New Mars Forums

Hi, good to be here.  I've just asked /. to interview Zubrin.  Fingers crossed.

Here's the submission.

freality writes "There is enough water on Mars to make it the next frontier for settlement, there's a Bill before the US House for near-term manned exploration and settlement of Mars, and China has stepped up to the space race plate. All that's lacking to really get this ball rolling is public mandate. Though the /. community is becoming more politically noticeable, it isn't united, vocal or active in calling for Mars exploration and settlement. Judging by the discussion of these stories, it also doesn't seem well informed about the benefits/risks of a manned Mars mission. That's bad geek karma. Like it did for YRO, This is the time for the /. editorial to put its strength into optimistic, informed consideration of Mars exploration and settlement. A great first step is to higlight the chief activist for this endeavor: Robert Zubrin. Zubrin is to Mars settlement what Stallman is to Free Software. Zubrin is a veteran aerospace engineer, has testified to Congress on Mars settlement, written popular books on the subject and formed an important activist group (marssociety.org). He is very well informed and extemely persuasive. Give him a forum in the /. community."

I just registered and this is my first message.

Why the rush?  I was just reading a post (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl? … 02/0011222) on slashdot.org and the ensuing discussion about it.  Basically, CNN reported that the National Research Council has recommended that trips to Mars be handled under heavy quarantine because of the very low probability of killer Martian viruses coming to conquer delicate little earth.

Hm.  I suppose the report is right.. there probably is a very low probability of this happening.  Do I agree that, as they suggest, that's reason enough to make major mission plan changes?  Well, that's probably a question best left to the experts.

However, the spin from this article was damaging.  Using the conversation on slashdot as a guide, most people who read this article were probably misinformed, put-off or spooked; and for no good reason.  That's no good. This is even worse when you consider that slashdot readers are big geeks and relatively informed about things science compared to your average CNN reader... who knows what the take-away for them was.

Just think numbers.  At least a few hundred slashdot readers and maybe, hmm, a few thousand (?) CNN readers think that Mars may well be dangerous to Earth.  Great.  This is the kind of momentum killer that keeps us on this planet.

As usual, for most things Mars, it's instructive to see what Zubrin has to say here:

"In olden days, before the Earth was well explored, map makers used to decorate unknown regions of their maps with various imaginative creations, not  the least of which were menacing dragons that could swallow a ship whole... The dragons may have been imaginary, but even imaginary dragons can and did prey upon the minds of would-be voyagers, and by so doing stifled human exploration for centuries.

Well, things haven't changed that much.  Today those who hope to raise a mission to Mars find their charts filled with dragons too.  Reports of horrible beasts with names such as Radiation, Zero-G, Human Factors, Dust Storms, and Back Contamination intrude into the discussion of mission plans, and do their worst to terrorize would-be crews (unsuccessfully), would-be mission planners (somewhat successfully), and would-be mission sponsors [e.g. slashdot readers] (very successfully)... If we're going to get to Mars, we're going to have to clear the maps."

Zubrin.  Man what a thinker.  He goes on to point out that unlike some of the other issues, threatening "Back Contamination" is just nutty.  For the full argument, read the book (The Case For Mars, '96 - Ch. 5).

The reason I'm posting here on the education list is that I suprisingly didn't find anyone post a comprehensive educational response in the slashdot discussion.  My first thought was to post one myself, but unfortunately if you post after the first couple of days on slashdot, nobody is going to read it (I'm still gonna post there).  My second thought was, make sure it doesn't happen again:

USE THIS THREAD TO TRACK LOCATIONS OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION ON MARS.  BE INFORMED ON MARS AND BRING YOUR INFORMATION TO THOSE DISCUSSIONS.

e.g.:

Site: slashdot.org
Popularity Rank: 1,639
Frequency of Mars Discussion:
      4 April, 2002
      5 March, 2002
      4 February, 2002
     10 January, 2002
      5 December, 2001

In the above record, popularity was determined by looking up slashdot.org at alexa.com.  Frequency is the number of headlines a month with "mars" in them and hence when discussion happen.  Was determined by filtering the results of a keyword search at slashdot.  This means to me that there will be about 4 or 5 discussions in May about Mars on Slashdot.  I'll try to be there.

Pablo