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Volume #4, Issue #1 The Mars Quarterly www.MarsSociety.org 1 IN THIS ISSUE Summer 2012 - Volume 4, Issue 1 Publisher A Space Program We Can Believe In The Mars Society Headquarters Robert Zubrin ................................................................................................... 3 11111 W. 8th Ave., Unit A Lakewood, CO 80215 USA Red Dragon Mission www.MarsSociety.org A DISCUSSION WITH CHRIS MCKAY ............................................................ 4 President .........................Robert Zubrin Executive Director .......... Lucinda Land Director, Strategic Planning A Discussion with John Callas ............................ Susan Holden Martin PROGRAM MANAGER: MER .......................................................................... 6 Director of Membership .......................................................Open Director, Public Relations The 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention .............. 9 ........................................ Michael Stoltz Director, University Rover Challenge ............................................Kevin Sloan A Discussion with Gernot Groemer Director, Mars Desert Research Station PolARES .......................................................................................................... 10 .......................................................Open The Mars Quarterly Editor-in-Chief .... Susan Holden Martin Art Director ..................Keith Keplinger, Keplinger Designs, Inc. Editorial Team/Copy & Proof ................. Kenneth Katz, Debbie Foch, Larissa Douglass, Daniel Beliveau, Edie Tepper, Jocelyn Thomson, Esq. Legal ................ Declan O’Donnell, Esq. A Note to Readers The views expressed in articles are the authors’ and not necessarily those of The Cover design by Mars Quarterly, or The Mars Society. Caitlin Folchman-Wagner. Authors may have business relationships with the companies or agencies they discuss. FROM THE FLIGHT DECK Reproduction The Mars Quarterly is published quarterly by The Mars Society, Lakewood, Colorado, USA. Volume 4, Issue 1, © 2012, The Mars Welcome back to the pages of The advocacy organizations is an Society. Nothing herein contained may be Mars Quarterly, which has been on a extraordinary opportunity to enjoy the reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, brief hiatus due to scheduling issues. best of both. Register today at: http:// including photocopy, recording, or any As this issue goes to press, we are home.marssociety.org/2012-convention- information storage and retrieval system, gearing up for our 15th Annual registration/. without written permission of The Mars International Convention which will be In this issue we offer interviews with Society. held at the Pasadena Convention NASA scientists Christopher McKay Advertisers send email to Center, August 3-5. The convention and John Callas, as well as Gernot [email protected]. Address will continue into the evening hours of Groemer of the Austrian Space Forum. letters, general inquiries, or send member dues or charitable donations to The Mars August 5, so that attendees can join us We invite you to read beyond our Society, 11111 West 8th Avenue, Unit A, in viewing the landing of the Mars pages to fully understand the extent of Lakewood, CO 80215, USA. Please include Science Laboratory - Curiosity. The their respective contributions to Mars your full name, address, and daytime phone number. The Mars Society is a 501(c)(3) convention hall will also be hosting research and exploration. organization. The Planetary Society on August 4-5, and this conjunction of space See you in Pasadena! The Mars Quarterly 2 Volume 4, Issue 1 A Space Program We Can Believe In Robert Zubrin First published at SpaceNews on May 21, reprinted with permission. The current administration says it around technologies that are either in wishes to set a course towards hand or clearly feasible. Making the sending humans to Mars. If it does, mission dependent upon fantastical here are the essential features that futuristic systems, such as gigantic such a program needs to have in 100,000 kilowatt nuclear electric order to succeed. spaceships is simply another way of 1. The Mission Objectives insuring that it never happens. Must Be Worthwhile. 4. The Mission Leadership The reason to send humans to Mars Must Not Be Feckless. is not to set a new altitude record for It is essential that issues be dealt the aviation almanac. Rather it is to with as problems to be solved, rather conduct serious exploration that will than as excuses for avoiding action. resolve the questions of the potential Thus, for example, NASA needs to existence and diversity of life in the stop hiding behind the cosmic universe and open a new world to radiation and zero gravity health human settlement. Therefore missions issues as excuses for not going to that do not actually land on Mars, or Mars until unobtainable propulsion only stay for brief durations, are to be systems are available. More than half shunned. There is no point going to a dozen astronauts and cosmonauts Mars unless you can do something have already received cumulative useful when you get there. If the cosmic ray doses during extended program is not solidly based on such stays in Earth orbit without harm. Zero a rational foundation, it will be gravity health effects can be avoided cancelled long before it ever goes by rotating the spacecraft to create anywhere. artificial gravity. 2. The Mission Must 5. Mission Success Must be Be Proximate. the Highest Priority. Claiming one is setting a goal of That may seem self-evident, but it is sending humans to Mars in the year not. The achievement of mission 2047, or some other far future date, is success requires really flying the risible. No one living several decades mission (see relevant points, above). hence will know or care what today’s Furthermore, placing the highest NASA’s officials chose to put into their priority on mission success means schedules, and to assign the mission placing mission success above crew to execution by such people is simply safety. There are an unlimited number to avoid commitment. For the of candidate technical improvements, program to be real, it needs to be Leek Julian precursor missions, and test programs planned in a way that will allow it to possible, with the fewest needs for that could potentially marginally be flown by people who are in the new technologies. The wrong way is improve the safety of the first Mars astronaut corps today, not by to take the most complex approach, mission crew. But if all, or even a generations yet unborn. Furthermore, with the maximum expenditures for significant fraction of them, were for the program to have any chance of new technologies. The Mars mission attempted, the mission would never success, it must reach its objective should thus not be designed for the fly, and we would guarantee program within a limited time. Otherwise the purpose of justifying the complete failure achieved at infinite cost. political conditions that allowed it to assortment of NASA or industry Precursor activities might improve the be launched will almost certainly advanced technology efforts seeking chances of a given Mars mission, but disappear before it reaches its goal. funding. Running a program that way they come at the cost of reducing the 3. The Mission Plan Must is like running a company with its number of missions that can be flown, Be Practical. expenditures determined by its and they certainly cannot be allowed The right way to do engineering is vendors. Practicality furthermore to proliferate to the point where they to take the simplest approach requires that the mission be designed continued on page 12 The Mars Quarterly www.MarsSociety.org 3 Red Dragon Mission A Discussion with Chris McKay TMQ I understand from reading become suitable for life at high only way to get into it is with a drill. A several media reports that you coined liquidity and it is accessible. Ice can shovel, a spade, an arm, they just the name Red Dragon. preserve bio-markers, if there is life. won’t work - as Phoenix found out. CHRIS No, I didn’t. John Karcz’s The low elevations of the northern So the key bit of technology that partner suggested it. I was the one plains contains ice that if warmed up, allows us to sample inside the ice is who put it in the press. But John came would form a liquid and be stable, the drill. Our drill has to be over a in one day and said he was talking unlike the southern plains where the meter long so we can drill very deep with his partner and she said “Why pressure is too low and the ice would into the ice - deeper that anyone has don’t you call it Red Dragon?” go to vapor. Being near the poles with ever gone on Mars. The drill has been Nobody did anything with it, and then high liquidity, the Phoenix site would built and is in Honeybee Robot one day when I was talking with a get as much sunlight and as high a Company’s shop in Pasadena. That is reporter, the conversation with John the first and most important part of came back to me, and I said “We’re the Icebreaker payload. calling it Red Dragon.” The second key part of Icebreaker is an instrument called the ‘Signs of Life TMQ What is Icebreaker? Detector’. The acronym is SOLID. It is CHRIS Icebreaker is a payload, and being built in Spain and will detect the Red Dragon is a mission concept for a bio-markers of life. particular capsule for landing on Mars. TMQ How does it do that? Icebreaker is a drill and a bunch of CHRIS It detects life using amino instruments that can go to Mars on assay technology. It will have a many different capsules. In fact microchip on which we will attach Icebreaker was designed with Phoenix literally hundreds of individual as the carrier spacecraft. But it could molecular sensors that are tied to go on Red Dragon - a SpaceX capsule; specific molecules like DNA and or it could go to Mars on a Phoenix proteins, and so on. When those lander. If someone else came to me molecules are present they bind, lock with another spacecraft that was going and key, and that turns on a little to Mars, I’m sure I could figure out florescent tag that will allow us to how to strap Icebreaker on to it as determine what molecule has been well.
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