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Felix sat down with Robert Zubrin - Scientist, Engineer, Inventor & President of the Mars Society - to have a talk about Elon Musk, SpaceX and the future of humanity. Robert Zubrin was able to provide me with most interesting answers and gave insights into what he learned while working and talking with SpaceX's Elon Musk

Donald Trump, the mercurial real estate tycoon and media personality who, much to the surprise of one and all, has become the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president opened his mind just a little about his attitude toward space exploration, according to a Saturday story in Forbes. In an answer to a question put to him about sending humans to Mars, the current focus at NASA, Trump said, ““Honestly, I think it’s wonderful; I want to rebuild our infrastructure first, ok? I think it’s wonderful.” In other words, dreams of going to Mars must take a back seat to...

Here we often discuss history, but what of our future? I wonder this as the shuttle program ends and after reading the The Case for Mars. The exploration of space is adrift, blown about by the shallow whims of politicians only interested in making it to the next election. Will the lessons of history that tell us of the perils of short-sightedness ever impact the feeble minds of Washington?

Robert Zubrin —The Case For Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must Fifteen years ago, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin published The Case for Mars, and issued a clarion call to his fellow scientists, and the people of Earth. We need to plan our Mars colony, and we need to do it now. Today Zubrin has released an updated and revised version of his classic book, outlining the most realistic way to get ourselves to Mars and start setting up a human society there. Smart, idealistic, and pragmatic, this book is more important than ever. And...

The so-called “Great Debate” at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Saturday afternoon featuring Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was something of a dud, in part because it wasn’t that much of a debate: after ten-minute opening statements by Zubrin (who opposes the agency’s proposed plans) and Schweickart (who supports them), the floor was turned over to the audience, some of whom asked questions of the two, and others who simply expressed their opinions. Conference organizers explained that the event wasn’t intended to be a debate...

In a speech to political allies gathered at Cape Canaveral last week, President Obama laid out his vision for America's space program. Under the Obama plan, NASA will spend $100 billion on human spaceflight over the next 10 years in order to accomplish nothing. Of course, that's not how Mr. Obama phrased it. But beneath the President's flowery rhetoric, that's how things add up. Here's the background. In 2004, the Bush administration launched a program called Constellation to develop a set of flight systems, including the Orion crew capsule and the Ares 1 and Ares 5 medium and heavy lift...

President Obama has called for a determined effort to free America from the hold of the international oil cartel. As his prime measure to achieve this, he has advanced a proposal to create a “cap-and -trade” system to limit carbon emissions. While the president’s stated objective is indeed worthy and in fact critical to the future of the nation, unfortunately, as a means to achieve it, a carbon cap-and-trade system is a complete non sequitur. The cap-and-trade mechanism is primarily a method of constricting electricity production. The United States only gets 3% of its electricity from oil. Thus taxing...

Congress is currently debating an economic stimulus package that would spend nearly a trillion dollars on measures of doubtful timeliness and efficacy. Here are three ideas on how to really hit the target much quicker, harder and for a lot less. 1. To resolve the credit crisis, make all down payments on house purchases tax-deductible. The credit crisis has been caused by a collapse of the housing market, which has made trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities held by major financial institutions worthless. This can be rapidly remedied by reboosting the housing market, which a tax deduction on all (not...

December 13, 2007, 0:00 a.m. The Alcohol CureHow to break the oil monopoly in this decade. By Clifford D. May “We are financing a war against ourselves,” writes Robert Zubrin, nuclear engineer and author of a new book responding to the distressing fact that Americans and Europeans are sending trillions of dollars to militant Islamists whose goal is our destruction. But in his new book, Energy Victory, Dr. Zubrin does not just complain. He proposes a way to break free of dependence on a resource controlled by those who have declared themselves our mortal enemies. The technology already exists....

Christine Miles, News That’s To The Point, KOIN-TV (CBS affiliate in Portland, Oregon) 5:48 A.M., January 15, 2003 -- Reporting about the proposed billion dollar a year increase in NASA’s annual budget, and a new focus on the creation of a permanent moon base. A stepping stone toward the goal of a manned mission to Mars sometime around 2030. Miss Miles said, “Many people feel that President Bush needs a reality check.” This, of course, is a reference to the belief held by some (all liberal) Americans that the money should instead be spent by government on bloated and inefficient...

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...

Seeking a rationale for human space exploration by Jeff FoustMonday, February 9, 2004 It would be difficult to find two people whose opinions on human spaceflight are farther apart than Robert Park and Robert Zubrin. Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland who is perhaps better known as the director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society and author of their “What’s New” weekly newsletter, is a staunch opponent of human spaceflight, arguing that robotic missions can do science just as well and for far less money. Zubrin, founder and president of the Mars Society, is...

<p>Floral bouquets and mementos are continuing to be placed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington as mourning for the seven astronauts who died in the Columbia disaster continues. It's appropriate that time be taken to mourn, and also to thoroughly examine what went wrong. Those flaws must be found and corrected. However, that mourning and those investigations must not keep NASA from fulfilling its primary mission of space exploration. In his Saturday address announcing the loss of the Columbia and its crew, President Bush said, "The cause in which they died will continue . . . Our journey into space will go on."</p>