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Robert Zubrin is an aerospace engineer and author best known for his advocacy of manned Mars exploration. 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".

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 formed the Mars Society in 1998. This is an international organisation advocating a manned Mars mission as a goal, by private funding if possible.

Zubrin lives in Indian Hills, Colorado with his wife, Maggie Zubrin, and two daughters. Maggie Zubrin has long served as the executive director of the Mars Society.

Qualifications and professional experience

Zubrin holds a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester (1974), a masters degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics, a masters degree in Nuclear Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering — all from the University of Washington. He has developed a number of concepts for space propulsion and exploration, and is the author of over 200 technical and non-technical papers and five books. He was a member of Lockheed Martin's scenario development team charged with developing strategies for space exploration. He is also President of both the Mars Society and Pioneer Astronautics, a private company that does research and development on innovative aerospace technologies. Zubrin is the co-inventor on a U.S. design patent and a U.S. utility patent on a hybrid rocket/airplane, and on a U.S. utility patent on an oxygen supply system (see links below). He was awarded his first patent at age 20 in 1972 for Three Player Chess.

Books written by Dr. Zubrin:

• The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (1996), with Richard Wagner. This outlines the Mars Direct plan along with speculation about the economic, social and technical viability of future Mars colonization.
• Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (1999). This ranges from the current status quo and innovative startups of the aerospace industry, through exploration and colonization of Mars, to a more futuristic look at humanity's possible colonization of the solar system and the feasibility of interstellar travel with known physics.
• Mars On Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic (2003). Zubrin recounts the origins and progress of the Mars Society's Mars Analog Research Station project, including a variety of perils, both mundane and adventurous, that were overcome in establishing the first analog Mars habitat on Devon Island in the high Arctic. He offers highlights of what has been learned so far through that effort.
• First Landing (2001), a (barely) fictional tale about a near-future Mars flight using the Mars Direct plan.
• The Holy Land (2003). This is an "SF satire on the Middle East crisis and the War on Terrorism, and concerns what happens when the liberal Western Galactic Empire relocates the oppressed Minervan sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington, in the midst of a USA ruled by Christian fundamentalist fanatics."
• Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts (2005). This is an effort to humanize and show the multiple dimensions of Arnold, and to contrast the democratic values embodied in the spirit of the Revolution with the socially bankrupt classism embodied in the British subjects who won Arnold to their side.

Books edited by and/or partly written by Dr. Zubrin:

Zubrin has also edited or co-edited the following books, most of which include contributions he wrote:

• Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space (1996), co-edited with Stanley Schmidt. This is a collection of fifteen selected non-fiction entries that had been published in Analog magazine over the years; it includes five articles authored or co-authored by Zubrin, including "The Hypersonic Skyhook", "Mars Direct: A Proposal for the Rapid Exploration and Colonization of the Red Planet" (co-authored with David A. Baker), "Colonizing the Outer Solar System", "Terraforming Mars" (co-authored with Christopher McKay), and "The Magnetic Sail". Notable additional contributors include Robert L. Forward and the godfather of terraforming, Martyn J. Fogg, each of whom contributed two articles.
• From Imagination to Reality: Mars Exploration Studies of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society : Precursors and Early Piloted Exploration Missions (1997).
• From Imagination to Reality: Mars Exploration Studies of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society : Base Building, Colonization and Terraformation (1997).
• Proceedings of the Founding Convention of the Mars Society (1999), co-edited with Maggie Zubrin. This contains articles corresponding to talks presented at the founding convention of the Mars Society in Boulder, Colorado in August 1998; it includes contributions from Zubrin, Buzz Aldrin, Martyn Fogg, and many others.
• On to Mars: Colonizing a New World (2002), co-edited with Frank Crossman. This contains articles corresponding to talks presented at the annual conventions of the Mars Society in Boulder in 1999, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2000, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California in 2001.
• On to Mars 2 : Exploring and Settling a New World (2005), co-edited with Frank Crossman. This contains over 130 articles corresponding to talks presented at the annual conventions of the Mars Society in Boulder in 2002, in Eugene, Oregon in 2003, and in Chicago, Illinois in 2004.

Dr. Zubrin on the ethics of terraforming

Dr. Zubrin is noted as an advocate of a moderately anthropocentric position in the ethics of terraforming. Discussions of the ethics of terraforming often make reference to a series of public debates Zubrin has held with his friend Christopher McKay, who advocates a moderately biocentric position on the ethics of terraforming. For example, a written account of some of these debates is available in On to Mars: Colonizing a New World, as a joint article, "Do Indigenous Martian Bacteria have Precedence over Human Exploration?" (pp. 177-182)

Dr. Zubrin in fiction:

An aging Robert Zubrin also appears as a background character in The Martian Race (1999) by Gregory Benford, a science fiction novel depicting early human explorers on Mars in the very near future. Benford, who is also an astrophysicist, is a longtime member of both the board of directors and the steering committee of the Mars Society.

References

1. Email from Robert Zubrin to Tim McMahon dated 9-18-2003 requesting book review

External links

• The Mars Society
• Pioneer Astronautics
• "The Political Economy of Very Large Space Projects"
• Review of Zubrin's book Benedict Arnold
• U.S. design patent D405,750, "Reusable rocket airplane"
• U.S. patent 6,119,985, "Reusable rocket-propelled high altitude airplane and method and apparatus for mid-air oxidizer transfer to said airplane"
• U.S. patent 6,347,627, "Nitrous oxide based oxygen supply system"

• Living people
• Science fiction writers
• Space visionaries
• Mars Society
• Satirists