http://marsdrive.com/

My 'secret' sources inside the Dutch Mars society pointed me to this new website. It's from a 'consortium', and they do have a board of directors (!) but I don't see any company names that actually make up the consortium. Anyway, they seem to have taken the Mars Direct plan from Zubrin as their modus operandi, but they did make some small changes to it. Apparently they want to use medium sized boosters to construct their hardware in LEO, where Zubrin is very much into heavy lift boosters. Oh, by the way, they do mention Zubrin a lot, and my sources tell me he is directly involved in this new plan. Makes me wonder why this couldn't be done from inside the Mars society. I mean, Mars is such a small planet. Surely you can't colonize it twice?

__________________
Our Moonshot: join the One Campaign.
please visit: www.one.org

Hi Cugel. To my knowledge this is an independent group, although there are some common interests and overlap.

Yes, but if they're so close to Zubrin... why not simply stay within the existing organization? Is there anything 'going on' between Zubrin and the other leaders of the Mars society? Is he leaving the club?
Anyhow, if you want to raise serious funding it doesn't help if there are 2 organizations, both operating worlwide. Just doesn't make sense.

__________________
Our Moonshot: join the One Campaign.
please visit: www.one.org

I don't think they are close to Zurbin. A least not from what i have heard. Coudl eb wrong though. Do you have specific reference?

As I understand it, the Marsdrive people do see themselves as being more interested in the settlement and after phase of human presence on Mars. the various mars societies are more getting people there and subsequent exploration.

But I agree, too many organisations disperse the effort and the resources.

Jon

I will try to find out some more and will keep you posted.

__________________
Our Moonshot: join the One Campaign.
please visit: www.one.org

Ok!

I wonder about these groups. How do you know their not created by extraterrestrials too cheap to pay for teleportation home?

Zubrin is a clever guy with a lot of good ideas on Mars but for a number of reasons he's constantly rubbing important political people the worng way, there are some who were offended by his satire on the Middile East, Robert Zubrin is also very much an advocate for using nuclear technologies in space which will rub the 'greens' the wrong way, he probably spends too much time linking exploration with the old period of European colonialism ( which is kind of politically incorrect for some ), Zubrin isn't much of a fan of Moon exploration ( which would annoy a number of folks in Washington ) and Zubrin would rather see a direct to Mars approach.

There's no doubt Zubrin's a smart man, but is he the best spokesman for Mars exploration ?

He is one voice amongst many.

Jon

Well, I have been exchanging some email with the Dutch Mars society but unfortunately they don't know much either. According to them Zubrin has something of an advisory role in the Marsdrive consortium, nothing more. Interestingly they said that Marsdrive is more of a practical movement, targetted at going to Mars with existing technology, where Mars society is 'evolving' into something a bit more philosophical and long range.
(I never noticed that when I was a member, but there you go...)

It explains to me why Zubrin, being much more the engineer than a philosopher, is attracted to these guys. Anyway, the European Mars Society conference (EMC6) is 1 month from now in Paris and they promised me to try and find out more about this development right then. To be continued.

__________________
Our Moonshot: join the One Campaign.
please visit: www.one.org

Hmm, I would have said (and have said) the opposite, that it is the Mars Societies that are focussed on the short(er) term. After all, most Mars Society papers and projects are focussed on the first few missions, and it is MarsDrive that talks about settlement But I can't speak for the Netherland Mars Society (although I do have their T-shirt!).

Jon

Hi guys, I'm from MarsDrive (Exec Dir), and I'm a fan of forums(when I get the time) and I noticed your discussion on MarsDrive. Who are we? Good question. I guess there is no simple answer but you could say that we are a constantly evolving group, very pragmatic/practical in our approach to things, and rather than trying to pay for a Mars mission , settlement or similar venture ourselves, we are gradually forming into a much needed facilitator organization.

This basically means we are positioning ourselves to co-ordinate all of the various players who can actually make a humans to Mars mission and future settlements a reality. We do this by many different means, and chief among them at present is online communications networks. Our mission design is only one of many, the first attempt at trying to work through some alternative ideas on getting people to Mars. No mission plan is ignored by us, we look seriously at all of them and future updates on our site will reflect this. I don't really believe any Mars group(and we need more of them) is short term to be honest, the challenges are just too complex to take that approach.

Settlement oriented or mission oriented? Actually it's both, and I can say that we strongly support any efforts to send people to Mars and for now we believe that is what we should be focusing on (mostly). Robert Zubrin has spoken to us from time to time at conferences and via email, and has expressed the view (from his book, The Case for Mars) that a private mission is doable but that funding is a major barrier. We take advice from all in the space community equally and are not partial to any one person.

For the last year we have basically been doing our homework on just what the Mars movement of the world really is and is not, and on finding solutions through those problem areas(where identified). I would call this our "vague" phase, but I am glad to report that within the next few weeks there will be much more clarity on who we are, our legal structure and plans for the near future, etc. Some of us are MS members, some are not, we come from all groups, and some of us from no groups. We try to help other groups where we can and our aim is to help see humans on Mars in the shortest time possible. Being pragmatic is a strong theme that runs through everything we do, and some of our partnerships already reflect that (SFF for example). We support ALL space priorities and try to find common ground where we can. I hope this answers some of your questions, let me know if there is more. Thanks.

Hi FrankS,

Welcome to the BAUT forum, and thanks for being here as a representative of MarsDrive.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Welcome indeed Sir!

Thanks for clearing that up, FrankS.
I'm not completely on your side, with respect to the idea of human settlement of Mars, but I'm looking forward to some interesting discussions!

__________________
Our Moonshot: join the One Campaign.
please visit: www.one.org

I'm glad I could be of help. My job as I see it is not to convince everyone that settling Mars is the main or only priority. In fact it isn't, but it is still a priority to many people and will never really go away as an issue. So what I'm trying to do is to find a happy medium(if there is such a thing). I would be interested to hear what you guys think about how us Mars advocates come across to you and the wider space community and what some of the general perceptions are also.

Well I think Mars should be a top priority for an space agency around the globe, it could do with another robotic mission and someday astronauts may get to live in a Mars colony and live-off-the planet with need for re-supply delivery from Earth, and landing a man on Mars would be one of the greatest achievements of mankind.

One problem I see is that there seems to be hostility thoughout the scientific community between robotic missions and manned space flight. There are people who favor manned flight and don't want any more robotic probes and then there are some people who are fans of robotic missions but continue to make negative comments on manned spaceflight. I don't see why the two areas of exploration can not work hand-in-hand.

If I were to make a criticism of Mars advocates I would say at times that they can be overly enthusiastic on Mars, and they can be dismissive of other areas of exploration. Future missions like a mission to Europa ( The Jupiter Moon that may hold life ) and exoplanet telescopes might also become some of the most important missions done by an space agency, so I don't see why we can't do these missions and explore Mars at the same time.

No argument from me

There are many ways to explore Mars, all are complementary because each does things that others cannot. There is a place for terrestrial telescopic observations, orbiters, landers, sample return, and human missions. Human missions are definitely the top end, but to arbitarily rule them out because of cost or complexity is liking saying to to astromers that telescopes are fine but no instrument over 6 metres and none in sapce because they are too expensive and complex.

I think the scientific hostility to crewed missions is unevenly spread. I think most planetary scientists working on the Moon and Mars see the return of crews to the one and going to the other as essential, and cannot wait for that to happen. Ross Taylor, Mike Malin, Ken Edgett, Steve Squres all come to mind. The opposition comes from planetary scientists working on the outer planets (who think anything inside the orbit of Jupiter is a waste of time) and scientists who wish to see money spent in other expensive fields (bomedical research, larg optical telescopes, partial accelerators). I suspect that most of these people either don't care about detailed studies of the Mon and Mars, or don't understand the problem. I read one astroner in the journal Astronomy and Geophysics last year say that who needed space probes anyway, an OWL could tell you all you needed to know about Mars - after all an OWL could map Mars at sub km resolution! Some did point out to him that we already had images of Mars at sub metre resolution, so sub kilometre scale imagery wasn't going to impress anyone.

I think the Moon vs Mars thing is historic and limited to the US. I heard a talk by Wendell Mendell a couple of years ago when he pointed out that for decades manned lunar research was centres in places like Houston and manned Mars research in Colorado, and this regionalism became reflected in the strength of the factionalism that has emerged. Certainly elsewhere in the world there is not a Moon vs Mars thing I have encountered.

Definitely! We can't do everything at once, but we can do a lot of things either sequentially or as a judicous mix.

Jon

Mars Society and MarsDrive Join Forces

MarsDrive has been partnering in many ways with:

http://www.4frontiers.com/
http://www.redplanetexpeditions.com/
http://www.isdc2008.org/
http://www.moonsociety.org/
http://www.marshome.org/
http://www.spacegeneration.org/usa/
http://www.spacenow.ca/
http://www.redcolony.com/
http://www.mackintoshweb.com/mars/
http://www.marssociety.org.au/
http://www.space-frontier.org/
THE PLANETARY SOCIETY, AUSTRALIAN VOLUNTEERS
http://www.spacefleet.org.uk/
http://www.marssociety.org.uk/
http://www.marte.org/
http://www.advancespace.com/
http://www.marspedia.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

MarsDrives first official effort is to Earlier in the year RobertDyck had been asked to find presenters for a convention next spring. back in Nov 02, 2007 and did a wonderful write up of his activity for this event.

Now it is time for MarsDrive to get the word out for the