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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
Watch and share interviews with professors, lecturers, researchers, engineers, scientists and astronauts, right here! We talk to the most extraordinary people working on the frontiers for humanity, driving research forwards and changing the world that we live in. We dive deep with thinkers, academics and true icons - many of whom you won't yet have heard of.
Listen to us here and on podcast whilst you drive, exercise, do chores, and be inspired to pursue extraordinary in your own life.
www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:02.102)
I am so privileged and delighted to be joined today by one of the most important voices of my generation when it comes to spaceflight, space exploration, and having a big vision for the future of what humans could achieve in the cosmos off planet. He is the author of many outstanding books that you should read, including some of my favorites, The Case for Mars, The Case for Space.
and Mars Direct and you can still get a little copy if you can find it somewhere on Amazon and places like that and I recommend it to students often. It's a privilege to be with you today, Dr. Robert Zubrin. Thank you for joining me.
Robert Zubrin (00:40.957)
My pleasure.
Polymath World (00:42.75)
Excellent. Would you just start, for those who are unfamiliar, by giving us a quick rundown of your career journey and your history and how you founded the Mars Society and what your experience has been.
Robert Zubrin (00:57.215)
Okay, so I'm an aerospace engineer. I spent a few years as a science teacher before I went back to school and got an engineering degree. But then I worked for a number of years for the big companies, Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin. And then I started my own company, Pioneer Astronautics, which did research and development on contract for NASA. And which I led for...
27 years until I sold it in 2023. And also in the mid 90s, well actually 1996, I published a book called The Case for Mars, which explained my ideas on how we could do human Mars missions in our time. These were ideas that I had worked while I was working for the Martin Company.
and which became well known then and which I then at that time I published it in the form of technical papers but in the case for Mars I presented it to the broader public and the book was successful. Over a hundred thousand copies were sold and I got four thousand letters. A few emails but this was the 90s, mostly real letters and from people all over the world and
They asked all kinds of questions, between the lines they were all asking the same question, which is how do we make this happen? And I and a number of people who were sort of thinking like me, there was an informal network of people at that time called the Mars Underground, and people don't want to make human...
exploration of reality, we looked at this incredible response and we said, gee, if we could pull these people together, we might have a force that could actually make it happen. And so we called the founding convention of the Mars Society and 700 people showed up and world's leading press, the New York Times, the BBC, the Washington Post, you name it, they were there.
Robert Zubrin (02:55.371)
and we came out of that convention with a global organization, 25 chapters in almost all major countries and a few small ones too. And now there's 40 chapters. And so we decided we do three things of which one was simply outreach, spread the vision. Second was political work to defend the various Mars programs in the political forum to make sure they got funded. And a third of projects of our own of which there's been
number but the most well-known and probably the most important have been our establishment of practice Mars stations. We have one in the Canadian Arctic on Devon Island and we have one in the American desert in Utah, the Mars Desert Research Station. And we do some other things too but that's what we've been doing and one of the people that we managed to draw to
Mars, Make Mars is Calling, this process was Elon Musk. Both the book itself and also the Mars Society activity that followed later, basically we convinced him to Make Mars is Calling and that of course has had now a significant impact on events following that.
Polymath World (04:16.747)
Yes, it's a remarkable story. think about almost 30 years now of the number of analog astronauts, the number of analog projects happening all over the world. I feel very privileged to be part of the Mars Society here in the UK with our education and outreach work. I wonder if before we could go further, you might comment on the recent events. NASA's budget has just been slashed by billions and the administrator
barely been there for a cup of coffee, you five minutes is now step down, Jared Isaacman. What do you think this means for the immediate implications of NASA, human spaceflight and Mars?
Robert Zubrin (05:00.563)
Well, it does present some real problems, And we were seeing these problems even before Jared Isaacman got the boot, which was the proposed drastic cuts in NASA's space science budget, 50%, essentially terminating the robotic Mars exploration program, as well as the, you know,
Roman Space Telescope, which was all built, is all built, and is planned for launch next year. They're canceling the program.
many other missions. Hubble will probably be abandoned under this budget. Webb will be sharply curtailed in its operations. Voyager will be abandoned. New Horizons, Pluto, which is proceeding into interstellar space, be abandoned. There'll be no new starts. Dragonfly, Mission to Titan's off the table.
It's a wrecking operation. It's a 50 % cut in the most productive part of NASA. at the time it was proposed, they were still talking about doing Musk's Humans to Mars mission. And I pointed out that if they're doing this, they're going to kill that mission because they're going to make the whole science community enemies of that program. They're going to say, we were killed because of this crazy Musk Humans to Mars program.
which means that it would not have the legs to outlast the Trump administration. And now Trump actually went and got rid of Isaacsman. Now, Isaacsman was a good man. He was good man. And he was opposed to these cuts, so they iced him. They just, I mean, you know.
Robert Zubrin (06:56.871)
Trump likes yes men. If you look at these Trump cabinet meetings where they go around the table and each person is asked to praise Donald Trump. It's like North Korea or something. That wasn't Isaacman. Now here's the thing. They may nominate someone else who's talented, but if he's not a yes man, he's not gonna last.
And so we'll just have to see how that pans out. I I hope I'm wrong. hope that having gotten so much bad press from doing this to Isaac Min, they'll be less quick to pull the same stunt on the next guy. But we'll just have to see. But look, OK, the situation is this. OK.
There's one or two bright stars here. One is Starship. SpaceX, while they've been having some problems, nevertheless has been moving at a pretty good pace at developing Starship, which if it does succeed, and I think it will, there's just problems they have to work through.
their methodology launch, fly, crash, figure out what went wrong, try again.
Falcon 1 did not succeed until its fourth flight. didn't succeed in landing Falcon 9 until the sixth try. They didn't succeed in landing the Starship upper stage until the sixth try. So now I guess we're coming up on flight number four or five of the Super Heavy. So...
Robert Zubrin (08:46.463)
They're getting there. My guess is that they will have a successful flight to orbit by the end of this year. what this will be once this succeeds is a remarkable thing. It will be a fully reusable heavy lift launch vehicle. A vehicle with a payload capacity, three quarters of that of the Saturn V, but fully reusable. So the cost to orbit will be
maybe 5 % the cost of a Saturn V and 1 % the cost of a space shuttle in terms of cost per kilogram to orbit. So this is terrific.
Robert Zubrin (09:33.823)
Now, I I have some technical ideas on how one would use this to actually execute human moon and Mars missions. I've written them up in number of papers. One that is available online is called The Mars Dream is Alive. It's in a journal called The New Atlantis. It's free. You can find it. But OK, so that's the good news that the primary technical instrument
needed to send humans to Mars is well on its way. Now we had until this week a situation where you also had Musk, who is an advocate of humans to Mars, in a very influential position within the Trump administration. Now that relationship appears to be breaking down because
I mean, I disagree with Musk on a number of things, for example, Ukraine and so forth. We do not see eye to eye on that. But one thing Musk is not is a yes man. And so I guess it was predictable that he and Trump would break up. And they appear to be rapidly.
resolving their marriage. We'll see. It might be repairable. knows? But, and also, mean, frankly, you know, there were anti-Musk people in the Trump administration, and I believe they saw getting rid of Isaacman as a way to stick a knife into Musk, because Isaacman's a friend of Musk. And, um...
So there was that, was some petty stuff going on there too. Now Trump did say in his inaugural address, he's gonna get humans to Mars. Now whether he's gonna stick by that now that he is broken up with Musk, you know, he might've just said that while Musk was shoveling him money. And now, you know, Musk said that he's going to stop shoveling money in that direction and that could be part of...
Robert Zubrin (11:53.899)
why they're not getting along. But we'll see, you know, if Trump comes in and wrecks the NASA space science program and in addition doesn't even try to do something else, then you know what is he? He's the president who gave up the solar system and we'll see if he's fine with that.
Polymath World (12:18.157)
Yeah.
Polymath World (12:24.821)
Yeah, such a tremendous waste of talent, brain power, funding, planning, preparation, everything. Yeah, we're trying to remain hopeful. Interestingly, I first met you at the British Interplanetary Society two years ago where you had a debate with Lord Martin Rees over his book, The End of Astronauts. And you were making the case for human space flight still being important.
robots can't just do it all. I wondered if you could...
Robert Zubrin (12:57.287)
Right, but that is not to say that I oppose robots. And in fact, the Mars Society has been mobilizing ever since these cuts to the NASA space science program, which is the robotic exploration program, mobilizing to get Congress to repel that assault on American.
Polymath World (13:02.088)
certainly, yes.
Robert Zubrin (13:23.795)
Well, international science, because it's an international program actually.
Polymath World (13:28.565)
Yes. Do you think, by the way, I don't know all the fine details, but Musk was planning on launching on a Starship a humanoid AI robot. Do you think that's going to get lost in the mix as well?
Robert Zubrin (13:44.329)
Well, I think, well, maybe, maybe not, but here's the problem. This...
Robert Zubrin (13:57.811)
demonstrates a certain failure of vision on Musk's part. Number one, he had maybe been making extravagant statements claiming he was going to send the first starship to Mars next year. I believe there is no chance of that happening.
Now there is a chance he could send an unmanned starship to Mars in 2028. The next opportunity after next year will be 2028. So they could get off an unmanned starship to Mars with a lot of hard work and luck. Yeah, it could be done. But the idea of using that to land a Tesla robot mannequin on Mars is...
It's not right. It's an insult to the scientific community. If you land an unmanned starship on Mars, preparatory to a human mission, you want to make that a robotic science expedition. The kind of payload that a starship could land on Mars could be not just one rover, but like 30 rovers and 30 helicopters and a well-instrumented science lab so the rovers and the helicopters could fan out and bring samples from near and far back to the landing site and put them under microscopes.
and chemical tests and so forth, and you can make this a massive payoff science mission. And if you did that, then all of a sudden the science community would, instead of seeing Starship and Musk as their enemy, who is behind an administration that is murdering their program, they would see it as something that is developing the capabilities that could increase the capabilities of Mars science a hundredfold, which it can't.
Polymath World (15:41.623)
Yes.
Robert Zubrin (15:42.223)
So, see, was cute when Musk did the demonstration of the Falcon Heavy. He had it launch a Tesla with a dummy in it called Starman off into interplanetary space. And that was fun, great photograph of a guy driving a red Tesla off into space. But that...
You know, just going into space somewhere isn't much of a science opportunity. If you've got the capability, Musk says he can land 100 tons on Mars. Let's say he really can do 30. That's still gigantic compared to current capabilities. You want to make use of that to do real science. You want to show that the Human Mars Program, and in particular, not only the heavy lift, but heavy payload delivery capability that it represents,
represents is an enormous boon to science. That's what they need to do to make this program bipartisan. Because even if Trump and Musk were to stay together, they are both extremely partisan figures. And if this is seen as their program, that they're doing this Musk thing because Musk wants to do his thing,
the program gets killed as soon as the fortunes of political war shift, which they always do. This has got to be transformed.
at a minimum from a Trump must program to an American program and preferably a free world program. don't think in the current situation, global situation, it is possible to have a fully international mission. I think at this point the lines have been drawn. But I do think we can go to Mars together with our friends and allies and this should be something that is used to pull together the democracies.
Robert Zubrin (17:35.729)
which is perhaps an imperative that Trump does not recognize, but I do and a lot of people do. And if this program was being used for that purpose, once again, it would get a lot more bipartisan and international support. But at a minimum, it's got to be an American program. It cannot be a must copy horse.
Polymath World (17:53.805)
Yeah, especially
Polymath World (18:01.421)
Right, yeah. Especially when facing the prospect that the ISS will be decommissioned in the near future and that's a huge international cooperative endeavor. Where's the cooperative endeavor going to come from? Well, Mars would certainly fit the brief or at least the moon, but no SLSs are being launched anytime soon either. in brief, why do you think
human spaceflight is still so important as opposed to purely robotic inspiration missions.
Robert Zubrin (18:38.897)
Well, first of all, is the case that human explorers can vastly outclass robots in terms of the science they can do. I mean, if we're going to find life on Mars, first of all, even to find fossils, you've got to hike long distances through unimproved, difficult terrain. You've got to climb up...
cliffs and down into canyons. You've got to do heavy work, digging and pickaxe work. You've got to do delicate work, like carefully splitting open the pages of shales that have been frozen together as sedimentary rocks. And then, and you've got to, you know.
This is way beyond the capability of robotic rovers. And to find life, we're going to have to drill. Drill, if there's life on Mars today, it's not on the surface, it's underground, perhaps as much as a kilometer underground where there is liquid water. Life needs liquid water. The only place where there's liquid water on Mars today is the groundwater. Groundwater is an environment that supports lots of microbial life on Earth. It could support it on Mars. We got to go look. And that means setting up drilling rigs.
rigs and bringing up samples of water and taking it to a lab and examining it under microscopes and subjecting it to various kinds of biochemistry testing and so forth, once again, way beyond the ability of robots. So you want to send humans for that purpose. And then obviously, if you ever want to settle Mars, you've got to send humans to Mars because that's what settlement is.
To find out the truth about Mars and to find out, frankly, the truth about the human future, to find out whether humanity can become a space-faring species with an open universe in its future, we've got to send humans to Mars.
Polymath World (20:38.571)
Yeah. Yeah. And of course, all the inspiration that comes with it. I mean, you are part of the Silicon Valley generation that all came out of the inspiration of the Apollo program and met many who who are in science and technology and mathematics who are there because of Apollo today. But human will aside, I read Mars Direct many times. I've given it to students. What are the biggest technological challenges that remain?
in terms of going to Mars or if the political will was there could we launch at the next window and put people there.
Robert Zubrin (21:17.439)
Okay, so you're asking what are the technological obstacles to human Mars exploration as opposed to settlement because settlement brings in a whole bunch of additional questions. For instance, you have to grow food at scale on Mars to settle Mars. You don't need to do that for exploration. Mars explorers can just bring their food. It's not a technology issue at all. Okay, so if we're talking human explorers,
Polymath World (21:30.796)
Yes.
Polymath World (21:34.977)
Yes.
Robert Zubrin (21:46.565)
I believe that the fundamental technologies have all been developed. There has to be hardware incarnations of those technologies.
In other words, we need space nuclear power. But we had a space nuclear reactor in the 1960s, although it small. We had nuclear power since the 1950s. We had nuclear power before we had color television. So the idea of creating space nuclear power, it's not like we're venturing into unknown realms of science or something. We're just talking about doing good engineering.
Rockets. We know how to do rockets. Life support. Life support systems could be better, but if you make the ones we have triply redundant, they're good enough to support a Mars expedition.
one fails you have two more backups. This kind of thing. It's there. And now we have pending, well we actually have a functioning heavy lift launch vehicle which is SLS, but we're about to have a much cheaper one, the Starship. I mean realistically I would say the following, that
we could with some determination.
Robert Zubrin (23:07.379)
have our first robotic starship landing on Mars, launch in 2028, it would land in 2029, just the way it is. Maybe another such mission, a better one in 2031, and the first human landing in 2033. And that's eight years from now. We took eight years to go from Kennedy's speech to landing people on the moon. And we are much better prepared today to send people to Mars than they were.
to send people to the moon. mean, you know, you know, here, I'll show you the kind of computers we had when we sent people to the moon. Here you go.
Polymath World (23:53.143)
Yes.
Robert Zubrin (23:53.567)
The younger engineers won't even know what this is. It's called the slide rule. We didn't even have things like hand electric calculators, let alone iPhones. We had these and then gigantic computers that had
one millionth the computing capability of stuff that you can buy for under a thousand dollars today.
We can do this, but it is a question of focus and determination. It is a question of courage, the ability, the willingness to accept risk, to do things you haven't done before. And yes, and ingenuity and technical virtuosity and attention to detail and all those things. And...
and unity. Apollo had bipartisan support. People were for it. We can't do this with a house divided. But we can do this. And we can, if we rise to this challenge, once again, astonish the world with what free people can do. We can defeat the narrative being promoted by the authoritarians, that the democracies are decadent. They're the people of the past. They are the people of the future. The future belongs to them. Tomorrow belongs to me.
We defeated the Nazis when they said that and we defeated the Soviets when they said that and we can defeat the Chinese-led authoritarian alliance now that they are saying that. But we have to do it. It doesn't happen by itself.
Polymath World (25:48.782)
Let me ask you about one thing in particular. My field of research is DNA repair. When I talk to my supervisor and others at the University of Reading about this, they are shocked that anyone could live five minutes on Mars with the bombardment. The difference being 80 times the radiation on the surface of Mars as to what it is on the surface of Earth. I don't think there would be a problem for a shorter...
mission or sort of a one month stay. But if people were to stay for over two years, what's the best solution in your mind for the DNA damage problem?
Robert Zubrin (26:28.881)
Okay, the radiation doses on the surface of Mars are comparable to those on the ISS. That is, are twice those in interplanetary space. reason why they're... Excuse me. They are half those in interplanetary space. Interplanetary space is twice them. The reason for the factor of two is in both ISS and the surface of Mars, you got a planet under you and that's blocking out half the sky.
Polymath World (26:44.183)
Yes.
Robert Zubrin (26:59.241)
The Earth's magnetic field does not block cosmic rays. We are protected on the Earth's surface in cosmic rays by the atmosphere, which is the equivalent of 10 meters of water sitting on top of you.
In the ISS, you're above that water. All you got is the magnetic field. And that blocks solar flares, have energies, the particles have energies of 1 million volts. It does not block cosmic rays that have energies of a billion volts. Now on Mars, the surface of Mars.
There is no magnetic field to speak of, but there is a thin atmosphere which gives comparable protection to people on that is it will block solar flares. The Mars atmosphere as thin as it is, equivalent actually more than what we would want for a solar flare storm shelter. It can stop million volt particles. Absolutely. So the only things hitting the surface are the cosmic rays, which also hit you in the ISS. And we have had people spend a year and a half
in the ISS and there have been people who've had cumulative radiation exposures between the ISS and other predecessors Russian space stations like the Mir over two years and we see no radiological casualties among them. All the health effects that we have seen associated with spaceflight have been zero gravity effects.
which we would, people get deconditioned in zero gravity because you don't get to exercise your bones and muscles as even a very non-athletic person just walking around on Earth is holding up 150 pounds on their legs as they walk around. You don't get that in space.
Robert Zubrin (28:55.441)
So you get deconditioned unless you really work out on the exercise machines. But on Mars, there's one third gravity. If you're walking around wearing a heavy spacesuit, you're going to get some exercise. And yeah, you also can use your exercise machines. So that is a health effect that's there for those who choose to...
sedentary but is not a showstopper for a mission by any stretch.
Polymath World (29:27.213)
Yes, I was speaking to NASA astronaut Michael Foll, who is one of those who spent, I think he was the first NASA astronaut to accumulate over a year between Mir and the ISS. And he said honestly, when he was beginning in the 1990s, he really thought he was an astronaut who was going to be among those who would go to Mars. And it didn't happen and there were the optimists and the pessimists.
I'd like to know what you are most optimistic about and what you're most hopeful about. You know, I point people towards the incredible boom in biology at the moment and we have tools in the biological sciences that we didn't have 10, 15 years ago. Is there something that gives you most reason for hope and optimism?
Robert Zubrin (30:19.795)
Well, biotech...
is certainly something that's going to play a big role in the settling of Mars. There you're going to want to use genetic engineering to create much more productive kinds of plants because of the very limited acreage that is going to be available to you. That's going to have tremendous benefits to people on Earth, making agriculture vastly more productive. And even very unconventional kinds of agriculture and aquaculture can be done and will need to be done. It's going to be a forcing function.
Vete, vite, vite, vite. And I think also for settling Mars, we're going to want fusion power because there's no fossil fuels on Mars, but deuterium is five times as common on Mars as it is on Earth. So there's a lot of things that are new about Mars that will force various kinds of technology development, which is one of the key benefits of settling Mars for Earth, creating another highly inventive pioneer culture that will make its contribution.
The most hopeful thing on the scene right now
Robert Zubrin (31:31.639)
is the birth of entrepreneurial space sector. One of the major accomplishments of Musk, aside from his specific technical achievements, is simply demonstrating the power of entrepreneurial innovation. That is, he's been able to show that a well-led entrepreneurial team can do things in space flight that previously thought only the governments of superpowers could do.
and not only that, do it in one third the time at one tenth the cost and even do things that they had said couldn't be done at all. And as a result of that demonstration, there are many, many emulators right now. have this birth of this whole entrepreneurial space sector. Now, yeah, now you talk about Michael Fult, an astronaut in sort of the 1990s period, saying he thought he could go to Mars. Frankly, if we had done things right, the astronaut
and the Apollo period could have gone to Mars. NASA had plans to send humans to Mars by the early 1980s. the, and astronauts, some of the younger Apollo astronauts like John Young, who was still a shuttle era astronaut, but he did go to the moon, could have been among those who went to Mars. But...
You know, we killed the program after the moon landing. was like Columbus coming back from the New World the first time and Ferdinand and Isabella saying, what, who cares, we're not interested in this. That's about how stupid the political class was. So now we have alternative leadership. And yes, and some of those people, mean, Musk can certainly be quite erratic. But at this point, Musk has...
made a decisive contribution if he should skate off the edge of the ice, which is possible, he's a risk taker. At this point he has shown where the way forward is. Reusable launch vehicles, entrepreneurial invention. He has blazed that path and whether it's him who reaches the promised land or somebody else, it's gonna be reached. That's the hopeful thing. Now, we do have...
Robert Zubrin (33:49.831)
a darkening international situation, which is very difficult, but I want to tell you story that you might appreciate. In 1970, the Apollo astronauts visited the crater Aristarchus. the crater Aristarchus is the scene
for the action in Arthur Clarke's novel Earthlight. And the astronauts had read it. And so one of them said, as he entered the crater Aristarchus, we are here at the crater Aristarchus, the scene of Arthur Clarke's great novel Earthlight. wouldn't he be proud to know about this if he was alive today?
And now Arthur Clarke, of course, was alive in 1970. And so this comment was brought to his attention. And so he said, yes, I certainly am proud to see this happening. But I have to tell you this. I wrote that novel while I was manning a radar station in England during the Blitz at night.
And if anyone had told me then that just 30 years later people would be walking around in that place that I was writing about, I would have called it the most wild poppycock imaginable. Okay? So there you go. You go from 1940, the Blitz, when that novel was written to the people actually being there. Okay? Well...
You know, so even when things are darkest, you could be amazed at what could come out in the future. So I remain optimistic.
Polymath World (35:50.86)
Yeah, I love that. That's absolutely fantastic. Given the turbulence of political will and international situations, do you think, are you confident that the private sector, the commercial sector could accomplish it without help? Could they make the difference?
Robert Zubrin (36:09.725)
Well, well, they're going to make a difference. No, I do not think it can be done without help. I do think this is going to have to be a public-private partnership. But what I'm saying is that a very powerful, innovative force has been recruited into supporting this effort. Now, certainly the innovative character of American industry played a role in the Apollo program.
But it was overwhelmingly a government-led thing. And it could be because frankly the political class we had at that time was greatly superior in quality to what we have now. I mean, really. Compare John F. Kennedy to Trump. Compare your current British Prime Minister to Winston Churchill. Compare Macron to Charles de Gaulle. Okay, the, you know.
Polymath World (37:02.847)
No comment on that one.
Robert Zubrin (37:07.455)
There has been entropy in the quality of political leadership over time. But fortunately, we now have this extremely powerful and creative entrepreneurial sector to help move this thing forward. And that gives me hope.
Polymath World (37:32.59)
Do think the arrogance and the anxiety that comes with something like a race could ignite something positive? You have China, you have Russia, you now have new players who could become big players like India and the Middle East entering the fray. Obviously you still have the European Space Agency and the US and Canada, but do you think...
the convergence of perhaps a new space race, particularly if China got really aggressive with wanting to land on the moon or Mars, could drive things forward quickly or in any way comparably to the Apollo era.
Robert Zubrin (38:13.119)
Well, it could. should. And frankly, we are being challenged in a way much more substantial than anything the Soviets presented, because the Soviet space program was a first-class space program built on the basis of a third-class economy.
Polymath World (38:19.787)
Yes, I love it. I've been appreciating it.
Robert Zubrin (38:42.313)
And the Chinese space program is a first class space program being built on the basis of a first class economy. also a lot more technology. And this is a very, very serious challenge.
Robert Zubrin (39:07.953)
and people are going to have to rise to this now, there is some question in my mind whether they will because you see once again the superior political class of the late 50s through the 1960s was alive above the neck. So you see we knew we were being sputniked. We were capable of being woken up. And now there's
serious question. you've got a war in Europe right now and the American and European political leadership, with a few exceptions, seems to be unaware of the seriousness of the situation. So they're being hit with challenges and are being
very slow to get out of bed but hopefully it would be a healthy thing frankly if they were humiliated by China accomplishing a Mars sample return after the US drops the ball. Whether that's enough to wake them up. If Chinese starts landing people on the moon. You know the Artemis program which was started by the Trump administration eight years ago. Eight years ago Trump administration started the Artemis program.
It took eight years for us to get to the moon the first time. Okay. You know, with this, and now eight years have come and gone and the human moon landing under this leadership is nowhere in sight. So, you know, it's time for us to, you know, put our hiking boots on or our running shoes, whatever you analogy you want to use. because
Polymath World (40:43.437)
Yeah.
Polymath World (40:52.449)
No.
Robert Zubrin (41:05.342)
It's a question for us whether we want to be the people of the past or the people of the future, whether we want to be people whose great deeds are just seen in museums or whether they're read about in newspapers.
Polymath World (41:19.329)
Yeah, yeah, and I am continually given some hope and optimism by young people who really do want to be part of a big technological sci-fi future, the kind of thing they imagined about and read in the better books and saw on the better TV programs. Now, we don't appear to be putting out anywhere near the number of engineers and scientists that we should or that we need to. But I can only imagine what another moon landing or even a
Robert Zubrin (41:44.606)
No.
Polymath World (41:49.302)
Mars landing would do in terms of inspiring the next generation So I'd love to give you the floor here to finish on the power of space science to inspire the next generation and just what that could look like and what it could be What sort of big dream you can put in front of our current children and teenagers?
Robert Zubrin (42:10.003)
Well, yes, you raise an extremely important point. NASA frequently likes to point to certain technological innovations that happened as a result of the space program of the 1960s as here's the pale.
Solar panels like solar panels. They were developed space first. Okay, you know Teflon frying pans this okay solar panels matter a lot Teflon not as much but there's a list of innovations that Came out of the space program microelectronics. Okay, um That's all true, but it's not really the main bit the main earthly benefit the main earthly benefit as
Robert Zubrin (42:58.623)
abstract as it may seem.
is the inspiration. Inspiration means putting spirit into someone. It puts spirit into people. The Apollo program. In particular to youth. It's said to the youth, learn your science and you could be an explorer of new worlds. And youth loves adventure. And as a result of that clarion call, the number of American science and engineering graduates doubled in the 1960s.
at every level, high school, college, PhD, and in some fields tripled. And we have benefited phenomenally from that extra intellectual capital ever since. And a Humans to Mars program today would have a much bigger effect in every country that chose to participate because, for example, the scientific and engineering professions are open to women now in a way that really was not the case in the
Yeah, were a few random people, girls went into science, but it wasn't a thing that they did. Now, in addition to getting millions of little boy mad scientists making rocket fuel and robots in the basement, get millions of little girl mad scientists.
and they affect all areas of endeavor. Now, I happen to be unusual in that generation in that I actually ended up working on space stuff. The rest of them went off and created the computer revolution, among other things. And that, of course, has radically changed the world. And you know, talk about biotech. There'll be so many more people going to biotech. There'll be people going into fields of science that haven't even been defined yet.
Robert Zubrin (44:51.553)
just as in the 1960s genetic engineering had yet to be defined or even imagined and yet many of the people who went into science then some of them are among the pioneers of genetic engineering and biotech in the
recent period. not only will existing fields of science be expanded, new fields of science will be created. That will be the result of this program. And I do believe it has to be humans to Mars. Yes, any space program does give a certain amount of inspiration. Okay, it does. The shuttle did to some extent, but not like Apollo, because Apollo is we were going where no one had gone before. And that's what you
The spirit of youth is to go where no one's gone before, to do what has never been done before, to see what has never been seen before. That's what it is about. And the place for that to happen now is Mars. Okay? That's why we got to do it. The youth of today are not going to be inspired on a grand scale by the challenge of doing again what their grandparents did. Okay? It is to be the pioneers of new worlds. That's where the challenge is. That's where the inspiration
And you know, in the beginning was the word and really what that actually translates to in the beginning was the spirit. Logos. And we do this, we will create a new world, a grand future through the spirit.
Polymath World (46:29.941)
Amen. Yeah, I love it. Completely agree. Where can people find out more about you, your work, anything in particular you're working on at the moment, and also about the Mars Society?
Robert Zubrin (46:43.473)
Okay, well the Mars Society, people can find it at MarsSociety.org on the internet. Our next international convention will be in Los Angeles at University of Southern California, October 9th through 11th, and you can register there. If you want to speak there, you can submit an abstract. There's an open call for papers active right now. Okay, now in addition to know more about what I've got to say, I've written a number of books of which the first
Polymath World (47:03.393)
have done that.
Robert Zubrin (47:13.377)
first and foremost is the book The Case for Mars, of which there is a...
It's gone through several updates and additions. That's available on Amazon in both print and Kindle format. And I have a new book called The New World on Mars, which is about Mars settlement. And there is a British edition that was published by Penguin UK. So you can get it in paper in the UK and you can also get it on Kindle as well.
Polymath World (47:44.673)
Wonderful, thank you so much Dr. Zubrin. I know I could talk to you all day, very happily and you're part of a group of people who are a big inspiration on me as I was moving into science myself. So thank you very much for your already wonderful legacy and for your time today and it's been a pleasure.
Robert Zubrin (48:03.455)
Okay, it's my pleasure too. Thank you so much.