Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 12:54:12 -0700 From: Mars List Manager To: Mars Society Mail-List Member Subject: Mars Society call to Action Mars Society Special Bulletin Number 2 Reprint and pass on as desired. For further information about the Mars Society visit our website at http://www.marssociety.org or http://nw.net/mars for our No-Frames site. Mars Society Calls for Mobilization to Save Mars 2001 Mission Rover As a result of the Clinton Administration's pulling of $60 million in committed funds to support the Mars 2001 mission, NASA has canceled plans to fly the "Athena" robotic rover to Mars in that year. Because of greatly expanded science requirements, an extra $60 million was actually needed to fly the two-spacecraft 2001 Mars mission as planned. The administration's decision to subtract $60 million, instead of adding it, was a devastating blow. This decision represents a massive setback to the US Mars exploration program. The Athena rover is a highly instrumented mobile rover capable of traveling tens of kilometers across the Martian surface; imaging, examining the soil chemistry and mineralogy of Mars, drilling beneath the surface, and searching for evidence of life. It is a major scale-up in both size, technology, and overall capability compared to the highly successful Sojourner rover that flew to Mars during the Pathfinder mission of July 1997. It is meant as the precursor to a still more capable rover that would fly to Mars in 2003 to gather samples for the Mars Sample Return mission scheduled for 2005. Canceling the Athena rover or delaying its flight till 2003 (the next mission opportunity) will push back the schedule of the entire Mars exploration program by at least two years. The decision to cancel Athena represents a violation of President Clinton's promise made in August 1996 to "put the full intellectual and technological might of the United States behind the search for life on Mars." It is also a violation of the administration's space policy document released in October 1996 which promised a permanent robotic presence on Mars by the year 2000. It's also just plain nuts. The current JPL robotic Mars exploration program is one of the few organizations within NASA to actually implement NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's call for "faster, better, cheaper" mission design. Recent missions implemented by this group have been carried out at about 1/5th the cost of missions of comparable complexity (such as Cassini, Galileo, Mars Observer, and EOS) implemented elsewhere or earlier by NASA. To stop this extremely productive program dead in its tracks to save $120 million (spread over three years, out of a 13,000 million/year NASA budget) shows an incredible misjudgment of priorities. There are two other components of the Mars 2001 mission that are still scheduled to fly: An orbiter equipped with a gamma ray spectrometer to prospect the chemical composition of the planet, and a lander equipped with experiments demonstrating the ability to make rocket propellant on Mars out of the local atmosphere and for measuring radiation levels on the Martian surface. Both of these components are also vital to the future of Mars exploration. Saving the rover by canceling one of these is not an option. Instead, the $60 million in funds pulled from the program must be restored, and the extra $60 million required added to provide the 2001 mission the full $400 million budget it needs to be done right. The Mars Society calls upon every individual and organization concerned with space exploration to rally to turn this disastrous decision around. You can help by sending e-mail expressing your concern to all of the people listed at the end of this section. And while you're at it, you might also let them know that while restoring the robotic Mars exploration program to fiscal health is absolutely necessary, it's not enough. The American space program overall needs a mission worthy of a $13 billion per year space agency, and that can only be the human exploration of Mars. The Clinton-Gore administration may not be interested in continuing America's pioneering tradition in space, but they owe it to the American people not to deny the person they choose as their next president that option. Starting now, NASA's Human Exploration and Development of Space (HEDS) division needs to be funded to prepare human Mars exploration at minimally the same level of funding (about $150 million/year) as the robotic Mars program. This will allow the HEDS group to conduct the critical Phase A planning and key technology demonstration effort that will enable NASA to say to the next President-Elect on the day following the Nov. 2000 election: "Here is our plan. These are our detailed designs, time-lines and cost estimates. We can have people on Mars by 2008, before the end of your second term. The choice is yours." Save the robotic Mars exploration program. Start the human Mars exploration program. Send these gentlemen a message! President Bill Clinton - president@whitehouse.gov Vice President Al Gore - vice.president@whitehouse.gov NASA Administrator Dan Goldin -dgoldin@mail.hq.nasa.gov Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) - senatorlott@lott.senate.gov Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) - georgia6@mail.house.gov Senator Christopher Bond, Chairman VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Subcommittee -kit_bond@bond.senate.gov Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Chairman VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Subcommittee - c/o dave.lesstrang@mail.house.gov Mars Society Founding Convention Growing Fast- Abstract Deadline Extended The response to the Mars Society call for papers has been overwhelming. With two months to go before the conference, over 80 speakers have been confirmed, and additional abstracts and requests for speaking slots are now coming in at a rate of over 5 per day. As a result, the deadline for submittals of abstracts has been extended to June 30. To present at the conference on any subject bearing on the exploration or settlement of Mars, send a 300 word abstract to mzubrin@aol.com. Written papers are not required for presentation, however those written papers that are delivered by the date of the conference that pass review will be published in a series of special issues of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and subsequently bound and published in book form by AAS/Univelt. For further information about the Founding Convention, see the Mars Society website at http://www.marssociety.org British Chapter of Mars Society Forms A chapter of The Mars Society has now been started in the UK. It has been set up to enable British people to participate in their own area, lobby their own government and VIP's, and have access to working on projects, research and practical, in their own locality. Activity has already begun and there's lots to do, and the inaugural conference of The Mars Society UK will be held in September/October 1998. If you are interested in joining and/or participating, please contact Philip Dembo on Tel:0181 569 7967 or e-mail to: Mars@dembo.demon.co.uk First Issue of "New Mars" Published The first issue of "New Mars," the Mars Society's electronic journal containing the latest news and features concerning Mars exploration and settlement has now been published. It is available for viewing through the Mars Society's website at http://www.marssociety.org New Mars is edited by former Ad Astra editor Richard Wagner. If you have an idea for a possible contribution, you can contact him at campr2@javanet.com. 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