What is the Mars Society?
The Purpose of the Mars Society
The Mars Society (www.MarsSociety.org) is an international effort to launch humanity towards a new world. Our purpose is to further the goal of the exploration and settlement of Mars through 1) Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars, 2) Support of ever more aggressive government funded Mars exploration programs around the world and 3) Conducting Mars exploration on a private basis.
The Challenge of Mars
Humans are explorers. Throughout history our progress has been driven by our basic need to know what is on the other side of the mountains or oceans, or what good may come from new ideas, new lands and new ways of doing things. We’re ready…. Though Mars is distant, we are better prepared to send humans to Mars than we were to travel to the Moon at the start of the Space Age.
How to we get there?
A continuing program of Mars exploration can be done for about 3 billion dollars per year with the first mission landing within a decade. The key is to take advantage of the wealth of resources Mars possesses. This can be done if a “live off the land” approach is used, such as the “Mars Direct” plan developed at Lockheed-Martin.
In the “Mars Direct” plan, an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) is launched to Mars; six months later it lands and fuels itself with methane and oxygen manufactured on Mars from the thin Martian atmosphere. Thereafter, every two years, two boosters are launched. One sends an ERV to open up a new site, while the other sends a piloted habitat to rendezvous with a fully fueled ERV at a previously prepared site. The crew spends roughly 600 days on the surface and then returns to Earth in the ERV. Eventually, by linking up numerous habitats at certain locations, the basis for the first permanent Martian Settlements can be established.
Editor’s Note: Let’s put the costs of this program in perspective: 3 billion dollars per year for a ten-year program to get us to Mars is roughly the cost of an annual movie ticket for each of our 300 million US citizens. A Moon and Mars program is about the cost of a yearly double-feature for each of us. That’s what congress is offering to “save” us when they talk about giving up on a manned space exploration program.
What You Can Do to Support the Quest for Mars
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Become a Member of the Mars Society
Your dues support the large-scale research projects of the Mars Society. You can support specific Mars Society projects with your ideas, your time, and your contributions of money or equipment.
You can join Mars Society from its website (http://MarsSociety.org)
OR save 50% on your annual membership by signing up at our first ON-ICE meeting in McMurdo (contact GloryGeoghagan@yahoo.com).
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Attend the Annual Mars Society Convention
The 13th Annual International Convention of the Mars Society will be held in August 2010 in Ohio. Detailed information will be available in early 2010 on the Mars Society website (http://MarsSociety.org).
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Join a Local Chapter and work with people in your own area
The Antarctica Chapter of the Mars Society will hold activities both On-Ice in McMurdo, and Off-Ice in Denver. Members outside of Denver can keep in touch via email and the Antarctica chapter website (http://MarsOnIce.org).
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Volunteer your skills
The Mars Society needs scientists and engineers, teachers, artists, students, mechanics, medical professionals, business professionals, musicians, adventurers and enthusiastic team members. Everyone has skills that can be used to help us reach Mars.
Founding Declaration of the Mars Society
The declaration was ratified and signed by the 700 attendees at the Founding Convention of the Mars Society, held August 13-16, 1998 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, United States.
The time has come for humanity to journey to Mars
We're ready. Though Mars is distant, we are far better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to travel to the Moon at the commencement of the space age. Given the will, we could have our first teams on Mars within a decade.
The reasons for going to Mars are powerful
We must go for the knowledge of Mars. Our robotic probes have revealed that Mars was once a warm and wet planet, suitable for hosting life's origin. But did it? A search for fossils on the Martian surface or microbes in groundwater below could provide the answer. If found, they would show that the origin of life is not unique to the Earth, and, by implication, reveal a universe that is filled with life and probably intelligence as well. From the point of view learning our true place in the universe, this would be the most important scientific enlightenment since Copernicus.
We must go for the knowledge of Earth.
As we begin the twenty-first century, we have evidence that we are changing the Earth's atmosphere and environment in significant ways. It has become a critical matter for us better to understand all aspects of our environment. In this project, comparative planetology is a very powerful tool, a fact already shown by the role Venusian atmospheric studies played in our discovery of the potential threat of global warming by greenhouse gases. Mars, the planet most like Earth, will have even more to teach us about our home world. The knowledge we gain could be key to our survival.
We must go for the challenge.
Civilizations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. The time is past for human societies to use war as a driving stress for technological progress. As the world moves towards unity, we must join together, not in mutual passivity, but in common enterprise, facing outward to embrace a greater and nobler challenge than that which we previously posed to each other. Pioneering Mars will provide such a challenge. Furthermore, a cooperative international exploration of Mars would serve as an example of how the same joint-action could work on Earth in other ventures.
We must go for the youth.
The spirit of youth demands adventure. A humans-to-Mars program would challenge young people everywhere to develop their minds to participate in the pioneering of a new world. If a Mars program were to inspire just a single extra percent of today's youth to scientific educations, the net result would be tens of millions more scientists, engineers, inventors, medical researchers and doctors. These people will make innovations that create new industries, find new medical cures, increase income, and benefit the world in innumerable ways to provide a return that will utterly dwarf the expenditures of the Mars program.
We must go for the opportunity.
The settling of the Martian New World is an opportunity for a noble experiment in which humanity has another chance to shed old baggage and begin the world anew; carrying forward as much of the best of our heritage as possible and leaving the worst behind. Such chances do not come often, and are not to be disdained lightly.
We must go for our humanity.
Human beings are more than merely another kind of animal - we are life's messenger. Alone of the creatures of the Earth, we have the ability to continue the work of creation by bringing life to Mars, and Mars to life. In doing so, we shall make a profound statement as to the precious worth of the human race and every member of it.
We must go for the future.
Mars is not just a scientific curiosity; it is a world with a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, possessing all the elements that are needed to support not only life, but technological society. It is a New World, filled with history waiting to be made by a new and youthful branch of human civilization that is waiting to be born. We must go to Mars to make that potential a reality. We must go, not for us, but for a people who are yet to be. We must do it for the Martians.
Believing therefore that the exploration and settlement of Mars is one of the greatest human endeavors possible in our time, we have gathered to found this Mars Society, understanding that even the best ideas for human action are never inevitable, but must be planned, advocated, and achieved by hard work. We call upon all other individuals and organizations of like-minded people to join with us in furthering this great enterprise. No nobler cause has ever been. We shall not rest until it succeeds.
Copyright 2002 The Mars Society (http://MarsSociety.org ). All rights reserved.