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JO: Five and a half billion dollars-NASA gets that every year for human space flight. If you, being the Mars Society, and you personally in your own way had that much money, is that enough to put mankind on Mars?
RZ: I think that five or six billion dollars if spent [by the government] would probably not to do a Mars mission. But, government money is government money. I think NASA with its good leadership running a program in efficient mode with the parameters that one could expect could put humans on Mars for 20 billion dollars. In the private world, five, six billion could possibly do it-certainly eight could. But, in the private world, six billion dollars is a lot of cookies. I think that both end uses are possible in principle. The government program requires globalization and political support. I think there's tremendous support in the American public for space exploration, in particular for putting humans on Mars, opening a new frontier. I think the American people still very much believe that we need to continue the invasion of Mars, and the citizens don't understand why we are not pursuing this more aggressively. They don't understand why so many politicians apparently [accept] this notion of [this being] the age of limits or something. Americans don't accept that. On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of people in the West, more generally North America and western Europe who also believe that it is essential to the human future that we do become a multi-planet species-that we do expand into space. And those people, if they could be rallied represent the sufficient financial force to do it themselves with a very modest personal sacrifice, meaning a hundred million people times a hundred dollars is ten billion dollars. So the approach of the Mars Society that it's taking is both approaches. We're trying to organize the public to be able to convey their support for Mars exploration to the political class so as to actually initiate human Mars exploration through NASA. But we're also doing projects of our own, such as the Mars Arctic Research Station. And the purpose of these projects are both to achieve certain scientific objectives in themselves, but also to earn credibility so that we can rally large financial forces to Mars who are aggressive, and important projects, for example, our second project, an intellectual space flight project, which is the TransLife Mission to research Mars gravity effects on mammals in space.
JO: Now the goals of the Mars Society as taken from their charter are to expand the knowledge of Mars as rapidly as possible through both robotic and human exploration and, number two, to establish a permanent human presence on Mars at the earliest possible date. Given the financial outlook as it exists right now, how soon can this [be] expected to happen?
RZ: How soon can it expect it to happen? Okay, how soon could it happen? It could happen. We could have humans on Mars within ten years. We are much better prepared today technologically to send people to Mars than we were to send people to the moon in 1961. So the government-funded approach is actually the quicker approach because the government actually has, in its hand, the resources required-both technical and financial-to do such a program if it decided to do so. Okay, so, if you want to look at the private approach, this requires a process whereby we grow in size, in financial heft, in technological capability, through a series of missions: Arctic Station, the Translife Mission, a robotic Mars mission, and finally, human Mars mission. Could take more like 20 years before the Mars societies are prepared to do this ourselves. The current war is on one level a major distraction for a possible program, but there are counterintuitive possibilities. I mean, who would have expected the confrontation with the Soviet Union to precipitate, a US expedition to the moon? And yet-and most people view the Cold War, far from hindering the Apollo Program, as being essential to it. Right now we are engaged with an opponent whose, operative ideology is opposition to science and reason and free thought, which is the basis for both science and democracy. A human to Mars program could be an essential element to discrediting their ideology. And so, things can develop, then, that are unexpected.
JO: What steps is the Mars Society taking currently to forward the objective of privately financing Mars development and exploration?
RZ: Okay, the steps that we are taking is a series of projects of our own, which have been privately funded-exclusively privately funded. The first major project was the building of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island. We resolved on this in our founding convention in '98. Between then and 2000, we raised and acquired money and we built the station in 2000, really under conditions of significant adversity because there was a failed paradrop and the construction equipment was destroyed. The paid construction crew deserted and we ended up building it ourselves with the help of the Inuits. But we were successful in building it and, this past summer we operated it for the first time and, actually, Human Mars Simulation Station was operated in the Arctic. This was something that people had talked about, at least in my working lifetime, at least since the early 80's and I'd be willing to bet, since the 60's. We did it. We now have a second station going up. It will go up in Utah: Mars Desert Research Station. Between the two stations-the Utah Station, operating in the winter, and the Arctic Station, operating in the Summer-we will have a program that will extend most of the year. We are also looking at additional stations in the European Arctic in Australia. Those, however important, [might be viewed] as linear extensions in the current program. So while we are doing that we are also launching a new program, which is the Translife Mission. This is a low-cost, privately funded mission that will put a capsule in Earth orbit that will spin at sufficient rate to produce Mars gravity in the capsule. And then we will have a crew of mice who will live in this for 50 days, during which time they will be allowed to reproduce and the youngsters to grow up. And then they will be recovered and studied and what we will be able to determine from this if Mars gravity is sufficient to reverse or at least stop the extremely bad health effects that have been observed at zero gravity-deterioration of muscle and bone. That is important for the first human explorers to Mars. But the second question is: Can mammals actually be conceived, born, and raised in Mars gravity and develop into proper adults? This is fundamental for the question of whether life on earth can ever colonize Mars or any other planet with a gravity substantially less than the earth. There is no data on that. NASA has completely neglected these issues despite 44 years of activity. And we intend to get this data. After this, one secondary aspect of this mission is -- we will have validated this capsule and, in subsequent missions, we could fire it out into interplanetary space, perhaps as far as the orbit of Mars-that life from Earth, for the first time, will go that far and we will be able to do that. I believe our first Translife Mission, we can do for about three million dollars.
JO: Three?
RZ: Yes. That is the first one-the Earth orbital one. Going interplanetary will cost a bit more. But these series of missions can be done for this kind of money. And I believe we can raise this kind of money. We've already raised more than a million dollars to support the Arctic Program. So this is a step but it's not an impossible step. And I think if we do this, we do this Translife Program-we fly these mice in Mars gravity and Earth orbit and perhaps interplanetary missions -- this will earn us the credibility required to raise money, not in the multi-million range, but in the hundred million range, which is what is required for privately funded fully independent, robotic missions to Mars. I mean, look: if a private organization had done, for example, the Pathfinder Mission, they would be in a position to raise billions after that.
JO: Yes.
RZ: See, when you hear privately funded, first thing people think of is commercial, business plans: profit. Okay, there are certain kinds of space ventures that can be funded on that basis-communication satellites obviously, perhaps even launch vehicles. But exploration missions to Mars? At this point the business plans are weak. And if you're going to people who want to spend money to make money-that is their fundamental purpose-then there are other things they're going to choose. Nevertheless, there is in private hands sufficient money to do this-not for profit, but for love. There is a tremendous amount of activity that is done in this country with private money but is not done for profit. Harvard raises a couple of billion dollars every year from alumni every year. And none of that is for profit. People are willing to spend money for things other than profit. And certainly for the opening space to humanity there are people that are willing to spend money. But they have to be convinced that if they do spend that money that there will be results. That is the purpose of our incremental program of escalating missions.
JO: Now, we have the Mars Society, the National Space Society, the Planetary Society, the Artemis Society. These are just some of the societies devoted to forwarding space exploration. Why is private space activism so fragmented and what needs to be done, if anything, to unify their goals, focus their membership, and reduce their overhead?
RZ: Well, I don't know if it's necessary to unify them. The National Space Society is the most heterogeneous of these organizations and it is less focused, for instance, then the Planetary Society and the Mars Society. And this has actually impaired its ability to act effectively. I think that five thousand people who know what they want can accomplish more than twenty thousand people who don't. I used to have a leading position in the National Space Society; the leading position, in fact. And after the Alan Hills meteorite was discovered and caused tremendous stir I was supportive of Mars exploration. I attempted to mobilize them behind this objective. And while some people were quite supportive, others were saying, well, you know, Bob, we understand you are from Mars, but what about the moon, what about L5 colonies, what about single-stage-to-orbit? You know, we really don't want to [focus on Mars]. And if you can't focus, you can't accomplish things. So this has made it difficult to achieve very much and that is why I decided to shift my interest to a focused organization. Mars Society knows what it wants and, as a result, in our short amount of time- we've only existed since 1998-we've accomplished more than all the other space organizations put together.
JO: To change question/subject slightly, NASA's currently publicly discussing privatizing the space shuttle. Is this a good thing?
RZ: I don't know. I'm not exactly sure what that means-privatizing the space shuttle. There's a lot of ways it could be done, I suppose, that might result in saving of money for the taxpayers as to allow NASA to accomplish much more with its budget. Or, you know, you could privatize things- Airport security- and get inadequate results. The shuttle is a complex machine. It has to be properly supported. It has to be properly run, and it's obvious that there are certain cost savings that could be made and there are other cost savings that could be attempted that would be destructive. I'm not privy to the details of this plan and I can't really determine whether this is going to be a good or bad thing.
JO: Do you consider [The International Space Station] an asset or a burden for the governmental space exploration development strategy?
RZ: The Space Station, as itself, is both an asset and a burden. It offers certain technical capabilities that are of some value. I don't think they have as much value as the cost of the station. The real problem with the space station is that certain people have set it up as a toll gate. That is, you cannot do anything else until the space station is completed, and yet, the Space Station Program has set itself up as a kind of entitlement that is meant to go on forever because the people that engineered the Space Station Program were primarily concerned with creating a program that would go for a long time and, thus be useful as a support for NASA's organizations to give them something to do for a long period of time. That is unlike Apollo where we were results-oriented, where the idea was to get to the moon as quickly as possible to accomplish a particular objective. The Space Station Program is really been organized as a maintenance program to maintain NASA as a force in being, which also, of course, the purpose of the shuttle program. Now, maintaining NASA as a force in being has some merit provided you intend to do something with it afterwards. I think that Richard Nixon and his people committed a massive crime when they basically shut down the Saturn V assembly lines and aborted NASA's plans to build moon bases in the 1970's and Mars missions in the 1980's. Had they not done that-had they continued with the Apollo Program and it's follow-thrus that had been designed, humanity would be a multi-planet species right now. We would have the capability to send human missions anywhere in the inner solar system and it would be an incredible situation. This was a massive disaster that was done. What they did, shutting all that down, is put NASA on life support by giving it the Shuttle Program to maintain it as an organization with certain technical abilities, but not really doing anything. I mean, it's done certain things, but not really if you compare it to what it was doing in the 1960's. We have spent as much money on NASA between 1989 and today, for the past 12 years in inflation-adjusted dollars as we spent in NASA from 1961 to 1973. Now 1961 to 1973 was the Apollo Era, in other words, the era that begins with the first human space flights-Alan Shepard, and Kennedy's speech in May of '61, running through the final Sky Lab missions, which were the Apollo sequel in 1973. Now what did NASA do in that period? Well, let's see: They developed multi-stage, heavy lift launch vehicles. They developed the capability for interplanetary communication and life support systems. They developed the re-entry systems for capsules. They developed the ability to do soft landings on the moon. They developed lunar rovers. They flew the Mercury missions, the Gemini missions, the Apollo missions, six human missions to the moon. They flew 40 lunar and planetary probes reaching in this period from zero capability to not only explore the moon, but probes to Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter. And they did all the technical work required for the Viking mission that subsequently went as far as Neptune. They developed Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center, Jet Propulsion Lab, as the centers as we know them today. They accomplished a huge amount. All the significant NASA technological spin-offs were generated in this period. And the intellectual spin-off-millions of youth encouraged to go into science and engineering because of the excitement of the possibility of joining in this incredible adventure of opening the solar system to humanity. This is what NASA did in that period. What had NASA done between 1989 and today? Well, they launched and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. They flew about eight planetary missions. They launched the beginning of the space station. I might also add that from '61 to '73 NASA also built a space station, Sky Lab, as well. So the social impact has been very modest by comparison to what was done in the 60's. There have been no significant new technologies developed. And yet we've spent the same amount of money. And the reason is that you cannot have progress without a goal. In the 1960's NASA had a great goal that made its reach exceed its grasp. And so it did. And it expanded its reach and it expanded our reach and created-together with certain military spending that was done in the same period-pretty much all the space technologies that we have today. By comparison, the 1990's have been completely unproductive-no goal, no progress.
JO: To switch the topic again, how do national laws inhibit the private sector from more effectively forwarding the goal of space development? The laws, national laws, international laws, treaties, state department restrictions on export/import-how are these laws currently inhibiting more effective private development of space?
RZ: Well, there's a number of categories of laws. There are certain export laws that have to deal with international trade. And these certainly pose problems for certain kinds of private space development. Now that is not necessarily to condemn them. They need to be looked at. If you're talking about space technology you are talking about strategic technology. You do need to examine to who you want to make this available. I mean, Qaddafi wanted to develop a launch system-was willing to put money into doing so. I think the US and other western government's crackdown on this activity was appropriate. I'm not that interested in seeing Libya with am orbital launch [capability], which also means intercontinental launch capability. Exporting certain satellite technologies to China is something that needs to be looked at. So there's strategic considerations. There's also protectionist considerations that have to do with protecting US launch providers from competition by various Russian or European launch systems for certain categories of launch. The European launch system is extremely heavily subsidized and is now as a result available cheaply both do to that and do to the cheap labor that is available there in general. The debate between protectionists and [those advocating a more] laissez-faire [approach] is one in which both sides have their points. It would be a bit simplistic simply to say that free trade is the way. In certain instances, it may be the way. In other instances you need to look at what the consequences of it are. Then there is an additional problem. There are problems associated with certifications of launch systems that have to do with safety and range safety and so forth. These are domestic in nature. There does need to be some reasonable and orderly certification process and, right now, there isn't, for private launch vehicles, for example. There are other aspects. For instance, a number of people have hoped to get started in the launch vehicle business at the low end by creating sounding rockets and marketing them commercially. But the problem with these business plans is that NASA gives out sounding rides for free, and this has prevented business. Well, you say if NASA gives out sounding rides for free, what's wrong with that? Well, they're not really free. Of course the taxpayers' really paying for them. So while this, of course, is beneficial to those who want to launch sounding payloads, provided they can pass a complex review process, and get selected for free launch, it has been, detrimental to the growth of small launch companies. Then there's the issue of insurance and liability. The United States government helped the base nuclear industry, for example, with the Price-Anderson Act, which limited liability in the case of an accident. I think that some form of liability, limitation is needed, in order to enable new launch companies to gain insurance, and that would also be of some help.
JO: Robert Heinlein once wrote a story called "The Man Who Sold the Moon." The hero of the story was named Delos D. Harriman. He essentially was a marketer whose primary interest was to sell space exploration to the public. Do you feel, to borrow the analogy, that space development in the real world needs a Harriman, someone of marketing ability to sell to the general public the idea of space exploration?
RZ: I think that this is an idea that needs to be marketed but, exactly like D. D. Harriman and I'm [not sure I understand the question] but, um, sure.
JO: Now there's been some discussion in some circles for some wealthy individual to step forward and kick-start private space exploration. But we've actually seen this happen. For instance, Beal Aerospace, run by Mr. Beal himself, stepped forward. And he spent 200 million dollars of his own money and really didn't do much of anything for space development. Is there any hope for an individual to make a large impact?
RZ: Yes, certainly. I mean, the problem common with Beal was that he latched onto a flawed concept. and the same could be said for Walt Anderson and his support of the Rotary Rocket Company. I guess one of the pitfalls here is the following -- you have these people with a certain amount of money and who are willing to spend money. And, they are operating on the rather individualistic basis because, frankly, this is not what most or even any well-grounded financial advisors would suggest they do with their money. So these people have been willing to spend this money because they have been, very individualistic and are willing to proceed contrary to adverse advice. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. Specifically with respect to technical advice, sometimes you have to go against the common wisdom if you're going to do something new. But they have been resistant to technical advice as well. Anyone would have explained to Walt Anderson why Rotary Rocket would not have worked. The Beal thing possibly could have worked, but it wasn't the most efficient way to put together a launch vehicle by any means. He was proposing to redevelop the wheel at every level. He was recreating rocket engines when he should have just bought them, instead of spending all of his money testing out rocket engines, which were low performance rocket engines and, therefore, not a marketable product as such. The whole point was that they were going to develop their own rocket engines so they would not have to buy other people's rocket engines. But, these were low performance rocket engines. In other words, you couldn't go into business as an engine company with these, which conceivably could have been high performance engines. But he should have just bought Russian rocket engines and integrated them into vehicles. And, for the 200 million dollars, they could have gotten into the stage of test flights and they could have been taking orders. Instead they were just burning up money. Also, he refused to play the game. Okay, you have NASA giving out R & D money, and instead of competing for it, he whined about it, which is silly. If NASA is willing to subsidize people, to help develop their systems, by all means, you should compete for the money, rather than say, no, I don't believe in government money and, therefore, I am at a disadvantage because I can't compete with other people who are being subsidized this way. The subsidy was open to him, and it would have helped him, had he competed and won some of that money. So, in that case, he was crippled by his own ideology. Kissler has been somewhat damaged in the same way though they apparently had finally caught on and are now competing for-and they did win-some NASA space launch initiative money. If you can get part of your money from NASA, do it.
JO: Now, when we think of space exploration, we tend to think of the Goddards, the Gagarins, the Von Brauns, the Rides. In reality, though, like you said, true progress is more likely to come from someone who can write a good grant proposal. How is the private space sector doing as far as tapping this basically free money from the government?
RZ: It's not completely free -- you spent at a certain amount of your money and time chasing them. But certainly it is money that you can get without acquiring debt or diluting your equity. I mean look, down in [Northern Colorado], there's the biggest aerospace company in the world. And it was all done by bidding on and winning government contracts and performing, in general, well on those contracts so as to be up to win further business.
JO: And you're referring to?
RZ: Lockheed Martin. Of course, they've also gotten private investment and so on. But, you know, that's basically how they've operated. And so it is a fact of life that every existing launch system in the world was developed primarily with government money. And that's okay. The aviation system in America was developed with huge amounts of government money. These things, especially in their initial stages, are high-risk involved-massive amounts of overhead. I believe, first of all, that government expenditure on this is justified. I mean I'm glad that we have airports in the United States. And I'm glad that we have ports in the United States. I'm glad there's an intrastate highway system, and government money spending on these things has created societal capabilities that improve life and also the possibilities for private commerce, enormously. And I think that these things also required for space. I think that government support for private space development is warranted and necessary.
JO: If you can sell real estate on Mars, what's stopping you from selling real estate on Devon Island or in Utah or in the Sahara or any other inhospitable location on earth?
RZ: Well, first of all, it's unclear whether you can sell real estate on Mars right now. But the one major thing that is stopping you from selling real estate on earth is that, in general, someone else owns it. But if you can sell it, yes. [Laughs.]
JO: The technologies required to support human life on Mars can also be used to support human life, for instance, in desert regions in the United States or in desert regions in Africa.
RZ: Some of them, yes, for instance, water acquisition from dry lands.
JO: Do you anticipate that the technologies will be used first for that or for space exploration?
RZ: [They] will be used first for space exploration. In general the technology will be used first for that which it's developed. In other words, you take certain extreme applications [first]. Steam engines, real steam engines that were efficient, were developed first for steam boats, and only afterwards did they find widespread industrial application. Nuclear reactors were developed first for submarines. We had the submarine Nautilus launched in 1954, the first commercial nuclear power plant was Shippingport in 1957. And so, in other words, you have an extreme application, propelling of boat underwater for six months without being able to surface, needing to surface, so someone says, well, the nuclear reactor can do that. And then you put all of the effort required into developing a nuclear reactor that is compact, reliable, and so on. And then, lo and behold, somebody says, well, you know, you can also use this to develop- if you choose-to produce electric power. And so it is. But you wouldn't, in general, have gone to the trouble of creating nuclear reactors to produce electric power because there's a dozen other ways to make electric power. So it has been characteristically the case that novel technologies are developed for extreme applications.
JO: One last question-and, this is a bit of a personal question: A hundred years from now, how do you want your biography to read-two sentences or less?
RZ: "He helped open the way to Mars."
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