Robert Zubrin

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Robert Zubrin bigraphy, stories - American aerospace engineer

Robert Zubrin : biography

19 April 1952 –

Robert Zubrin (born April 5, 1952) is an American aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of the manned exploration of Mars. 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". He questions the delay and cost-to-benefit ratio of first establishing a base or outpost on an asteroid or another Apollo Program-like return to the Moon, as neither would be able to provide all of its own oxygen, water, or energy; these resources are producible on Mars, and he expects people would be there thereafter.

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

Zubrin lives in Lakewood, Colorado; he has two daughters, Rachel and Sarah.

Patents

  • , "Reusable rocket airplane"
  • , "Reusable rocket-propelled high altitude airplane and method and apparatus for mid-air oxidizer transfer to said airplane"
  • , "Nitrous oxide based oxygen supply system"
  • , "Three-player chess board"

Books

  • 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. Revised and updated in 2011.
  • 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 hard science fiction novel about a 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 US ruled by Christian fundamentalist fanatics.".Email from Robert Zubrin to Tim McMahon dated 9-18-2003 requesting book review The story was partly inspired by Čapek’s War with the Newts.
  • Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts (2005). This is an effort to humanize and show the multiple dimensions of Benedict 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.
  • Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil (2007). An expansion on his recent articles criticizing both reliance on oil and the potential for hydrogen energy, while highlighting the benefits of switching more toward methanol and ethanol. It carries an endorsement from former CIA director James Woolsey.
  • How to Live on Mars (2008). A tongue-in-cheek technically accurate guidebook for Mars-bound Earthlings about how to survive and thrive on the Red Planet, written from the point of view of a 22nd-century Mars native.
  • Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism (2011). This traces the history of antihumanism over the last two centuries, from Thomas Malthus and the eugenics movement through to the anti-nuclear and global warming campaigns. Zubrin argues that these movements have all represented an attempt to gain oppressive political control through the restriction of human activities and freedom.
  • Vixens of Alpha Centuri (1974) (as Robert Martins) Early humorous science-fiction work written while a student.