The Mars Society announced today that it is beginning a nationwide grassroots campaign to get Congress to pass legislation compelling the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to produce a plan to get humans to Mars within a decade. As part of the campaign, the Mars Society has drawn up a draft Mars Exploration Act requiring NASA to produce a plan, and mobilizing its chapters across the nation to meet with their representatives and Senators in their home offices to explain its purpose and ask them to become co-sponsors.
Commenting on the campaign, Mars Society president Dr. Robert Zubrin said, “NASA today is a rudderless ship. Its robotic Mars exploration program, over-focused on a sample return mission which would do little to advance the key goal of finding life on the Red Planet, has now collapsed under the weight of that program’s excessive cost and schedule. Its Artemis human Moon exploration program has no significant scientific objectives, and, with a mission capability inferior to that wielded NASA’s Apollo program more than half a century ago, utterly fails to meet the geostrategic challenge posed by China’s rising claim to world leadership.”
“America needs a much better space program, one that is worthy of a nation of pioneers. A space program that makes the greatest of discoveries, inspires our youth to develop their scientific talent, and makes clear to all who can lead the way to a grand human future by astonishing the world with what free people can do.”
“We can have such a program. With the advent of heavy lift launch vehicles and an entrepreneurial space industry capable of developing all the necessary flight systems at low cost, we now have in hand, or near at hand, all the tools needed to send humans to Mars within a decade. We are in fact, much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to send men to the Moon in 1961, and we were there 8 years later.”
“What we need now is a plan. Congress needs to put NASA on the spot to draw up such a plan – one that gets humans to Mars in a decade. The plan NASA comes up with might not be the best, but at least there will be a plan, on the table, open for discussion and improvement by the rest of the space community.”
“Congress owes it to itself, and to America, to demand to see what is possible.”
The text of the Mars Exploration Act is shown below, and available in pdf form at this link.
History is not a spectator sport. The Mars Exploration Act campaign is the key next step to get humans to the Red Planet. We need you. If you want to participate in this campaign, and are not yet part of an active Mars Society chapter, contact the MEA Campaign Coordinator at Political-Advocacy@marssociety.org
Draft Legislation for Mars Exploration Act
Whereas the planet Mars, being in its youth a twin of the early Earth, could potentially have served as the birthplace for a second genesis of life; and
Whereas only human explorers operating on the surface of Mars can discover and properly characterize such life, thereby revealing the truth about the potential prevalence and diversity of life in the universe, questions that thinking men and women have pondered for thousands of years; and
Whereas the United States now has in operation or in an advanced state of development the heavy lift launch vehicles necessary to enable the human exploration of Mars; and
Whereas when coupled with the heavy lander necessary to enable human Mars mission, such a transportation system could be used to enable precursor robotic scouting expeditions to Mars with a hundred times the capability offered by our current automated probes; and
Whereas youth loves adventure, a bold human Mars exploration program would be a bracing challenge to the young people of our nation, inviting them to develop their scientific talent to take part, thereby gifting America with a vastly expanded new generation of scientists, engineers, inventors, doctors, medical researchers, and technological entrepreneurs, who would advance our prosperity, health, and national defense in innumerable ways; and
Whereas the United States now has a dynamic entrepreneurial space industrial sector which can be called upon to drastically reduce the cost of a human Mars exploration program, which in turn will greatly accelerate the further development of that sector and its capabilities; and
Whereas the technological capabilities that would be developed by a human Mars exploration program would give America and its allies critical military and economic advantages; and,
Whereas just as during the 1960s, the Free World is now being challenged by an autocratic axis which claims that tyranny is the path for the human future, and this claim can and must be decisively refuted by a bold space program that once again astonishes the world by showing what free people can do; and
Whereas overall the United States is far better technologically prepared to send humans to Mars today than we were to send men to the Moon when President Kennedy committed us to that goal in 1961, and therefore to shrink from such a challenge would represent an unacceptable concession to the notion that we have become less than the people we used to be;Be it resolved that the US Congress requires the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to draw up for its consideration within six months a plan to enable a sustained and effective program of human Mars exploration, with the first unpiloted landing of the required heavy payload delivery system occurring no later than eight years from program start, and the first human landing on the Red Planet accomplished within a decade.