The case for exploring space

The desire for space exploration goes far deeper than political ambition or economic drive. It satisfies, in a sense, the basic necessity of a civilization to explore, play and expand outward. Here, Robert Zubrin, author of Entering Space and The Case for Mars, talks with Nexus publisher Ravi Dykema about Mars, the human need for exploration and the possibility of a celestial civilization.

RD:  What led you to write The Case for Mars?

RZ:  In 1990, President Bush had called for the nation to launch a program to return to the moon and go on to Mars, in what became known as the Space Exploration Initiative. NASA came up with a proposal for a huge program involving 30 years and $450 billion. With the long time line and the incredible cost, the project died in congress. I was working as an astronautical engineer at Martin Marietta, and my colleagues and I realized we could put together something a lot better than the NASA plan, so we pulled together a team of the most creative engineers in the company. We couldn't agree with each other, so we came up with three plans, all of which were better than the NASA one, but which couldn't be reconciled with each other. Martin Marietta decided to present all three, to see what would happen.

      One of the plans was Mars Direct, developed by me and David Baker. A radical departure from the NASA report, it involved no orbital bases, no construction of giant interplanetary spaceships, no nuclear propulsion-it was a much simpler and cheaper plan. To develop the plan, we asked ourselves, "How have we successfully explored on earth?" And our answer was by living off the land. Louis and Clark never would have made it across America if they tried to bring food, water and air. They would have needed thousands of wagons, and all those wagoneers and their horses would have needed thousands more wagons, and it would have been impossible.

      Most of what the NASA mission was shipping to Mars was the fuel and oxygen required to come home. But if you're going to go to Mars to stay, you're going to have to figure out how to be self-sufficient there anyway, so why not think about how to use Martian resources to make the plan possible? We came up with an elementary scheme involving processing the Martian atmosphere into rocket fuel and oxygen, allowing a ship to go to Mars without all the propellant, which means it can be much smaller, and the booster that can launch it is much smaller and it doesn't need to be built in orbit, and everything becomes possible.

RD:  And using current technology, rather than advanced technology not yet developed?

RZ:  That's true-the key technology wasn't even what I would call modern technology. It's really 19th century chemical engineering. Initially, the Mars Direct program was incredibly controversial. We had immense support, including from NASA, and incredible opposition right from the beginning because it was a total break from the previous paradigm of thinking about Mars missions-constructing giant interplanetary spaceships that sail to Mars with all the propellants for the round-trip, and dispatch a little landing craft down to Mars to plant the flag and leave. Around 1992, I started working with Johnson Space Center, and by 1994, they had adopted a variant of the plan as their own, but twice the size of mine. Their plan had a bigger crew, a bigger ship, more and heavier equipment, but it still used the direct launch and live-off-the-land philosophy. The cost was estimated at $50 billion-much less than the NASA model, and in the range of costs that was similar to what the government spends all the time on medium-sized military procurements for ground attack helicopters that they don't even use when the wars start happening. Word got out to Newsweek magazine, and they published a cover story in July 1994. A literary agent approached me about a book, and I wrote The Case for Mars. But it was more than just how to get to Mars. It was as much about why-why I have always felt it's extremely important that humanity open up new worlds for itself.

RD:  Humanity has long explored the unknown, and it seems likely our country was founded because of that spirit. There's a compelling reason to settle elsewhere.

RZ:  That's true. Exploration is fundamental to civilization, and to our species. We did not originate here. Humans originated in Africa, where they stayed for 150,000 years until, for some reason, small groups of people decided to venture out-first the Middle East, then into Europe and Asia, right into the start of the Ice Age. It's sort of bizarre, because humans are not adapted to the cold-we're tropical animals, and we only exist outside of the tropics by virtue of technology, including fire, clothing, housing and skills required to acquire food. We're here because our ancestors had a fundamental drive to see what was over the next hill. A species that remains limited to a seemingly small geographical range and a limited repertoire of behaviors, is one that is on a delicate plank towards extinction. A healthy civilization needs to continue to explore. Now, the space frontier is different in a positive way than terrestrial frontiers. If we talk about the frontier-say, in North America-it was an open frontier to Europeans, but the place was not unpopulated. There were others who suffered. In space, at least in our solar system, there are no Indians on Mars, so we can approach it with a cleaner conscience. And it has all the positive aspects of what we've seen in open frontiers on earth without the negative side.

RD:  Under the Kennedy administration, the United States sent a mission to the moon, which advanced science and inspired our imagination. How would a mission to Mars contribute to our imagination?

RZ:  In the Apollo mission, Kennedy made use of the energies available from the Cold War competition to mobilize support to mount a moon program. The United States took money that could have been spent on nuclear missiles and spent it on Saturn Fives. And it inspired us. Inspiration gets millions of kids to go and get scientific educations, and that changes the world. The real payoff from Apollo wasn't Tang or computers or the Internet. The payoff is that millions of kids said "I want to be part of this." And they became scientists and engineers and inventors and medical researchers and doctors and so forth. I'll bet if you polled the 40-something billionaires in Silicon Valley, you would find that a large chunk of them were inspired by the push into space during Apollo. We created an incredible amount of intellectual capital, which is the true wealth of a nation.

RD:  And it occurred during the 1960s, when it seemed anything was possible.

RZ:  That's true. There was a more hopeful attitude, and we were more idealistic. There was a sense then that the world could be re-made and the space program epitomized that feeling. The current space program does not have drive like it had in the '60s. We don't have a goal that's making the nation's reach exceed its grasp. None of the effort is focused, and the level of accomplishment is much less. I don't believe returning to the moon is an appropriate goal for the space program. We can't inspire a new generation of youth with the challenge of repeating what their grandparents did. People need challenge, societies need challenge. People need to slay dragons-this is why war is popular. But it's clear that technology has reached the point where, rather than challenge the abilities of leading states, war would destroy even civilization.

RD: You are supposing then that, in the past, war could challenge society, mobilize imagination and drive technology?

RZ:  To some extent, it did. There's no question that jet airplanes and radio and so on were developed under military stress. But that doesn't work anymore-war as a test of personal valor really went out with firearms. Now, two questions remain. One, how do you maintain a comparable societal drive which will challenge a society with tasks that are currently beyond its capabilities? Two, when there is no outside challenge, can you still climb mountains when there's nobody to compete against? Or, given that you can, will you?

RD:  What about Mars? Could people actually live there?

RZ:  Initially, you would need enclosed habitation, because the atmosphere on Mars is not breathable, though it could be made breathable. But it's far more habitable than the moon. You could set up a greenhouse on the moon and grow plants in it, but you'd have to bring water. And you'd have to bring the carbon that goes into the plants, because there's no carbon on the moon. And there's no nitrogen on the moon, so you'd have to bring nitrates. And there's only a little bit of sulfur and phosphorus and calcium and things like that. So other than oxygen, none of the main elements of life are present on the moon. On Mars, on the other hand, there's water, there's carbon dioxide, there's nitrogen, and the secondary elements of life are there as well. So if you bought a greenhouse tomorrow, all you need to bring is the seeds. And the rest of the stuff that goes into forming that living material can come from Mars.

RD:  How long would it take a spaceship to reach Mars?

RZ:  Six months with current technology. Someday it could be faster.

RD: And other than the excitement of exploring, what's the reason to put a colony on Mars?   

RZ:  One reason, as we've discussed, is for the sheer challenge that keeps humans and society alive. Another is for the knowledge of a new world. If we find fossils of past life on Mars, that means life is everywhere in the universe. It means we're not alone, and that's worth finding out. A third reason is for the future. If we do this now, in 200 years there will be a new branch of human civilization on Mars, and they will have developed their own culture and language, they will have made innumerable contributions to literature, philosophy and technology, they will have created their own history of epic deeds-they will have written a chapter in the human story. And when they look back at what we're doing today, will they consider it important? Will they care who was in power in Kosovo, or whether we had a national health plan or a balanced budget? Probably not. But what we did to create their civilization, that is what they will consider important, and rightly so. We will have made them possible. Giving a gift to the future of a new world is invaluable-the really important things we do with our lives are those we do for the future.

RD:  Beyond Mars, what could we do in outer space? What could we get inspired about? 

RZ:  Mars is the first step, and it is the decisive step, because it is our first venture out of Africa. When the first humans left Africa, they were taking on that first challenge that said "Can we be a species that exists somewhere else than our homeland?" By the same token, Mars is not the final destination; it's the direction. The first pioneers will go to Mars on six-month voyages in little tuna-can spaceships. But once people are there, your average business traveler won't want to take six months. He's going to want to travel on something really fast, so there will be a drive to create more advanced spaceships. And the kind of spacecraft that makes getting to Mars relatively routine will make it reasonable to go to Titan, the moon of Saturn.

      The philosopher Francis Fukiama wrote a book called The End of History shortly after the Soviet Bloc had more or less collapsed. Western liberal democratic capitalism had globally triumphed, and basically its only serious worldwide competitor had fallen apart. His theory was that history had, essentially, ended. Some things might happen-somebody wins the World Series, or Serbia gets out of line-but in any serious sense, history has stopped. He has a point, but I think he's fundamentally wrong. With the evolution of global communications, from long-distance sailing ships to telegraphs to telephones and airplanes and now the Internet and communication satellites, the globe is irrevocably linked. We have become a global civilization in every sense of the word, what a Russian space visionary named Nicolai Kardashev called a Type I civilization, one that has achieved mastery of its planet. A Type II civilization has achieved access to the full resources and potential of its solar system and Type III, of its galaxy. Having achieved Type I status, we can expand outward. By the 21st or 22nd century, people will have all sorts of ideas-political or social or economic or religious-that you or I might think are completely weird. Imagine if they had a place where they could make their own world. If we enter space and open up these multitudes of new worlds, people could experiment. Some of these noble experiments might succeed, and we might discover there is a better way.

RD:  So, unless our race goes back a few notches in its level of peace or prosperity or technology, colonization of Mars seems inevitable?

RZ:  I think it's very likely. I have faith in the human race, and in our exploratory instinct and drive. But I wouldn't call it inevitable, as if it is fated and must happen. Nothing must happen-things happen because people make them happen. And there have been civilizations that suppressed the exploratory urge. The early Chinese were fearful and resistant to exploration. Others, like the Arab civilization in its initial phase, have been extremely open-minded and exploratory. Major historians have commented on this pattern in history. It looks like this: a civilization is born somewhere, it grows, it comes into conflict with competitors and wins. Then it establishes a phase which is variously called golden age or universal empire-the best-known example in Western history is the Roman Empire.

      Rome grows, it beats Carthage, it beats the Greeks, it beats everybody else, and it consolidates the Mediterranean into a universal empire. War with competitors ends and cultural fusion begins, and we call that the golden age. Then, however, it starts to decay, because the stresses that were driving the system before have left. Once the civilization has mastered the challenges which its early history conceived of as its primary, or maybe total, challenges, it collapses. Civilizations think "This is all the world that matters and we have it." What else is there to do but stagnate?

RD:  Do you think we're stagnating? 

RZ:  I think we're faced with a crisis. We're not stagnating, although there are certain elements of stagnation in our culture. The place where you see this first is in the technosphere. Those that were most closely aligned to military necessity are dismantling capabilities now, and the level of destruction of intellectual technological capabilities is phenomenal. Incredible centers of fine research have been virtually taken apart. The sword is no longer needed, and it's been left out in the field where it's starting to rust. What we need to do is beat it into a plow share.

      Now you may say "Well, gee, I don't really care if they don't have bomb makers at Los Alamos anymore." But those people at Los Alamos were also the people who had the intellectual capabilities of creating things like space nuclear power reactors, or better nuclear reactors that could produce electricity, or fusion reactors that would have no radioactive waste at all. Those capabilities are being dismantled, and those brilliant people are going to work for US West selling cable connections to the home, and that's a huge loss.

      The perception of military necessity has driven the quest for educational excellence. It was Sputnik that forced a significant upgrading of science curricula nationally, and spurred the drive to eliminate illiteracy in the South. But if the ruling elements in society no longer consider it important to develop the intellectual potential of the population, because their power or major goals no longer depend on it, you get entropy and decadence.

      We've just completed this quest from East Africa to Type I civilization. Some of the key victories of that quest are still in human memory, like the defeat of Nazism and development of the Internet. There's still a sense that progress is possible, and that it will be possible 20 years from now to do things we don't think are possible today. R and D teams, whether for defense purposes, space purposes or technological/industrial purposes, still exist. We need to mobilize them now-it's easier to create the plow share when the steel in the sword is still good. But if we let these teams fall apart, they'd be much harder to put back together again. 

RD: What's the chance of our meeting intelligent life forms from other places? 

RZ:  I think eventually we will, but I don't think there are intelligent extraterrestrials in our solar system. The next solar system is four light-years away, so traveling at the speed of light, it would take four years to arrive there.

RD: Is it possible to travel faster?

RZ:  Current physics indicates not, and it would be difficult to even travel at the speed of light. In this book, though, I talk about systems that might be able to get up to about 30 percent the speed of light, so it would take a decade to get there. Unless we learn something really new, which is possible, we're not going to be zipping around the galaxy like in Star Trek. But we will be spreading out into the galaxy.  Eventually, we could get visited by others. Other life forms may have evolved to our level, or they may have originated 100 light years away, and be gradually diffusing outward from there. Meanwhile, we're diffusing outward from here, and eventually we'll meet. 

RD:  What do you think of the numerous people who believe that aliens are visiting us already?

RZ:  I don't think the evidence for that is particularly strong, but I do think there are aliens. We have 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone. About 10 percent of them are sufficiently like the sun that solar systems like ours could exist around them. We now know that planetary systems are not exceptional occurrences-we've identified 20 of them in nearby interstellar space. That means there are a lot more, because the method of detection that's currently being used only works when those solar systems have outlandishly large planets. I don't think if we were 10 light years away looking at our solar system right now with our current technique we would actually know that there was a solar system here. So we're only seeing the really obvious ones, and we're seeing plenty of them. 

      As Carl Sagan used to say, there are "billions and billions" of worlds out there in our galaxy alone. And there's no fundamental reason to believe that the processes that led to the development of life on earth are exceptional. So there's probably life out there, and it's probably evolving. Interstellar colonization is of massive value to any species, so they will colonize, and we will colonize, and we'll run into each other at some point.

      Sometimes people ask me, "What if we go to Mars? Do you have the right to make it like earth?" I say "Yeah, the place is dead-let's bring it to life." And they say, "Okay, we'll give you that one. But what if there's already life on Mars?" If there's any life on Mars, it's just bacteria. I think a full living planet is a more noble thing than a rock with a little bacteria on it. In the final analysis, I think humans are more important than bacteria, and if we can make a living world for humans at the expense of bacteria, I would do that as well.

      Let's say a place has plants and animals and analogs of birds and fish. It would be wrong to destroy such a thing, although if we could colonize there without disrupting that environment and preserve its nature by and large, then we would have the right to do so. If we discovered an island on earth that was big and had all sorts of wonderful trees and animals, I would think it would be fine for humans to establish cities there, so long as they didn't destroy the place. If we do that, we cramp the style of the native birds a little bit, but still it's okay.

      What if we actually discover intelligent beings? At that point, we have to expand our definition of what a person is. I'm a humanist, so I think a human has a right to chop down a tree so he can build a house. How many trees? Not all of them, because then there wouldn't be any for his descendants, but as many as he plans to replace. You don't have the right to kill another person because you have a child. Ultimately, the ethics have to be based upon what is good for people. Bringing dead worlds to life is good for people. That view only continues to be moral if, when we encounter other intelligent beings, the definition of "people" is expanded to include all intelligent, thinking beings.

      I mentioned that Type II is the solar system civilization and Type III is galactic civilization. There are no other intelligent species in our solar system, but there unquestionably are in our galaxy.  There are probably millions of other intelligent species. The galaxy is a very big place, with 400 billion stars, and probably most of them with many planets. A Type III galactic civilization is not going to be formed by one species spreading out to colonize an entire galaxy. It's impossible, because the galaxy is filled with numerous intelligent species, and the distances are too great. A Type III civilization is going to consist of millions of local intelligent civilizations spreading out until they meet each other, establish communication with each other and exchange culture with each other. The most valuable commodity we can get from aliens is not their real estate, it's their ideas. And that's the most valuable thing they can get from us.

RD:  What is the significance of encountering other intelligent species completely unlike us biologically?

RZ:  Because I'm a humanist, I had to ponder that issue for some time. Does it mean we're less special because we're not the only intelligent species? Are we to then deny that they exist for as long as we can to defend a conceit that we are the only intelligent species? I don't think that's required. Look at children: a child believes that he or she is the only person. In a certain abstract sense, they understand there are other people, but in terms of what is important to them, they are the only people. As they mature, they come to understand that there are other people who have minds and feelings and so forth. Then they can regard themselves as precious, which they are, because they are unique-they are not alone, but they are unique.

      Similarly, the value of humanity does not stem from trying to defend a notion that we're the only intelligent species. I think there are millions of intelligent species, and the evidence for that is going to become more and more apparent. But we still can be precious and unique. I don't think the particular form of intelligence we are will be duplicated. Intelligent beings, species with totally different evolutionary histories from us, will be totally different in their emotional make-up and the way they think. They'll have to solve some of the same problems we have to solve in dealing with the physical world, but the way they think about it will be completely different. The nature of their art and literature and philosophy will be completely different. Within the context of a populated galaxy, the dignity of man is still defensible and suffers not at all. Just as you are not in any way made less by virtue of the fact that other intelligent people exist, neither is our species made less by the probability that other intelligent species exist.