Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin will speak on Sunday, June 18th at the InScience Conference in Kyiv. InScience is the largest science gathering held in Ukraine yearly. The theme of this year’s conference is “Science for Victory, Science to Rebuild Ukraine.” The title of Dr. Zubrin’s talk will be “Victory from Space.”
Following the talk, Dr. Zubrin will take part in a number of private meetings and do some press interviews as well. He and his wife Hope will then travel to Poland where he will give a talk on Poland’s chance to enter the entrepreneurial space revolution at the AGH University in Cracow at 3 PM June 21. Those interested in attending should contact the Mars Society Polska for details.
Dr. Zubrin’s recent book The Case for Space has been published in both Ukrainian and Polish.
Commenting on his visit to Ukraine, Dr. Zubrin said, “I am deeply honored to be invited to speak at InScience and have an opportunity to show my solidarity with the people of Ukraine who are holding the line in defense of the entire free world against the fascist Eurasian Axis.
“In 1858, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in which he said ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I do not believe our union can long endure half slave and half free. It must become all one thing or all the other.’
“The forces of freedom won that war. But the world today remains a house divided, half slave and half free. It will become all one or all the other. And the outcome of this war in Ukraine may well determine which way the world will go.
“If Ukraine should fall, then an army of one million men aligned with the free world will be deleted from the West’s order of battle, the power of fascist Russian will be augmented, the strategic weakness along its southwest border that impairs its ability to invade the Baltic states will be cured and its forces will advance to the borders of Poland and Romania. Moreover the policy of deterrence which has prevented general war for the past seven decades will be discredited, and many governments, both in Europe and Asia will cut their submissive deals accepting domination by the aggressors, leaving the brave few that choose to resist to militarize, losing half their freedom thereby as well.
“But if Ukraine prevails, then deterrence will be restored, and with the fence that kept war in check for the past 7 decades safely back up, then those nations dedicated to the arts of peace will have a chance to show their mettle, and by their example lead the peoples to the unfree world to choose a better path.
“Putin invaded Ukraine because he knows he has to keep Ukraine down to keep Russia down. If Ukraine wins, the Putin gang are done, and the shadow of Kremlin tyranny that has darkened Eurasia for more than half a millennia be lifted.
“To those who say there is no difference between what the two sides in this struggle offer to the future of humanity, I say look at Ukraine. Look at the horrors that the monstrous Putin regime has wreaked there; the devastation of entire regions, the massacre of civilians, the mass graves, the mass kidnapping of children. And look at the regime itself. Russia is not a country with an organized crime network. It is an organized crime network with a country. Its putrid, pornographically evil rulers became fabulously rich by stealing all the wealth created at enormous sacrifice by the people of the Soviet Union. A gang of poisoners and pimps, who, while posing as defenders of traditional values, profit from human trafficking on a massive scale, who wage war by creating mercenary armies of the most brutal thugs collected in their prisons, and whose entire regime is based not merely on lies, but on the on conceit that there is no such thing as truth.
“Science is the search for truth. The idea of truth is central its faith, just as it is to Science’s sister, Conscience. Tyrants would gladly steal some of the works of Science, but they hate and mock her faith. Moreover Science, like Conscience, is both the child and parent of Freedom, who they hate most of all.
“If Ukraine wins, the free world wins, and humanity today stands on the verge of the most brilliant chapter in its history, the opening on an unlimited spacefaring future. But if the other side prevails, we face the prospect of a new dark age, made darker, deeper, and more eternal than any before it by the abuse of the stolen fruits of Science by its worst enemies.
Freedom gives us science. Science gives us freedom.
That is why as a partisan of freedom and a man of science and conscience, it is the greatest honor and privilege of my life to stand with Ukraine.
