Message #26253

[mdsungate]

   Okay here is the book I read that gives a detailed stradgedy for colonizing the red planet.  It’s called “The Case For Mars” by Robert Zubrin.  He now has a web site at:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~marscase/Home.html


Here's who he is from Wikapedia:

Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of manned Mars exploration. He was the driving force behind Mars Direct—a proposal intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission. The key idea was to use the Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen, water, and rocket propellant for the surface stay and return journey. A modified version of the plan was subsequently adopted by NASA as their "design reference mission".
 Terraforming Mars, the Noble Experiment?
Summary (Jul 12, 2004): Mars Society founder, Robert Zubrin, talks about how to terraform the red planet. His engineer's eye reveals his robust plans for not just getting to a new home, but also how to build one from scratch.

Here's a quote on terraforming from this site:

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1074.html

Terraforming Mars, the Noble Experiment?
Interview with Robert Zubrin

As a former Martin-Marietta aerospace engineer, prolific author and founder of the non-profit Mars Society (1998), Robert Zubrin is regarded as the driving force behind the proposed Mars Direct mission to reduce the cost and complexity of interplanetary travel. The flight plan calls for a return journey fueled by rocket propellant harvested in situ, from the martian atmosphere itself.

As described in Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet, the Mars Direct concept eventually became a cornerstone of a frugal 'living off the land' approach to travel in NASA's Design Reference Mission. The Design Reference Mission (DRM) covers Earth launch to Mars landing, Mars cruise to Mars launch, and Earth return. The mission entails sending cargo ahead, docking the crew at the space station, then meeting up with the stashed supplies once on Mars.
"For our generation and many that will follow, Mars is the New World," writes Zubrin. The New York Times Book Review (Dennis Overbye) indicated how such an outline initially was greeted as breaking conventional wisdom about martian mission plans: "Part history, part call to arms, part technical manual, part wishful thinking, The Case for Mars ... lays out an ingenious plan. ......one of the most provocative and hopeful documents I have read about the space program in 20 years."

So private enterprise is "thinking" about it.  My thought here is that there is nothing new under the sun.  And if we can terraform Mars in the future, have "we" or someone humanoid, done it in the past?