Dr. Robert Zubrin Wants To Get Humans To The Planet Mars In The Next 10 Years
The Mars Underground - Pioneers for the Next World, is a bold and exciting concept, the brainchild of leading aerospace engineer and Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin. He has a dream, he wants to get humans to the planet Mars in the next ten years, he just has to convince NASA that his plan will work — using animation the documentary shows how the journey might play out and how a terraformed Mars might look.
Now, with the advent of a revolutionary plan, Mars Direct, he shows how we can use present day technology and natural resources on Mars to make human settlement possible. But can he win over the skeptics at NASA and the wider world?
The Mars Underground is a landmark documentary that follows Dr. Zubrin and his team as they try to bring this incredible dream to life. Through spellbinding animation, the film takes us on a daring first journey to the Red Planet and envisions a future Mars teeming with life and terraformed into a blue world.
Continuing on with the theme, the video below is one segment of a feature documentary, "Someday Somewhere Beyond", exploring the history and future of space colonies.
About Dr. Robert Zubrin:
Robert Zubrin (born April 9, 1952) is an American aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of the manned exploration of Mars. He was the driving force behind Mars Direct—a proposal intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission. The key idea was to use the Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen, water, and rocket propellant for the surface stay and return journey. A modified version of the plan was subsequently adopted by NASA as their "design reference mission". He questions the delay and cost-to-benefit ratio of first establishing a base or outpost on an asteroid or another Apollo Program-like return to the Moon, as neither would be able to provide all of its own oxygen, water, or energy; these resources are producible on Mars, and he expects people would be there thereafter.
Disappointed with the lack of interest from government in Mars exploration and after the success of his book The Case for Mars as well as leadership experience at the National Space Society, Zubrin established the Mars Society in 1998. This is an international organization advocating a manned Mars mission as a goal, by private funding if possible.
Zubrin lives in Lakewood, Colorado; he has two daughters, Rachel and Sarah.