capsule that can be launched on expendable launch vehicles, and therefore starting in 2010, clear $4-5 billion a year, between station and shuttle budgets, that can support human exploration to the Moon and Mars. If that’s how you want to play it, you can play it that way, and that’s where the money is. NASA’s budget has been more or less flat since about 1989 or so, so there appears to be a political consensus through different congressional majorities and different administrations of the two parties that people are willing to fund NASA at this level of around $16 billion a year in current dollars. There is the money within that budget to send humans to Mars if you reprioritized it and basically moved the money from the shuttle and station budgets to human exploration. I’m for doing that as soon as possible. As long as we’re doing the old space program, I’d want it to do its most productive activity, which has been Hubble.

MR. KEIPER: Hubble. I’d like to get to two more questions from the audience, and I’d like the next one, ideally, to come from someone from NASA, since we have so many here. The gentleman in the blue shirt right there.

DR. BRENT BOS: Thank you. I’m Brent Bos from NASA Goddard. This is a question for Dr. Park. I’ve heard you tonight and in other various venues talk about how our robotic landers on Mars are superior geologists to a human. As a graduate student I worked on Mars Pathfinder and have also had the opportunity to go on various field exercises with geologists. I was very surprised to find out that a geologist was about a thousand times more effective on site -- when he can examine the rocks, pick them up, have that dynamic interaction with them.

But it seems like you have very strong opinions that a robot is much better than a human on site. I was wondering how many field exercises you have been on with geologists to form that opinion, and how many robotic missions you have been on.

DR. PARK: I haven’t been on a robotic mission.

But in fact, I have been on missions with geologists. They use the hands. They don’t have those hands when they’re locked in a space suit. They’re looking through a visor. They’re hands are - if you watch them use tools, they’re almost as limited as my hands.

It’s not the same thing at all. You can’t pick a rock up and heft it, you don’t get any feel of its composition, any sense of hardness or texture. These things are all missing in a spacesuit.

If you can get the guy outside the spacesuit --. Terraform it first, I guess.

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, before we terraform Mars, a simpler -- a simpler approach is just to bring the rock inside the hab. And then you can hold it in your hand, and look at it, and do absolutely everything that a field geologist on Earth can do with it.

MR. KEIPER: Based on the Mars analogue research that you’ve been doing in the desert and in the Arctic, how do you respond to that? How much can you do with the gloves and the clunky suits and the masks and the visors and everything -- how well can you see? Obviously you weren’t wearing the precise spacesuits that you would need to wear, or anything even close to them, but something that could give you a sense of how much sensation and manipulation of your environment --.

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, it is true that the spacesuit greatly reduces your situational awareness. Obviously you don’t have a sense of smell, you don’t have a direct sense of touch. You do retain the ability to pick up samples and manipulate them and look at the rock this way and that way and this way, and the ability to break it open and look on the inside of it and do all sorts of things like that, that’s in the suit itself.

And on the basis of that, following up all sorts of intuitive clues and observations, you select on a given traverse out of thousands of rocks that you’ve glanced at and hundreds that you’ve looked at more closely, you select perhaps ten that you bring back into the hab, and put it on the table. And yes, you can look at it with a hand-lens, and yes, you can thin-section it, and look at it with a microscope. You can do all those things. And you can do that to a dozen samples a day, and you’ve got 300 days on Mars, and you can travel much faster than the rovers can travel.

You know, here are these things, they can move ten feet a day. Or excuse me, 100 feet a day. They so far have not quite managed ten feet a day. But okay, let’s give them 100 feet a day, that’s what a human walking on foot does in 30 seconds. It’s what a human on an ATV does in five seconds.

So, simply the issue of mobility. The ability to select samples and then take them into the lab on Mars and subject them to an essentially unlimited battery of tests. And changing your priorities as you say, well here’s a phenomenon we weren’t expecting. Maybe we should test this one with acid; maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that.

So -- and here is something that’s so interesting. Why don’t we put it in bacterial culture medium and see if there’s endolithic bacteria in this rock. This is way beyond the ability of robotic rovers.

MR. KEIPER: Okay, one last question from the audience. And we’ll get the gentleman way in the back. And then after this, we’ll go to closing comments.

MR. BOB McNALLY: My name is Bob McNally. The first Golden Age of manned space exploration happened really concurrently with the first Golden Age of robotic space exploration. And the question I’d like you each to at least briefly address is, given that one of the realities of science is that all funding ultimately comes from taxpayers, do you think that the Golden Age of robotic exploration would have had the vibrancy that it did without the public excitement and support for the manned program?

And it’s often -- public excitement is often excluded from a scientific and rational discussion, but given that funding ultimately is a result of public excitement, could you each speak to your respective viewpoints in regard to that?

DR. PARK: Well, in the first place, we’d need a lot less funding. But beyond that, that’s really the reason I told the story about my students going out and watching the fly by of Neptune. They were just as inspired by that robotic mission as I had been earlier by a manned mission.

And I think what we’re missing is a little leadership.

DR. ZUBRIN: Well, my comment is, is that if one simply looks at the data, one finds that the robotic program has prospered much more heavily when there has been an active human exploration program, and that is a fact.

The most active robotic program was in the ’60s, when we had the most active human program. The dimmest period for the robotic program in terms of creating new starts was the 1970s when -- after the hiatus in the human space flight program. That is, Viking really had been developed during the Apollo period and so had Voyager. The only new -- I mean what do we have? We had Mars Observer started in the ’70s or so, and maybe, what, Magellan?

So we’ve had a much more -- so, yes. The rising tide does lift all the boats. And if you are concerned with robotic exploration, you’re likely to get a much richer program if the human exploration program is also going on.

MR. KEIPER: Okay, before we go to closing comments, a few quick housekeeping notes. A transcript of this event will be available on the Center’s Web site within a week or so, EPPC.org. Also, please, I invite you to find out more about The New Atlantis at TheNewAtlantis.com.

Those of you who did not RSVP, please, if you would like to find out about future events that we’ll be having on questions relating to biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology or more on space, please leave a business card or just a little paper with your name and e-mail address on it at the front desk somewhere.

And some -- a quick shill if you’ll allow me, for both these gentlemen here. It’s kind of a nice point that the guy who believes in sending people to space is the person who, if you want to get his books, you talk to him in person. Mars on Earth and The Case for Mars are here.

The man who believes in sending robots to space, you can get his book via machines at Amazon.com for $15. Fifteen dollars, Voodoo Science, Amazon.com. So, that’s great.

DR. ZUBRIN: Or just send a robot down to the bookstore to get it for you.

MR. KEIPER: That’s possible, too. And some quick thank-yous for the evening. Thank you for helping to set up tonight, Sarah Mehta, Scott Bond, Eric Cohen, Yuval Levin, Christine Rosen, Laura Fabrycky, and Diane Conocchioli.

Special thanks to Allen Boyle of MSNBC, to Eric Brown, and to Kasey Cook. And finally, thanks to Hillel Fradkin, president -- outgoing president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who has done a great deal during his tenure here to transform this place and establish a number of important projects -- including this one tonight, which he made possible.

And so on that note, I’d like to have closing comments. First, two minutes from Dr. Zubrin, then two minutes from Dr. Park.

DR. ZUBRIN: Do we want to find out about the universe or don’t we? If we want to get the information about whether there was or is life on Mars, we have to send the means to actually do that.

Spirit and Opportunity will probably be able to determine the geological context of their sites. They will be able to determine if Gusev Crater was once a dry lake, if the Meridiani Planum site of Opportunity was a geothermal hot spring with water and water there at low enough temperatures to support life potentially.

But, I think there’s very little possibility that they’ll find fossils at those sites, even if fossils are available at those sites. They simply can’t travel fast enough. They can’t look at enough different rocks.

At our Mars desert research station, we have found dinosaur fossils? But, we didn’t find them the first day. We didn’t find them by walking ten feet or 20 feet or 100 feet. We found them by traveling around extensively and doing extensive exploration of the area, and eventually we found dinosaur fossils.

The -- so, if we want to get the answer whether there was life on Mars, we’re gonna have to send people. If we’re gonna get the answer of whether there is life on Mars, we’re gonna have to be able to drill down into the ground, sample the water, bring it into the lab, examine it under a battery of tests with a scientist who can react flexibly to the data as it develops, in consultation with other scientists back on Earth that he or she can consult with. This is the sort of program you want if you really want to get to the answer to this.

And if we want to challenge a generation of youth in the way we challenged them with Apollo, of "learn your science, you can pioneer a new world." You can be a hero for humanity by being someone who has done something that has never been done before, seeing things that no one has seen before, built where no one has built before, then you should develop your mind. And we’ll get the payoff that comes from challenging people in that way, and having a society which places its social values in that way.

And if we want to do something really important for the future, okay, you know. Five hundred years from now, or even much sooner than that, 200 years from now, I am convinced that if we do what we can do in our time, establish that human foothold on Mars, there will be a new human society on Mars, a new branch of human civilizations. With, you know, houses and schools and community orchestras and used bookstores and universities and all of that, and their own contributions to literature, philosophy, technology, what have you.

And when those people look back at this time, what of what we are doing today will they consider is most important? Will they care who was in power in Kosovo or Iraq? They won’t have even heard of those places. Just as most people could not name most of the states in Europe in 1492. Most people here can name the queen who sponsored Columbus. I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who can name the queen who followed that queen. Or who was Prime Minister of France at that time. Or name the treaty that was signed between France and England in 1492.

But, the sponsoring of Columbus, the opening up of brand new possibilities for human development, that was the most important thing happening in that time. And I believe that future ages, looking back at our time, will consider the steps that we took to expand the human reach, the human mind, the human hand, human life beyond Earth to be the most important events of our time, far outranking virtually any of the other things that concern most of us today.

And, you know, if you have it in your power to do something wonderful and important for the future, then you should. And that is why we should send humans to Mars.

Thank you.

MR. KEIPER: And Dr. Park.

DR. PARK: You know, my nightmare is that we send humans to Mars to look for life -- because they’re gonna find it. But, it’s gonna look awfully familiar. The one thing that we need to do is make sure we do not contaminate Mars with human life. There are more bacteria in your human gut than all the people that have ever lived on the Earth. One accident on Mars with a human being and the search is pretty much over.

So, you don’t send life to look for life. We should be sending out sterilized spacecraft, sterilized robots. Fortunately, getting to Mars they get pretty well sterilized just by being out there. But, the one thing you can’t sterilize is a human being.

MR. KEIPER: Dr. Park, thank you very much.

And thank you all.

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A good debate on space exploration policy with some good questions and answers.

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