Can we achieve 140 mpg fuel economy? You bet. Just get the bureaucrats out of the way, and Yankee ingenuity will do the rest.
— Robert Zubrin
Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discovery.
In the 1960s, reaching for the moon meant just that. It was a metaphor for attempting the impossible, and we attempted it, and we did it. And it inspired millions of people in every way. The number of science graduates in this country doubled in the 1960s at every level - high school, college, Ph.D.
We have never been in danger of running out of resources, but we have encountered considerable dangers from people who say we are running out of resources and who say that human activities need to be constrained.
You can't 'control' a Mars mission from Earth. The Mars mission is going to have to be controlled by the people on Mars... There is just too much involved that is out of sight of Earth.
The facts of the fossil record never justified denying poor people a healthy diet. The facts of the weather record do not justify denying poor people affordable energy. And no set of facts, whatever they may be, can justify denying scientists - or anyone else, for that matter - the right to free speech.
People make their own fates, and if enough of us make our fate to be space explorers, perhaps we can actually get some space exploration done.
I think that when humans get around to exploring and building cities and towns on Mars, it will be viewed as one of the great times of humanity, a time when people set foot on another world and had the freedom to make their own world.
The space program needs a goal, and the goal should be humans to Mars.
The NASA humans-to-Mars program is all sizzle and no steak.
In the courtroom of science, if you have the facts on your side, you don't need a gun - and juries would be well advised to distrust the case of those parties who choose to use weapons to silence adversarial witnesses.
I grew up in the 1960s and wanted to become part of the great space exploration effort, but when I graduated from college in 1974, the Apollo program was over, and the country had moved into this pessimistic mode. We had entered the 'age of limits.'
Just think how much poorer we would be today if the world would have had half as many people in the 19th century as it actually did. You can get rid of Thomas Edison or Louis Pasteur; take your pick.
I don't think we should have to do a Mars mission on the basis of hysteria. I think we should do a Mars mission on the basis of a deliberate judgment that what we want to do is open up a new planet for humanity... that we are continuing to be a nation of pioneers.
