WEEKLY WHINE

Plus he has an awesome name

This weekend, I have the extreme pleasure of working with a man who brings us a fun new concept and who is equally as much fun as his concept. Dr Robert Zubrin, founder of The Mars Society, author of The Case for Mars, and creator of the Mars Direct plan to send humans to Mars, is in town for the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Mars Society booth has been staffed by a bunch of volunteers from the Caltech/JPL chapter, including myself, and Zooby, as his friends call him, was also available to sell copies of his book, to autograph copies of his book that he sold, and to give his talk on the exploration of Mars. If you get a chance to see him in person, do so, since he's not only imaginative and engaging, he's also an entertaining thrill. Here's but a sample of his wisdom:

On his book:

"The book plus my signature for $13. It's a win-win deal."

"My signature alone is worth that much."

"I have an intimate knowledge of that book, and I can tell you with complete confidence that it is the best book on Mars exploration ever written."

"I certainly couldn't have written it any better."

On politics:

"If you go to congresspeople asking them to support or oppose impeachment, they're going to have an opinion already. But Mars isn't an issue. You actually have a chance to persuade them."

"If Kennedy had said, 'We choose to go to the Moon by 2000', the program would die when Nixon came in. We'd still be saying, 'The Moon? That's an impossible dream.'"

On corporate politics:

"In a big company like Martin Marietta, $47,000 is nothing. It'll buy you 47 charts."

"A team of twelve engineers produced three plans, none of which were consistent with one another."

On exploration size:

"[Sir John Franklin's expedition] took along 100 tonnes of salt pork, and in a massive project like this, there's going to be some pork."

"Amundsen and his crew didn't just survive, they got fat."

On the Space Exploration Initiative:

[referring to a 1000 tonne manned vehicle to Mars] "I like to call it the Death Star."

"So in the 90 Day Report, they said, 'Sure, we can go to Mars. We just need $450 billion and 30 years. Once you give us that, let's rock!'"

"Yes, you can build such a Death Star in just ten easy steps."

"You're going to need a Parallel Universe before you can build a Death Star."

On Mars Direct:

"Let's say that the hab module lands on the wrong side of Mars. Then maybe there's something wrong with the pilot selection process at Johnson Space Center."

"If you do land on the wrong side of the planet, the backup ERV [Earth Return Vehicle] can land next to them and they can check it out. However, you probably wouldn't trust the pilot to do that."

"The crew can go to Mars in a tuna can. This one is slightly larger than your Chicken of the Sea model."

"In the solar flare shelter, they'd be like sardines, or maybe the A-Train in Manhattan but without panhandlers. And if there are panhandlers, you've got an entirely different problem."

On other topics:

[responding to criticism that he's negative about some other organizations] "I have a right to be negative about them."

"A non smoker has a 20% chance of having cancer, and the radiation dose on this mission will add about one percent, to make it 21%. A smoker has a 40% chance of getting cancer, so if we get a crew of smokers and send them to Mars without tobacco, we'll reduce their risk of cancer. We're sending them to Mars for their health!"

"The Ares heavy lift vehicle uses Space Shuttle main engines, which you can get from the junkyard for free - at night."