TGD 1.0 (Mars Society's "Party Line")

Mike C. wrote
>>And I think some of the arguments he makes against
>O'Neill's concepts are simply wrong.
>>"Entering Space", while an otherwise fine book,
>>spends even more pages attempting to debunk O'Neill.

I am frequently dismayed, when I run into the Mars Society "party Line"
thinking (Mars is the best and only place suitable for humans to expand to)
by the ignorance of the detractors of space settlement or anything at all to
do in space.

Zubrin himself must be aware of the good work done towards many aspects of
space settlement, but he professes that it all is worthless. I don't
understand this, other than a sneaking suspicion that he knows of the
frqagmentation or the various previous efforts towartds getting into space,
and deliberately sets the very specific goal of Mars, possibly just to get
things started.
Possibly he does see some use for the other things, but space colonies are
just too big to try for, and doomed to fail as O'Neill's efforts did. For
many reasons too, space settlements run into instinctive resistance, because
of the seeming absurdity of the concept to people who haven't studied the
rationalizations behind the choices.
If you talk to people about going to the Moon, they yawn, and say "we've
been there, so what?" We all know this to be wrong, but by the time you
start explaining it to them, their attention has been drawn away (The
general public seemingly having the attention span of plankton).
Mars is a big, visible, unknown target. Every "knows" that we should go
there next, since we went to the Moon, and then lost interest. Now, yes, we
all know this to be wrong also, but we run into the attention span gap
again.

Get Mars, with the expressed intent aamong the activist body which achieves
it, to use the first accomplishment as a foothold.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the absurdities (and cynicism) of this
argument, this is my personal reason for supporting the Mars Society..

Unfortunately, his focus is all too effective in drawing people's attention
away from anything else of interest in space. Many of the M.S. enthusiasts
are completely ignorant of the work done on space colonies, asteroid
resources, or Lunar base logistics arguments, other than Zubrins writings. I
run into this time after time, and get only intolerant sneers & actually
circular reasoning to my argument for things in space oe long term reasons
for space infrastructure -the dirty "I" word, to them because of his
debunking (valid, IMHO) of the SEI bloated architecture.

I was at a panel discussion with Dr.Z, Chris McKay, and Carol Stoker
attendant to a M.S. steering comittee meeting a couple years ago. They gave
the usual Mars related talks (always very good, and extremely compelling, by
the way). During the Q&A period, a couple of audience questions caught my
attention, and made me doubt more then ever the wisdom of their
intransigence towards anything else to do in space.
The 2 questions were "What do you hold out as a payback, or return on any
investment in the Mars missions?" and "What does your vision of the future
Mars human civilization offer to the betterment of Earth, or Humankind's
interests?"

The usual Zubrinite Mars arguments fell flat -most definately to the
audience, and even to me & the other nearby chapter members I could
communicate with. I stuck up my hand, and when called on, I answered these
questions with room to spare: As for investment returns, if you look besides
Mars, at other things we could do (possibly for less cost than even a Mars
Direct mission), there is ample potential for unbelievably staggeringly huge
profit potential in space: NEAs, T/C advances with GEO platforms, even SSPS
is _not at all_ out of the picture -in many qualified observer's minds.
(Yes, I definately _did_ state this)
All of these things lead directly into the answer of the question of what
space offers to the Earth & Humanity long term. Mars is a valueable lesson
in what can happen on planets, in the science we can find there. Space
itself offers vastly greater resources, with literally unlimited room for
growth, and relief to the overstressed Earth. We go to space directly to
save & preserve Earth.
We want Mars for what it offers our minds, and as a big, visible target to
get the attention of people towardds space. By the way, we can get
everything else. There's very little doubt that an extremely strong
exploration effort can be self-funding, and even profitable if it's part of
an overall space architecture.

>From Robert Reed 21 Mar 2001
>... I say that we should do all, and not concentrate
>just on one thing.
>There are people who want to go to Mars, such as the
>Mars Society. And other people will want to build
>giant space colonies...
>I say let each group go their own way.

Using this expansion of overall space development with Mars as a tasty
temptation to get us going, I've been arguing with them that the strict
adherence of the Mars Society to their tight focus is actually hurting the
movement, in a big way.
Others who are enthusiastic for space (and might even feel some enthusiasm
towards Mars) feel shunned & belittled by the Martians, at the same time as
they feel a sense of unbelieving pity & contempt towards these closed-minded
fools. They will not ever throw their weight into the effort. I personally
feel that the Mars focussed effort which they are undertaking is a good idea
-for getting interest into space.
As I said, I feel that there is great reason to believe that a Mars
exploration mission could in fact lead towards other things in space, if the
stated intent is to leave infrastructure in place for other steps. This is
without a doubt the stated intent of the Mars Society. They never talk
unless they continue into the future of a second branch of human
civilization. No "flags & Footprints".

Nevertheless, letting each group go its own way is not a good idea. How much
of a new organization's effort & energy is sunk into simple housekeeping?
Mailings, membership, and the basic organization soak up lots of time &
money. Further, lobbying, public outreach, and political activism all takes
time & effort. How many interested people who aren't rocket scientists
(myself included) ever get to have a hand in getting anything done?

The local chapter of the NSS gets a few members to write to a
congress-critter about a particular piece of legislation, and toss in a few
words about their sparkling fantasy of cities in the sky. The next year, a
few Mars Society people talk to him about Mars. He promptly forgets them
both. Furthermore, out of the 150 people in a given area who might be
informed & interested in activism, usually only 10% do anything. That means
that over a 5-10 year period, the same 10 people do everything for a group,
then get burned out & drop out, disillusioned.
This is what's been going on for the last 20 years in the NSS. Now, we have
these upstart Martians walking all over everyboidy else. Doing their own
thing, but treading the exact same ground.
How much better if everybody could see a common thread, which leads to what
they want? How much greater leverage, and what a louder voice they could all
have if they worked together sometimes.

"The Great Debate" is about resolving this.