The New Case for Mars – with Robert Zubrin

Click here for Notes and Transcript

Time Markers

00:19 – Introduction, Zubrin’s early fascination with Mars, and the history of space exploration.

03:15 – The American frontier mythology.

07:00 – Why humanity should settle on Mars, and debunking the “lifeboat” argument.

11:23 – Governance on Mars, and why attracting immigrants is the key to success.

14:29 – The nexus of space spending and space.

19:56 – Space Takes, and the perspective of space as a warfighting domain.

31:03 – The increasingly rapid space launch cadence.

Transcript – Robert Zubrin Conversation

David Ariosto: Robert Zubrin. There is scarcely a bigger advocate for human settlements on Mars that I can think of. You’ve written some 14 books. Many of them were specific to Mars. You’re the president of the Mars Society, and you were driving force behind that Mars direct proposal decades ago. I’m wondering just to start off with like, where did this come from? How does a kid from Brooklyn end up, wanting to settle the red planet.

Robert Zubrin: Well, it started with the Sputnik. Actually I was 5 when Sputnik flew. It’s actually the first major world event that I can remember in terms of my own life. And while the adults were you know, very upset about Sputnik. I was delighted by it because I was already reading science fiction. I was an early reader, and what Sputnik said was that all these stories about space travel was going to be true, this is real, this is happening. And I wanted to be part of it.

And so I mean, a lot of kids at that time had that response, and people have seen the Homer Hickam and the Rocket boys. He was 10 years older than me, or so. He was a teenager, but so they actually built significant rockets. But my father encouraged my interest, and we built model rockets. And he got me a telescope. I did drawings of the moon through the eyepiece and everything, and I was into it but.

David Ariosto: It’s not easy to see the stars from Brooklyn, I will say, as I have family there myself.

Robert Zubrin: No, but you can see the moon from Brooklyn, and I did, and you could see Split Neck from Brooklyn, and we did and as did everyone. But I started reading kids, science books and more science books, and it rapidly became clear to me that Mars was the real destination here; that it was the most interesting planet. It was the one that could have life, and it was the one where there could be a human future. And so you know. Then, during the sixties, you know, I’m growing up and Apollo’s underway, and we’re going to the moon by 1970, and Mars by 1980, and Saturn by 1990, and Alpha Centauri by the year 2,000. That’s what the future looked like. And of course, only the 1st milestone in that program was achieved. We did get to the Moon back before 1970. But the rest of it, no.

David Ariosto: Well for now, right? And I think that’s maybe what my next question sort of centers on is that there’s this frontier aspect of this that has always been kind of imbibed in certain aspects of human culture. The frontiers in the western frontiers, the oceans, you know, scaling Mount Everest. And I just wonder, in the context of your impressions whether this is something that certain people just have to do biologically, that there’s just some kids that just have to leave their hometowns, and they don’t quite know why. And it plays into this sort of broader sense of exploration that may be in some ways baked into our genetic composition.

Robert Zubrin: Well, to a certain extent, but certainly in terms of Americans. The American religion. Our notion of ourselves is based on the story of the frontier.

Our creation story is celebrated in Thanksgiving. Okay? And that’s why I think it is the most it’s the only holiday that we have that hasn’t been commercialized and or not predominantly commercialized.

And this is why America, you know, we have actually a smaller population economy than the European Union. But our space program is at least 5 times the size of ESA and because Americans believe in the frontier, they believe that there needs to be a place where we can go where the rules have been written, yet a place where it will be possible to create with complete freedom. And that’s what the frontier means. And that’s why I think that’s why we’ve got a space program. We do not have a space program because of all the specific and quite real advantages of weather satellites, and so forth. I mean, we would have weather satellites, because weather satellites are useful, and communication satellites are useful, but the reason why we have a space program that has sent so many more interplanetary probes than Europe or the rest of the world put together, and why only Americans have gone to the moon.

And you know Jules Verne knew this. He wrote his book, 1865, the first man in the Moon. They were going to be Americans, and launched from Florida by the way, and orbit the moon and be picked up in by a US. Navy warship is all as actually happened. This was all predictable. That we would be the ones that do this. So it’s not so much in our I mean people in general have this desire to go where people have never gone before. That’s why we got out of Africa. But Americans in particular have this very strong drive of insisting that there be an open frontier.

David Ariosto: And in the context of that, it’s not just sort of exploration. But I think in your new book you talk about a potential Mars principal export, which is just. I mean, just it’s fun to think about these things in terms of exports of a place that that human footprints haven’t reached yet, but in terms of that principal export being inventions. And so I wonder, in that context, we always talk about the risks of this. And Elon Musk has said, you know people will die, and you know there are inevitably a baked in risk to doing something. This extreme. However, we rarely talk about the risks of not going and what that means in in terms of stagnation. And you know I don’t necessarily mean in terms of the lifeboat argument, but I mean in terms of what it does to a population when you’re not pushing for that Next thing.

Robert Zubrin: Well, if you’re not pushing, you’re not growing

And yes, I don’t buy the lifeboat argument at all. I wish that Elon would just drop it because it really doesn’t have the right smell to it. You know, it’s like white flies.

David Ariosto: Explain that. Explain that what that is to for people. If you can.

Robert Zubrin: Well, this argument that has been advanced, that the reason why we need to go to Mars is so that there’s some survivors when the earth is destroyed. And 1st of all, I don’t think a Martian settlement could survive if the earth was destroyed. But that’s not even the point.

That’s not why we’re going to Mars. We’re going to Mars to establish new branches of human civilization which will expand humanity’s creative power and thereby expand our ability to meet all challenges of all types and and not just space-based challenges, like asteroids, which, certainly becoming spacefaring, is necessary to meet. But anything I mean, if you look at. Okay, the defense against COVID it was amounted that as vaccines were found by people from many countries, so the fact that there were more creative forces engaged in solving this problem gave us more answers. And you know, America.

Once it became developed, it exported all kinds of material goods, but really, from the point of view of human history as a whole.

greatest exports have been our inventions, starting with actually schooners and sloops in the colonial period. But then steamboats and telegraphs and light bulbs, and essentially generate electrical power, and recorded sound and motion pictures and the the nuclear power and airplanes. And these are all American inventions, and they have radically changed the world. And you know we didn’t.

You know, when I was a kid, people actually, my parents would tell me, finish your breakfast. There are children hungry in Europe. Okay? But then, you know. A generation later kids were told to eat your breakfast. There are children hungry in China and India, and then now it’s not even true there, but just Africa.

Well, how? Why? It’s not because America was exporting grain, although we did. It’s because we exported modern agriculture. And that’s what enabled America to feed the world. And I think the Martians are going to make all sorts of inventions. They’re going to be in an extremely challenging environment. And they’re going to be a technologically adept people. They’re going to be challenged. And they’re going to make inventions. And those inventions are going to benefit all of humanity.

David Ariosto: We when we talk about this, though, we talk about this particular space program, we’re not talking about sort of Apollo style national program. I mean, you yourself have seen the starship tests. You watch the technology evolve, and the case for Mars begin to grow both within this. You know this administration, but but also just sort of this paradigm shift that we’ve seen with regard to the commercial sector, this is a different tact than that was pursued back in the 19 sixties. And I wonder in the context of Mars what that looks like and what precedent we can think of, because the thing that comes to my mind, is the Virginia Company, with the founding of Jamestown back in the early 16 hundreds, that 1st permanent English colony in which the rules and norms were set by the company, in other words, that the colonists were also sort of employees. And you had all these questions not only in terms of the intrepid nature of financing and those who wanted to brave the Atlantic Ocean but those who couldn’t afford it. There was questions of indentured servitude, and you know those early frontier towns even beyond Jamestown? Those are rough places.

And is that just sort of what we’re looking at here? Is this a foregone conclusion in terms of how this these varying city states, as you describe, start to compete against each other, and the best thing wins out? Or is that sense of dystopia really possible over the long term.

Robert Zubrin: Well, okay. So first of all, while some of the early colonies were started by companies hoping to make a profit out of these colonies very quickly within a decade or two at most of their founding.

The colonists were in it for themselves. Not for investors back in England, or something. So and that’s gonna happen on Mars. Okay, there may be commercial operations. Decide to establish colonies on Mars, but they’ve colonies.

It very soon will be in it for themselves. And and of course the the Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Colony established their own rules even on the boat coming over the Mayflower compact and then they were able to experiment in new social forms. Now, when I say, okay, and I’ve written a book as you’ve referenced, called the New World on Mars.

The colonies are going to be in competition not so much. I mean, it could happen that they’re in competition for certain kinds of exports. But really, what they’re in competition for is immigrants, and the ones that will prevail will be the ones that are most attractive to immigrants. Okay. And the reason why the North won the Civil War in the United States is because it was the most attractive to immigrants. You ask any civil war buff, why did the North win the Civil War? They’d say it had a much larger population and more industry. Why did it have a much larger population and more industry? Because it was free? And that’s where the immigrants went. 40% of the Union army were immigrants or 4th generation Americans. Only 3% of the Confederates were.

So this is, though a very good thing, because, you see, the colonies that will outgrow the rest will be the ones that are most attractive, and therefore I do not believe that extraterrestrial dystopias are going to be the prevailing form of society, because no one would emigrate to them.

I believe, therefore, that, however they start out the prevailing Mars colonies, the one that ultimately become the pattern for Mars will be free. They will feature personal freedom, and they will be attractive in all other respects, in terms of opportunity. And even aesthetics. That is, people are not going to, and particularly women, are not going to want to emigrate to total dumps. And and so you might have mining outposts that are extremely crude, but the colonies that actually manage to grow and become the prevailing form of extraterrestrial civilization will be ones that are attractive to all aspects of human interest.

David Ariosto: You know, in that context, when we talk about Spacex, we talk about really any, any company or national effort. Nothing quite drums up the funding like battle cries, so to speak, in terms like the the nexus between military spending and space. Exploration is a tried and true, and I mean you referenced Sputnik right in the beginning of this interview? I mean, you’ve seen that throughout the course of this. And there’s new geopolitical rivalry that we’ve had over the course of the last decade with China.

And China has shown itself willing to sort of establish these benchmarks and these timetables, and make good on them to some extent. And I wonder just in the context of what you’ve written about before. I know you’ve been a big advocate of us. Space superiority and what that looks like. If you extrapolate further out, not just in Leo and geosynchronous orbit, not just the moon, but when we really start putting. If we start putting human settlements on Mars.

Robert Zubrin: Well, okay, this is very interesting question and very relevant. Well, whenever a more challenging environment is opened up to human activity in the long run it always benefits the more liberal societies. This is why, for instance, throughout history, from ancient Athens to the time of the British navy. It is always the more liberal societies that were the dominant sea powers. And then, once the air is opened up.

Robert Zubrin: despite the fact that it was the axis powers who 1st exploited air power in a forceful way, in World War 2. Ultimately the Anglo-Americans by far exceeded them in terms of capacity, and even though it was the Russians who Soviets, rather excuse me, because actually it was Ukrainians who created Sputnik. But the the Soviets who opened up space, the first satellite, and also the first astronaut.

Ultimately it was the United States that by far outpaced them. And even though the NASA of the sixties was not entrepreneurial organization of the sort that we’re seeing now. Nevertheless, it achieved its victory in the Moon race by mobilizing the creative powers of the free American economy and the and now you look at this I mean SapceX, for whatever his personal views may be, has given the United States enormous capability of a space superiority in that. We can now launch much larger numbers of satellites than any opponent. And this Ukraine war, by the way, it’s just the first Space War, because it is the war in which outcomes are being largely determined by space-based assets, including space-based communications, reconnaissance and precision, guided weaponry.

The opening up of this new realm, well, it’s a realm for commerce and conflict. Yes, it it predominantly benefits the more liberal society which is us. And and I think that whatever colonies are established on Mars, and including Chinese ones that probably be Chinese ones. But unless those Chinese colonies become free societies, they will be outgrown by whatever free societies there are established on Mars, and this will once again put greater weight in the side of freedom in future human history, just as the establishment of free societies in the New World is what enabled Britain to win World War 2. Because there were more people who had the same values that they did and more nations that did.

And so I do not agree that people say, Well, if we colonize Mars, there’s going to be competition on Mars. This will lead to war on Earth. Okay, there may or may not be war on Earth because of competition on Earth. Okay? And also because people believe in finite resources, which is a driver towards conflict to the extent that we open up space, and it refutes the conceit of finite resources. It tends to ameliorate the risk of war. But, furthermore, to the extent we open up space and expand the domain of human freedom, it will help ensure that should there be conflict, the side of freedom will prevail.

David Ariosto: I think we’re going to have to leave it there. So Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, author of 14 books, including the new one, the New World on Mars. What we can create on the red planet. Thank you so much for spending time with us and explaining for this next phase in human history, potentially.

Robert Zubrin: My pleasure.

Transcript: Space Takes

Mike Gruss: Hi, David, let’s talk about how you think about space when you hear space. How do you think about space in General? Are you a wild West frontier guy?

David Ariosto: I think there’s two parts to that one, I think about camping with my daughter, and like looking up at the sky. You know, I got this telescope behind me here. Oh, sort of over here, and I think about, you know, sort of my early days, you know, as a reporter in Afghanistan, in Helmand Province. I could actually call my parents from a sat phone out there in the frontier areas. So you know, just kind of like the wonder of it, but also sort of the utility of it.

Mike Gruss: Yeah, there’s a lot of people go into that Wild West camp where they think of it as a frontier. But also, you know, the superhighway with thousands of satellites constantly avoiding collisions. But the one I want to talk about this week is space as a warfighting domain, and that’s a statement that you know how true it seems is, and how vehemently people believe that, I think, depends on who you’re talking to.

The whole conversation to me about space as a warfighting domain changed about 10 years ago, and that was when John Heighten became the head of Air Force Space Command, and he just used very clear language, maybe the clearest language to date that that space was a warfighting domain, and he later became the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs. This week we heard a lot about space. There were a lot of big Pentagon headlines. One was Dod wants to cut their budget by about 8%. Each of the next 5 years.

There’s a couple exceptions. One is this new iron dome for America project that could include pretty robust space element. We saw a report from the Mitchell Institute that said there are systemic issues that threaten whether the Space Force can keep up with China, which is obviously the big competitor here to the United States Military Operations in space.

A report that mentioned a lack of clearly defined roles and overlapping missions between the Space Force Space Command intelligence agencies, such as the National Reconnaissance Office and the national geospatial intelligence agencies.

So basically like, Hey, the term that’s been popular recently has been this warfighter ethos. What does that mean? And what does each of these agencies? How do they contribute there and then? Finally, a report that kind of mentioned this, this hesitation to need to go on the offensive in space and even use that term. And so even this week.

David Ariosto: I don’t know what that means going the offensive in space.

Mike Gruss: Yeah, it’s it’s you know. I think a lot of times we talk about counter space and as a as a way of defense. But it can also mean removing an adversary’s capabilities, meaning stopping someone from doing something else or ensuring someone doesn’t do something else. And so that’s how I would. I would think of offensive. And you can even probably go much further than that, maybe even destroying a satellite.

But I think this week we even published a commentary again from John Heighten, who I mentioned earlier, and Nina Armano, who is a Space Force general, saying, Hey, we need to fully fund space force. And so there’s just this real churn right now of saying, Hey, space is a war fighting domain. But at the same time we’re not maybe being able to connect the dots about. What does that mean for space? If they’re going to be these cuts, what does it mean for contracts. What? How does this new administration view military space? What does that look like outside of iron dome? And I’m not really sure we know right now, and it’s making for some good dialogue, but also a little bit of confusion.

David Ariosto: You know, when you talk about connecting the dots, I don’t know that there’s a topic that connect the dots more than the nature of warfighting, not only in space and sort of this current geopolitical climate, but just the nature of the administration right now. So I mean, like, you’ve got kind of like three things that are happening kind of definitively right. You’ve got DOGE, the Department of Government efficiency that’s making cuts across the Board Federal Government and Defense Department’s the biggest. It’s the biggest budget you know. Hires has the most people. I think it’s a little bit more than an 800 billion dollars budget, 2.8 million people working for that, both civilian and military workforce.

And I think there’s like 70,000 people, full-time employees just working at the Pentagon alone. So like if you’re if you’re looking to cut that, that’s that, maybe is one of the agencies that you would look to. But then you also have these like sort of these shifting foreign policy priorities. You know, you look at what’s happening in Ukraine and Russia, but also one of the exceptions that you mentioned, Mike, was China. And you know there’s a growing emphasis and a sort of a question. I think, that comes out of this Mitchell report in terms of like these competing philosophies in how to deal with Beijing.

It’s a very fascinating period of time, both in terms of that. But also, you know, I remember, back in 2023, you had us chief of space operations. Bradley Saltzman, who was calling for this, quote unquote competitive endurance. And that’s what the Mitchell Institute’s reports or takes issue with. It’s sort of this question about, you know, emphasizing not sort of these quick wins, but sort of enduring challenges over long periods of time, and, you know, emphasizing adaptability and importance of strategic partnerships. And you know this report is kind of.

Mike Gruss: Very good at China’s great at all that. And do you want to play their game?

David Ariosto: Right. But the reports kind of taking issue with that right. And and I think not only in terms of the speed and whether Space Force is indeed underfunded in its relative direction. But just some like the core tenets of how all of us operate in space, you know, sort of harkening back to that 1967 Outer Space Treaty. This nature of generally keeping weapons specifically mass destruction, weapons out of space, even that seems to be on the table. Maybe with regard to what Russia has already done, maybe in terms of what China’s looking at with some of these anti-satellite weapons. So it’s this inflection point in terms of where we’re at geopolitically defense mindedness in terms of strategic positioning. But you know I it’s a really interesting time to be paying attention to. And oh, by the way, commercial space is ramping up, and how that fits into this mold is just. It’s not entirely clear, I think, even from policymakers, perspectives.

Mike Gruss: And I think that’s what I was gonna add is that the larger, the broader space industry right now is being driven by this expectation of growth in government contracts, not just in the Us. But across the world, and not just in military, but also civilian space. But the growth is being driven by government contracts, but the biggest part of that comes from military contracts, and that’s why we’ve seen so many companies, you know, over the last couple of years, particularly in the last 6 months or so, make this pivot to defense that maybe we didn’t think of them traditionally as defense companies that they’re saying, Hey, there’s room for us here. And so I think the question will be like, Hey, if there are, these cuts, will they open up more opportunities for space? And I don’t think anyone knows that yet. But, it’s going to put this new Administration’s views. We’re going to see exactly what they mean and exactly how they exactly how they value military space operations.

David Ariosto: You know, it’s also interesting on the flip side of that, when we look at China, and you sort of look at this explosive growth. And it’s almost methodical growth, too, because some areas that they’re not actually moving quite as fast as some of the conversations would make it seem. But certainly in areas, you know, supportive technologies like quantum communications. And those technologies, you know. AI, we saw big leaps with deep seek, and how that sort of plays into the space industry. These are profound.

But I wonder, in the context of sort of this growing sort of quasi commercial market in China, and as more of their economy is reliant on space assets. Whether or not that sort of reduces the tension a little bit, because when you have that many assets in orbit.

There are greater vulnerabilities in terms of performing like a bad actor. If you only have a few things up there, and you throw one of your anti-satellite missiles.

The resulting debris fields, as we have already seen, may not impact you much, but as thousands and thousands of your own satellites fill your constellations, and your economies of scale are reliant upon these things.

Is there is there a ratcheting back, then, of the tension that we might see, as that commercial dependence ramps up.

Mike Gruss: And I think what we’ve seen in the past has been that there has been from the Us. Side very little distinction between Chinese military operations and Chinese commercial satellites, and that they’re viewed one in the same and you know, to the same extent. I think China’s viewed. Some of us satellites the same way, so it’ll be. It’ll be interesting to see if there, if that distinction comes down. But

David Ariosto: Yeah, because you you don’t have that in the US. You have NASA, and you have Space Force, and you have DOD.

Mike Gruss: Right. I think there’s I think the counter argument would be like, it’s all. It’s all government.

David Ariosto: Sure. Well, sure, sure, sure. And you know clearly there’s a military culture that maybe is imbibed within NASA from its early inception. But at the same time, you know, I remember speaking with folks within the Chinese space sector, and they’re sort of privately, just sort of shaking their fists like, why can’t we separate these things? Because maybe we can do business in a way that wasn’t. But right now all of it routes to the military, at least on the State side, and then on the commercial side, a lot of it sort of tangentially runs through the military. So you know.

David Ariosto: the argument is real that these things are interlinked, and it’s hard to separate them. So your defense strategy kind of has to take into account both commercial and the state side of things.

Mike Gruss: And then there’s a whole other argument that says, Hey, why would we want to just buy something that’s commercial? We would want something that’s exquisite and made specifically for the military and not something that just anyone can buy right off the shelf. And so that complicates it even further. So yeah, it’s going. This is going to be an interesting debate that’ll play out for a long time. But it’s interesting to see these pieces kind of lining up right now, especially as Doge and the budget come into clearer focus that you know exactly where where space lies.

David Ariosto: You know, I think that sort of leads into our next topic pretty seamlessly, in the sense that we’re talking about speed. And we’re talking about volume as it relates to speed. You know we saw that Firefly has recently just been awarded a 21.8 million dollars contract for rapid response launch missions with the Space Force.

And I think about that. And you sort of look at this sort of broader context in terms of what does rapid deployment of space technology in emergency scenarios potentially mean for this, like changing paradigm when it comes to the growing sort of militarization of space. I don’t have a good answer to that. I don’t know if you do, Mike.

Mike Gruss: Yeah, I mean, I think the goal here is, let’s say, a satellite was no longer operational for whatever reason. And it’s a key asset to how the US operates. How quickly can you replenish it? How quickly can you get something else out there so that that capability is not lost, or the contingency plan is not lost.

They had to integrate a payload and get ready for launch and get something on orbit. And I think that’s about the timeline. And that was significantly, significantly faster than the previous record. But the goal for years and years has been, hey, can we turn something around 24 hours? Can we get something up and say, all right, the cell. It’s not there. How how quickly can we replace it? And it? It’s, you know, it’s one of those things that that sounds, as we talk about week after week, sounds science fiction, but it really becomes it almost becomes normal. It almost becomes mundane. How quickly these satellites can launch. You know, the goal is obviously to have them do it almost from anywhere, not just from one or two places. And so, as the number of opportunities grows as the speed gets short, the speed from demand to launch gets shorter and shorter. You know the idea of losing a satellite becomes more and more palatable. Not that something that’s anyone wants, but it’s like, all right, we can replace this.

David Ariosto: Yeah, I mean, it’s also just these concepts of just you know, what does tactical responsiveness actually mean from a military perspective, as you have so many more assets up in space, and even like traditional concepts of sovereignty and territorial defense. I mean, how do you sort of govern that in this broader scope. And when you’re well outside of the boundaries of what’s considered airspace, you’re now in space, space, so to speak. So it’s sort of a brave new world, and I think also to get to the volume portion of this. I don’t know if you want to do the honors here. But we were talking about rocket Lab and Spacex performing these just launches minutes apart.

Mike Gruss: Yeah, I think there was a launch last week that just four minutes apart.

David Ariosto: Four minutes, yeah.

Mike Gruss: Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve made this comparison before. But it starts to feel a little bit like air travel, you know. It’s you’re like, Oh, something else is taking off. Someone else is leaving

David Ariosto: Well, I mean Spacex. Spacex alone had like 134 launches last year, both Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy, I mean rocket lab’s up to 16. So I mean, 1st of all, that kind of shows the disparity in the marketplace in terms of just how far ahead Spacex is in terms of launch cadence. I think rocket Lab was 10 last year, and now they’re 16, and Spacex was 96 last year. Now they’re at 134. So like the chasm between between the two.

And these are some of the leading players here. It’s just it’s interesting. It’s interesting in that. And it’s interesting in the perspective of at least past attempts to diversify the launch space. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out in the current administration.

Mike Gruss: Totally. Yeah, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. And it’s you know, I think these quick turns, just a minute apart. That’s gonna become more and more common and less and less of a story. And I don’t think we’ll be surprised by this, you know. Maybe even in 6 months or a year.

David Ariosto: Alright, we’ll take it from there.

Mike Gruss: all right, that’s all the time we have this week we’d love to hear from you and your thoughts on what a war fighting domain looks like, and what we should expect these next couple of months, where certainly there’s going to be a lot of movement into what space looks like from military’s perspective in the future. Feel free to shoot us a note at spaceminds@spacenews.com, and we’ll talk to you next week for Space News. I’m Mike Gruss.

David Ariosto: And I’m David Ariosto. Thanks so much for listening to us here on space minds.