1. Open the New World!
Hello, I'm Robert Dyck, with the Mars Society. I'd like to thank you the opportunity to speak to you today about Mars.

2. Battlestar Galactica
On July 29, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, President George Bush Sr. proclaimed his Space Exploration Initiative: "First, for the coming decade – for the 1990s – Space Station Freedom… And next – for the new century – back to the Moon. And then – a journey into tomorrow – a journey to another planet – a manned mission to Mars." He tried to make it sound like John F. Kennedy's speech of Sept. 12, 1962, when he said: "We choose to go to the Moon!"
I think everyone here remembers that speech. (Do not repeat the following)
"We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win...
So NASA went off to produce a plan to accomplish this. They returned 3 months later with a document entitled "Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars," which soon became known as "The 90-Day Report." It included a permanent base on the moon, lunar mines, a space station triple the size of Freedom or the current ISS, this space station would have "dual keels" that would act as shipyards to construct interplanetary spaceships, there would also be orbiting fuel depots, checkout docks, construction shacks, and a 1,000 tonne plus spaceship for Mars. All this for the low, low price of $450 billion dollars. When the US congress saw the price tag their reaction was "You want WHAT!" And the Space Exploration Initiative has never been heard from since.
Then two engineers form Martin Marietta, one of the major contractors for NASA, developed a mission plan called Mars Direct. This would send a 4-person crew directly Mars; no Lunar mines or Moon base, no orbiting shipyards or fuel depots, no space station, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Seven manned missions to Mars would have a total cost of $20 billion dollars using; equal to the cost of Apollo after adjusting for inflation. Each mission would require two Saturn V rockets, or rockets of similar size. It would not require anything bigger, and would not require assembling anything in orbit.

3. Viking Mosaic photo of Mars
But before getting into details of that, the question is "Why Mars?"
M-type asteroids commonly called iron asteroids are composed primarily of iron and nickel. "M" stands for metal, and is used because the iron and nickel exist as solid metal, not oxides or other mineral ore. An M‑type asteroid is a solid hunk of iron‑nickel alloys with traces of rock other metals such as gold and platinum. The gold and platinum are less concentrated than mines on Earth, but the iron and nickel are easy and cheap to extract. The left‑overs have everything else concentrated, including gold and platinum. In fact, the gold in the left-overs is more concentrated than the richest gold mine on Earth; and at the same time the platinum is more concentrated than the richest platinum mine on Earth. To make steel you need carbon, and M‑type asteroids don't have any. C‑type asteroids are carbonaceous chondrite. They're made of pebbles of rock held together with tar and ice, and have traces of magnesium. The ice can be mined to make rocket fuel, and the tar can be transported to the M‑type asteroid as a source of carbon to make steel. Addition of nickel and magnesium makes stainless steel. The gold, platinum and 6 semi‑precious platinum‑group metals could be transported to Earth as bullion, and the miners will get rich. Near Earth Asteroids actually require less rocket fuel to get there and back than the Moon because they don't have the Moon's gravity. But asteroids have no air and practically no gravity.
The Moon has gravity, but no air or water. Lunar soil has rock as well as mineral forms of iron and aluminum oxides, and even has large titanium ore deposits. Since everything in lunar soil is an oxide, the most abundant element is oxygen. Due to the oxides, iron would be more expensive to process on the Moon than an M‑type asteroid, but Lunar mines could produce aluminum and titanium. The moon would be an ideal location for space telescopes: the lack of air and a solid foundation makes the moon perfect for interferometry telescopes that could image Earth‑size planets around other stars, and the far side of the moon is ideal for radio telescopes. The problem is water; the only water on the Moon is tiny ice crystals at the bottom of craters at the poles; craters where sunlight never touches the bottom. Even here, the concentration is about a cup of water scattered over an area the size of a football field. Furthermore, it simply has no nitrogen. The Moon does not have what it takes to support life.
Mars has a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, and possesses all the resources necessary for life and civilization.
Unlike the Moon, Mars has plenty of water, enough to erode networks of river channels. Some of these channels could have been caused by wind erosion, but pictures from Mars Global Surveyor shows evidence of seepage and ponding.
In addition to water, Mars has carbon dioxide as the majority gas in its atmosphere. It also has nitrogen as the minority gas in its atmosphere, and may have nitrates in the soil too. So carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen ­– the four primary elements of life – are all present in abundance on Mars. There are also large quantities of all the secondary elements of life, including sulphur, phosphorus, and calcium; and all the elements of industry, such as iron, aluminum, titanium, silicon, copper, nickel, etc. are also widely available. Mars has a 24 hour day-night cycle, which is what plants need to grow in natural sunlight. It has experienced all the volcanic and hydrologic processes needed to concentrate rare elements into mineral ore.
So the long and the short of it is that Mars has all that is needed to support life, and technological civilization as well. It is unique among all the bodies of our solar system other than the Earth in this respect. It's the ideal location for colonization.

4. Photo of Water channels on Mars and Martian Meteorite ALH84001
I'm sure that almost all of you will have heard about the Martian meteorite, ALH84001, which made news in August This rock is known to have come from Mars, probably after ejection from the planet by meteor impact, because its isotopic composition matches that found on the Martian surface by the Viking lander. We have other rocks that have been delivered from Mars to Earth the same way. The thing that was really exciting about this one, though, is that it showed evidence for life on Mars in the distant past. That evidence includes carbonates that indicate that the rock was once in a liquid water environment that might have been life-friendly; actual organic material; mineral residues that on Earth are normally the result of bacteria; and tiny structures that resemble fossilized bacteria. None of this evidence is conclusive, as there are alternative explanations for all of it. But it is strongly suggestive of past life.
However, long before the Alan Hills meteorite showed up, Mars was a suspect for life.
While cold and dry today, Mars probably once had abundant flowing liquid water, as indicated by erosion features that cover its surface. Here are some images of water erosion features taken by the Viking and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. There are such features all over the planet. There are no canals on Mars – those were a telescopic illusion – but there are plenty of dried up river and lake beds. In fact, it is believed that the early Mars even had oceans. So Mars once had plenty of liquid water, and did so for a longer period of time than it took life to originate on Earth. If the theory that life evolves naturally in water-rich temperate environments is correct, then life should have appeared on Mars. If we can find it or its remains, it would prove that the development of life is a high probability event wherever appropriate physical or chemical conditions exist. Since we now know that many stars have planets, there are probably many such places.
Mars is thus the Rossetta stone for determining whether life is unique to the Earth or general throughout the universe. It will tell us whether we are alone, or part of something much larger than anything we currently imagine.

5. Mariner and Viking
We need to go to Mars to find out. So far, the only tools available for the search have been robotic spacecraft. These started with the Mariner 4 flyby in 1965, and continued with the Mariner 6 and 7 flyby missions in In the 1971, the Mariner 9 orbiter first imaged water erosion features on Mars and discovered the Valles Marineris – a canyon three times as deep as the Grand Canyon and as long as the United States. Then, in 1976, while two Viking orbiters imaged the planet, two Viking landers tested the Martian soil for life and returned ambiguous results. Chemical reactions in test samples released gases, but direct assessment of the soil by a gas chromatograph indicated a complete absence of organic material. The majority conclusion of the science team was that the sample gas releases were caused by inorganic chemistry, not by life.
However, the science team also cautioned that "the absence of evidence for life produced by the Viking mission cannot be interpreted as evidence of absence."

6. Pathfinder and Sojourner
In 1997, Pathfinder was sent to Mars, and landed using an airbag landing system that allowed it to survive 70 mile per hour bounces across the Martian surface. It then released a small rover called Sojourner to explore a water runoff channel in Ares Valles. Sojourner found evidence of long-duration water flow, including rounded cobbles and conglomerate rocks.
Also, in 1997, Mars Global Surveyor arrived in Mars orbit and discovered a large area in the Northern hemisphere of topographically depressed land that was relatively crater-free and which is flatter than any regions on Earth except the ocean bottoms. It was concluded that the planet had once had a northern ocean.

7. Mars Sample Return Mission
There was a plan for a 2005 mission to return a Martian soil sample to Earth, but it seems to have been scratched.
In 2001, Mars Odyssey arrived; an orbiter carrying a gamma-ray spectrometer capable of evaluating the planet's surface chemistry.
In 2003, the United States plans to send a capable long distance rover called "Athena" to Mars, equipped with a large set of scientific instruments. The U.S. also plans to fly a camera carrying airplane on the Red Planet during the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk. Also, in 2003, the European Space Agency plans to launch the Mars Express mission which will include both a French/Italian orbiter and the British Beagle 2 lander, which will carry experiments supporting the search for life.
In 2004 the Japanese Nozomi radar probe will arrive. Designed for sounding the Martian ionosphere, this probe may also be able to use its radar to penetrate the ground to search for subsurface liquid water. The Mars Society is currently conducting a study of that possibility. Then, in 2005, a joint NASA-European mission will be launched to return a nearly a kilogram of Martian rocks and regolith to Earth.

8. Field Geologists on Earth and Mars
But while extremely useful, robot probes have their limits. Sojourner, for example, was a small vehicle with wheels 6 inches in diameter that could only move at a rate of 6 feet a day. Even the powerful Athena rover will only be able to travel a few hundred feet a day, and will be quite limited in the types of terrain it can traverse.
On Earth, fossil searches require hiking long distances through unimproved terrain, scaling difficult slopes, doing heavy work like digging and pick-axe work, and doing delicate work such as carefully splitting shales edgewise to reveal hidden fossils pasted between the thin pages of rock. It also requires the use of a great deal of on-the spot intuition, perception, and judgment in sniffing out the subtle clues present in the environment to make the find. These abilities are all far beyond the capabilities of robotic rovers.
If we are serious about searching for life on Mars, real live rockhounds - human explorers - will have to go.

9. Lewis and Clark at Three Forks
The Americans really miss their frontier, but this is a good analogy.
The 90-day Report and similar Mars mission designs of the past required huge ships because they carried to Mars all the fuel and oxygen required for the round trip. But this is not how people have explored on Earth. Lewis and Clark hunted their way across America with 25 men; taking advantage of all the native knowledge they could in order to maximize their access to local resources. Imagine the baggage train they would have needed if they chose instead to bring all the food, water and air needed for themselves and their horses. Hundreds of wagons would have been needed, and all those wagon drivers and their horses would have needed further supplies, involving thousands of more wagons, etc. The way to explore cheaply is to live off the land.
We can do the same sort of thing on Mars. For example, a small amount of hydrogen brought from Earth can be reacted with Mars' atmosphere to produce a variety of fuels, water, and oxygen. One way to do this is to react the hydrogen with the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere to produce methane and water. This is known as the Sabatier reaction and has been practiced on Earth in the chemical industry for over 100 years. The methane is stored as fuel, the water is electrolysed into oxygen, which is needed to burn the fuel, and hydrogen, which is recycled back into the system to make more methane and water. An additional reactor can be used to split Martian CO2 into carbon monoxide, which can be vented as waste, and additional oxygen, which can be used as propellant or for life support. Using these techniques a single ton of hydrogen brought from Earth can be transformed into 18 tons of methane/oxygen propellant on the surface of Mars.
It is the same sort of leverage as that obtained by a pioneer who acquires the useful mass of a bison for the transported mass of several bullets and cartridges, or the useful product of a corn field for the transported mass of several barrels of seed.
Living off the land is how people have explored and settled new frontiers on Earth, and it is how we can open Mars. Used in this way, the same rich resources that make Mars interesting also serve to make it attainable. And the techniques required to access them are not rocket science, but century-old chemical engineering. Miniaturized automated chemical plants for making propellant on Mars have already been tested in the lab.

10. Launch Vehicles: Photo of Saturn V, artwork of Energia, and shuttle derived vehicle
If the mission's return propellant is made on Mars, no giant spaceships are needed. Instead, comparatively modest spacecraft can be employed, which can be launched directly to Mars using boosters with the same capability as the Saturn V moon rockets employed in the 1960's. Such vehicles could be quickly developed using either revived Saturn V, Shuttle-derived, or Energia technology.
The Energia was rocket Russia developed to lift the Buran, their copy of the Space Shuttle. The main engines of their system are located on the core module; their equivalent to the external tank. The Buran orbiter is just cargo until it's lifted into space. That permits the Energia rocket to fly on its own, the orbiter can be replaced with a cargo pod. In fact, the Energia once launched a Russian military satellite that way. The strap-on boosters are the first stage on a Zenit rocket, and that is still in production. Russia built 100 of the main engines, 4 are used with each launch, but the Energia only flew twice: once with the Buran and once with the military satellite. I can only guess how many sets of engines were used for testing, but 3 sets were used that leaves 20 sets of engines ready for use. The Russian military maintained launch facilities in flight-ready condition until the Buran orbiter was handed over to Kazakhstan on January 1, That just leaves production of the external tanks for the core module. Production of Energia could be restored easily. In fact, pictures of a tour of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in April 1997 showed a complete Energia rocket and 2 more core modules in the MIK vehicle assembly building.

11. Mars Direct Here is where we get back to Mars Direct.
In the Mars Direct plan, two launches are employed. The first sends to Mars an unmanned and unfueled Earth Return Vehicle, which deploys a small nuclear reactor for surface power and then uses its onboard chemical synthesis unit to make its return propellant. This process requires about 10 months, which together with the 8 months the ERV takes to fly to Mars, means that 18 months after the ERV is launched, a fully fueled Earth Return Vehicle is available on the Martian surface. Launch opportunities to Mars occur every 26 months, so well before the next launch window opens up, the propellant production process will have been completed.
That being the case, at the next launch window two more vehicles are launched off to Mars. One carries another ERV/fuel factory payload just like the first. The other carries a tuna-can shaped hab module with a crew of four. After a 6-month outbound voyage, the crew land their hab on Mars in the immediate vicinity of the first ERV. They will use the hab as their house and field laboratory and workshop on Mars for 500 days, after which they will perform a 6-month return transit to Earth in the first ERV. The second ERV is available as a backup for the first mission, but its primary purpose is to provide return transportation for the second expedition which will follow 26 months later.
Thus in the Mars Direct plan, two boosters are launched every two years; one to open a new exploration site with a pre-positioned ERV, the other with a crew-carrying hab to investigate the site opened two years earlier. Two launches every two years is an average of one major launch per year to conduct a continuous program of human exploration of Mars. That is something that the US - or any major nation or combination of nations can easily afford.

12. Mars Semi-Direct
NASA has adopted a modified version of Mars Direct, called the Semi-Direct plan, as its Design Reference Mission. The Semi-Direct plan employs local propellant production and three direct launches per mission to send a crew of six to Mars and back.
The first launch sends to Mars an unmanned Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which makes propellant in similar fashion to the Mars Direct mission. The second launch sends to Mars an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle which is parked in a highly elliptical Mars orbit, complete with enough methane/oxygen chemical propellant to return it to Earth. The third launch, which occurs 26 months after the MAV, delivers a tuna-can shaped hab module carrying a crew of six to rendezvous on the Martian surface with the MAV. Simultaneously, another ERV and MAV are launched to provide backup and prepare for the next hab module which will arrive two years later.
As in the Mars Direct mission the crew then spends 500 days on the Martian surface exploring the Red Planet. At the end of that time, they board the MAV and ascend to rendezvous in Mars orbit with the ERV, which then transports them towards Earth. Approaching the home planet the crew boards the Apollo-shaped MAV capsule which then serves as their re-entry and landing vehicle.
Either plan could put the first team of human explorers on Mars within 10 years, at a total program cost in the $20 to $55 billion range.

13. Solar Flare Storm Shelter, Artificial Gravity, Shannon Lucid
With proper design, the mission provisions can be used to create an onboard storm shelter to provide protection from solar flares in transit. While capable of delivering a deadly dose of several thousand rems to an unshielded astronaut, solar flares, which are composed of large numbers of protons with energies of about 1 million volts, can be stopped by five inches of water or food material. The ship will have enough provisions on board to provide a small area with more than that amount of shielding. Solar flares occur irregularly, with dangerous events happening for a few hours perhaps once a year. During their year in space (six months in transit each way) the crew will only have to endure one or two brief periods of tight confinement in the storm shelter.
Cosmic rays, which are made of particles with billions of volts of energy cannot be stopped by such thin shielding. However the magnitude of the dose that will be incurred is only about 50 rem per year. This will cause no immediate hazard. Rather, a statistical risk of cancer will result, comparable to smoking cigarettes for the same period. This may be regarded as an acceptable level of risk.
If desired, the hab module can remain connected with a tether to the spent booster upper stages, and then the assembly spun up to create artificial gravity on the way to Mars. Doing this will allow the crew to avoid any ill effects from long-duration zero gravity exposure. Although, in 1996, astronaut Shannon Lucid showed that if a strenuous exercise program were strictly followed, zero gravity for the six month flight time to Mars could be endured without harm.

14. Human Field Exploration
After a six month flight to Mars, the crew will stay on the planet for 18 months, exploring it thoroughly to find evidence of life past or present, and prospecting it for the resources needed to settle it in the future. A key asset for such far ranging field exploration will be pressurized roving vehicles, capable of supporting week-long field trips for several members of the crew. Making fuels on Mars would allow the use of ground vehicles employing combustion engines, which will give them much greater range than that possible if they were limited to battery power.
Typically, two members of the crew might use the rover to engage in a long-distance field sortie. Meanwhile, the other crew members would stay back at the base, studying samples brought in by previous rover sorties or doing various kinds of engineering or greenhouse research.
At the end of their year and a half on Mars, the crew will take off for a six-month transit back to Earth. In both the Direct and Semi-Direct plans, their hab modules are left behind on Mars. So as one mission follows another, hab modules will be added to the base, gradually building up the basis for the first human settlement on a new world.

15. Building the Base
At a developing Mars base we will learn how to extract water from Martian soil, or, better yet, drill for geothermally heated water from the subsurface liquid water table, which if reached, could provide us with both copious supplies of water and a powerful local source of power. We will use greenhouses to learn how to grow crops in Martian soils. We will do engineering research to learn how to make bricks, ceramics, glasses, plastics, metals, wires, tubes, habitats . in short we will develop the craft needed to turn the substances found on Mars into usable resources.
By developing the craft of self-sufficiency on Mars, we can open the Red Planet to human settlement.

16. Terraforming survey team and terraformed Mars
The dry riverbeds we see on Mars show that it was once a warm and wet planet, a place friendly to life. By producing an artificial greenhouse effect, human colonists could someday make it warm and wet again.
Studies done to-date show that if halocarbon gases similar to the CFC's currently causing problems on Earth (but without the ozone-damaging chlorine) were released on Mars at the same rate they are currently being produced on Earth, the average temperature of the planet could be raised as much as 10 centigrade within a few decades. This temperature rise would cause large quantities of carbon dioxide to outgas from the soil. As CO2 is also a greenhouse gas, this would add to the warming, which would cause the rate of CO2 outgassing to increase further. Within 50 years of the start of the terraforming program, a CO2 atmosphere about a third as thick as Earth's could develop. Temperatures in the Martian tropics would be high enough for liquid water to exist.
While humans could not breath the atmosphere of such a partly terraformed Mars, they would no longer need spacesuits, only oxygen masks, to travel outside. Available shirtsleeve habitation could be greatly expanded as only airtight, but non-pressurized structures such as huge inflatable domes, would now be required to create human-livable areas. Plants could be introduced to spread across the planet's surface, and over long periods of time put enough oxygen in Mars' atmosphere to make it breathable by humans and other animals.
Humans may not only bring life to Mars, but Mars to life. Future ages will regard this as one of the noblest enterprises ever undertaken.

17. The Mars Society Convention. The Mars Arctic Research Station
The Mars Society Convention. The Mars Arctic Research Station. Panoramic Photo of the Founding Convention of the Mars Society.
But that is for the future. The task today is to get the human exploration of Mars underway. In order to make that happen, an international organization has been formed, the Mars Society, dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means. The Founding Convention, held in Boulder Colorado in August 1998, drew 700 people from all over the world. Over 80 local chapters have been established worldwide since.
The Mars Society's public efforts involve meeting with large numbers of political figures in both the US and other countries to urge expansion of government funded Mars exploration efforts. Last year, Marc Garneau, the new president of the Canadian Space Agency, promised to spend $500 million Canadian dollars for a mission to Mars.
At the same time, we are initiating a series of escalating private projects, each designed to earn credibility needed to raise sufficient funds for a more ambitious program to follow. Our first project is to build a simulated Mars exploration base in the Arctic, on Devon Island, where the climate and geology resembles that of Mars. The Mars Arctic Research Station will be operational by the summer of The founder of the Mars Society hopes to follow this with a hitchhiker payload on a NASA or European Mars probe. One such hitchhiker could be a balloon equipped to perform aerial photography on Mars. If this is successful, funds should become available sufficient to support a full-scale robotic Mars mission of our own in 2007, and continuing in this mode, eventually raise our credibility to the point where initiation of human exploration, either on our own, or on a cost sharing basis with NASA or other government agencies becomes possible.

18. Average citizens can make a difference
Average citizens like you and me can make a difference. Since many members were talking about the Russian Energia rocket, I did a little research myself. Robert Zubrin stated in his book "The Case for Mars" that if run privately the cost for Mars Direct could be reduced to $3 billion, but that was based on a Stanford study that estimated the cost to revive the Energia rocket at $500 million plus $300 million per launch. I asked if anyone had actually talked to the Russian company to ask them if it's available, and how much it costs. No one had, so I did. I sent a fax directly to the director of the international division of the Rocket Space Corporation Energia. I got an reply. He did confirm that their big rocket (named for the company) is available to anyone willing to pay the price, but didn't confirm the price. When I talked to their American office to get the contact number, one employee there said that NASA had asked them a few years ago how much it would cost to revive the Energia rocket. They spent thousands of dollars on the study and were quite disappointed that they never got a contract from it. But the result was $ million to "restore certain elements of infrastructure". I also discovered a page in NASA's web site that lists various international launch vehicles, including the Energia. It lists the per launch cost at $120 million in 1995 dollars. Ok, so we now know when "a few years ago" was. This a lot cheaper than the Stanford study.
The dates of these messages are quite interesting. I sent the fax on December 2, I received the reply (in Russian) on February 1, That reply stated they learned of the Mars Society from my message, and included a couple articles from the Russian press about their plan for a manned mission to Mars. I sent a second message on April 11, 2001 asking for clarification and translation of an acronym from the attachments. I didn't get a reply to my second message, but on April 16, 2001, Russia announced to the western press that they want to send a manned mission to Mars by I think that announcement is a far better response than any personal message. At least year's conference in August, RSC Energia had a display of their big rocket. Apparently my messages had quite an impact.

19. Decaying Infrastructure
That was until May 12, Kazakh workmen maintaining the vehicle assembly building stored 10 metric tonnes of roofing material on the flat roof. They had experienced theft at Baikonur. Then there was a major rain storm. The roof collapsed destroying the 3 launch vehicles inside. Furthermore, Russia had move the Buran orbiter out of the orbiter processing building to prepare modules for ISS. The moved the orbiter to the safest location they knew, the vehicle assembly building. The orbiter was destroyed as well. The Russian military had maintained the Buran shuttle for launch on short notice, but as part of the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Buran and its Energia launch vehicles were handed over to Kazakhstan on January 1, From that date until they were destroyed the vehicles were available for sale. Three complete launch vehicles, enough for a single Mars Direct mission to Mars, were lost. Now the United States is talking about decommissioning their Shuttle. That infrastructure must be converted to a Mars-capable launch vehicle quickly or it will also be lost forever.