President of Pioneer Astronautics and Founder and President of The Mars Society
Things have changed. The world’s government-led space efforts, begun so proudly in the eras of Sputnik and the Apollo Moon launches, stalled during the following four decades.
But now the ice has broken. In the midst of this decay, new forces have risen that are radically changing everything. Uniting the entrepreneurial genius of Silicon Valley with the hard-won technological expertise of the old aerospace industry, a new generation of space companies has been born whose upstart members are revolutionizing our prospects.
In this talk astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin will examine the possibilities. Starting with a discussion of the present-day breakthroughs, we will take a deeper look at where it leads: to ultrafast global travel through suborbital space, to new industries on orbit, and to human settlement of the Moon, Mars, the asteroids, the outer solar system, and ultimately the stars. All these things are possible, and he will explain how to achieve them.
Then he will look at what such mastery implies: what we will gain by undertaking this grand adventure, and what we would lose by failing to do so.
Let us seize the day.
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Robert Zubrin is President of Pioneer Astronautics, an aerospace R&D company located in Lakewood, Colorado. He is also the founder and President of the Mars Society. Formerly a Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, he has a Master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Washington. Dr. Zubrin holds 20 patents and is the author of over 200 published technical and non-technical papers in the field of space exploration and technology.
In addition to his many technical publications, Dr. Zubrin is the author of nine books, including "The Case for Mars", the humorous “How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet”, “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudoscientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism”, and most recently, “The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility.”
Since founding Pioneer Astronautics in January 1996, Dr. Zubrin has served as the Principal Investigator of over fifty research and development projects in areas including spacecraft and launch vehicle propulsion systems, Mars and Lunar in-situ resource utilization technology, EVA life support and propulsion, and robotic exploration systems. As leader of the Mars Society he led the construction of two Mars analog research stations – one in the Canadian high Arctic in 2000 and the other in the American desert in 2001 - and has overseen a program involving over 200 simulated Mars exploration missions at those stations during the period since. Prior to working at Lockheed Martin he worked in a number of areas, including thermonuclear fusion, nuclear power plant safety, and as a high school science teacher.
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The Zoom presentation will be on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 from 12:00 noon to 1:00 PM PST, followed by up to half an hour of Q&A. If you would like to attend, please request the Zoom link from Peter Kurzhals.