The Case for Space with Robert Zubrin, Ph.D., Lecture at Florida Atlantic

Thanks to Robert Zubrin, Ph.D., noted space expert and author, for the stellar talks at FAU, exploring how the revolution in spaceflight opens up a future of limitless possibility. Zubrin spoke to the College of Science's Human Mission to Mars class and gave a public lecture on the evening of November 15. He is the author of "The Case for Space" and "The Case for Mars," which is used in the Human Mission to Mars class. Following the public talk, Zubrin answered questions from the audience and signed copies of his book to a crowd of attendees. Learn more about The Case for Space at fau.edu/space. For more information about The Human Mission to Mars class, visit: fau.edu/mars.

[@LuciFeric137]

Dr. Zubrin has kept the faith for 40 years now. More than 50 years since the moon landings. Dr. Zubrin has been looking at the big picture. Why cant we get people like him at NASA?

[@justsaiyansteve]

ran stid Because its become more about politics than science.

[@gagarinone]

Ordinary Joe's is not curious, is not interested in space and the exploration of space.

[@davidskybrody]

There are such visionaries at NASA. But they must do what the Congress and the President tells them to do... or NOT do. #ElectBetter people.

[@mr.g937]

This unfairly antagonizes NASA. Plenty of ambitious visionaries exist at NASA, if the government that oversees them gave them the mandate to think big, they would. Blame Congress first and foremost.

[@Uncommonsensetoo]

It is great to have visionaries like Dr Zubrin but it really boils down to funding so if Zubrin was at the head of NASA it would not make that much of a difference in terms of going to Mars. NASA is a government organization so it's funding has to be approved by Congress. Going to Mars with the substantial cost and risk involved is a tough sell. Most tax payers are more concerned with earthly matters. Elon Musk does not need congress and has plenty of money to spend so he is our best bet.

[@strategicthinker8899]

His best recent talk.

[@jakolmydig960]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZ2qmpKNj5Zqi5I

[@zlozlozlo]

Dr. Zubrin starts at 5:05.

[@khaccanhle1930]

Every time I hear his enthusiasm about the advancement made in private space companies, I don't wish I had been around for Apollo, I wish I was too young to remember the Shuttle. It looks like a bright human future in the solar system is possible.

[@alexanderzahariev5632]

Robert Zubrin is the best.

[@bluemango3159]

He really likes the 1492 example. Not complaining tho always love his speech

[@chmmwv457]

Haha yeah, now I know about the bourgeoisie taking over the papacy...whatever that is.

[@JFrazer4303]

That's the "Borgias". the "Papacy" is the Vatican, the "holy Roman Catholic church". Unlike the 1492 example, going to space allows for less eradication of the natural environment for profits, ends scarcity of resources or energy or room for growth. There are no natives to enslave on NEAs or Mars.

[@justsaiyansteve]

20th century mind solving 21st century problems.

[@beautytruth8181]

It's a pity we don't get to ee more of the slides.

[@christotaku]

"Elon, where are you? Please...!" hahaha

[@CSmialek]

Brilliant talk from a brilliant man!

[@thorstenkrug144]

He is an optimist, has an apealing vision. And i like his voice. Wish more ppl would hear him and act acordingly. Sigh.

[@LETTYONLY1]

I love this guy ❤️

[@TimothyLipinski]

Great video and talk !. Talked to Robert Zubrin a couple of times and the second time was after a talk on Mars ! In his book "The Case for Space", Chapter Three (3) covers "Moon Direct" about the return to the moon. The tech developed for the return to the moon to stay czn take US to Mars and beyond ! The LEV/LLV at 6.1 km/sec delta-V, LEO to LS and refuel for the return flight. The LEV/LLV can also land on Mars or take off from Mars to Mars orbit (5 km/sec delta-V)... The NASA designed "24-Hour Lunar Shuttle" (LEO to LLO) by Stanley K Borowski can be supported at the moon by the LLV/LLV. The rocket engine for the "24-Hour Lunar Shuttle" (ISP 940 to 514 sec) can take US from the deep gravity well of LEO to Mars orbit. The Mars Rocket in Mars orbit can refuel with Oxygen (O2) from Mars or the moon of Mars ! The Mars Rocket has enough Hydrogen (H2) fuel for the round trip from earth to Mars. Timothy Lipinski

[@edwardfoehring8827]

Robert you are Awsome .

[@zlozlozlo]

I'm looking forward to his post-Starship speeches.

[@xcidgaf]

3:26 imagine turning on the tv, preparing to go to work and hear those three scramble your brain.

[@xcidgaf]

1:05 Victoria really knows how to compose a coherent question

[@zapfanzapfan]

Excellent as always! The Chinese corona virus may cause some social and political cohesion again that we have not seen for a while. Maybe we can start to get big things done again afterwards.

[@zazugee]

china apparently will send astronauts to mars before chinese will eat marsian life get contaminated with marsian virus and it will spread to earth

[@LuciFeric137]

Nice sentiment. But I see the virus dividing America even more. People still think it's a hoax or isnt dangerous.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Bit of a misleading thing is that around 12:30 he talks about cost per kilogram to launch, and indeed it did not change in over 40 years, but there has been inflation since so the actual cost to orbit has dropped equal to inflation.

[@stokesseegers5012]

Some guy who was a guest on Ellie in space brought me here.

[@jshepard152]

5:15 Start here.

[@shreyasp3287]

But sir zubrin what about acceleration experienced in launch It is risky for travel isn't it

[@JFrazer4303]

About as much as is landing or taking off in a passenger jet, as far as risk.

[@cosmic4037]

He should have joined the SSP.

[@faheyplayer]

The distinguished Dr. Zubrin, giving a lecture at the college named after me, of course. HA!!

[@whirledpeas3477]

Grow up

[@faheyplayer]

You think I’m serious….I guess you didn’t see my last name, you jumped the gun, AND missed the pun so the joke is on you for what little cleverness it may hold, lil zhepa

[@whirledpeas3477]

@@faheyplayer okay "Karen"

[@faheyplayer]

@@whirledpeas3477 How sad to have no sense of irony, no sense of humor, just an angry, impulsive little hamster troll.

[@whirledpeas3477]

@@faheyplayer okay "Boomer"

[@solexxx8588]

Terraforming mars without a magnetic field is unlikely. A rotating space station that simulates gravity is more likely.

[@JFrazer4303]

There's entirely too much rubbery definition-bending in these discussions between a base and a "Settlement" or colony. We've had people continuously on Antarctica for decades, but it is not a colony to which people will retire or raise their children. Yes, we need a large permanent continuously inhabited research base at Mars and he Moon, or among the moons of Jupiter. Not down on these bodies which have poor resources, low gravity and hostile environments. The university city/resort at Mars will be in an O'Neill habitat in orbit. If Mars' moons don't have enough metals, we can bring in a "near-Mars" asteroid. Before you have the scale of effort and infrastructure to build beyond a exploration base on Mars, you'll be able to start "bootstrapping" a space habitat. Terraforming is silly. It's the wrong answer to the wrong question. A fully terraformed Mars, Venus, Titan, Europa, etc will yield many another x2 the presently available land area on Earth. Just in the inner Solar system small bodies there are materials for O'Neill habs for hundreds of times the present land area. In the Belt, thousands, and in better conditions than will be possible on Mars and the habitable zone around the Sun goes out into the Oort halo. Anyone who talks about living long-term on Mars, need to prove that we can live long-term and stay healthy in low G. That's *proof*, not S.F., not wishes and hopes and try it and see. Not maybe in the future biomechanically engineering ourselves and our offspring. Prove that first, and we can go on to talk ab about why O'Neill habitats in space are still the better or only option for long-term, large-scale habitation off-Earth. Anyone who talks about He3 fusion, needs to prove fusion first, and we can go on to talk about why SSPS are still the better option. I know Dr. Zubrin doesn't like these, and I've heard he and Musk and many others use lies and numerous red herrings to talk down on them. Some say that with launch prices of the Space Shuttle, we want to lift a 10 billion ton space colony to L-5. We won't be so dishonest to say that they want to use the Shuttle or "Starship" to soft-land a city on Mars. NASA in the '70s showed a plan to mine the Moon or NEAs and build up to the first small O'Neill habitat (Stanford Torus). No new3 inventions needed. Cost over ~30 years was like any other large infrastructure or industrial development down here and we get all the launch and in-space infrastructure to reproduce it. The cost would long since have been paid off by returning NEA metals to Earth: The first entity that returns even a few kg of loosely sorted metals, wins forever the "game" of making money by accessing or hoarding resources or precious metals. The value of all the gold in all the vaults or oil underground crashes down through the cellar, and old-money hegemonies built on it evaporate. (Please, anyone show how any of that is exaggeration or hyperbole) Neither Mars nor the Moon is the best first target for a large long-term space effort. We know of 10k+ NEAs in the Apollo groping. Minus one over Chelyabinsk in 2013: denser with metals than the Earth's crust ~50km deep. Some meteorites are density 8+, grater than pure Fe. King Tut's rust-proof meteoritic steel dagger is 6% Co. No mine on a planet or larger moon will ever work such resources. We know of 1400 NEAs easier to get to than Mars, 400 easier than the Moon, 40 or so easier than Lunar orbit. Any large-scale long-term space effort that doesn't first propose to open mining of NEAs is not to be taken seriously. Zubrin talks about paying for Mars with patents from the settlers, and returning to the economy by inspiring a new generation of engineers and such, ~18 years down the road. Musk is selling internet and ground-orbit launch. The economic value of everything we do in space including weather and Earth-observations and all of telecommunications is peanuts in comparison to the NEAs. The objection that it's not possible to economically return N EA metals is vapid. If your contract proposal says it's not possible, then your astronautical engineering company obviously won't get the contracts. The Apollo capsules came right in on hyperbolic interplanetary trajectories without entering Earth orbit or trying to slow down. A dumb aero-entry barge of asteroidal steel or aggregate artificial rock doesn't even need to stay entirely intact or afloat after splashing down in the shallows off an industrial port city. It's arguable that no mining or refining or raw materials production or energy acquisition efforts down here can be done economically and has never been done so. Every time we try to get a mining conglomerate to clean up, they go bankrupt taking the profits to off-shore tax-havens and leaving the mess to future generations of tax payers. We hear it from industrialists all the time that if we try to make them have zero lasting footprint on the environment, they can't stay in business. Such heavy industries down here are killing us.

[@ankyspon1701]

Great Post... And from an environmental perspective, in another presentation, Zurich can be heard saying that it's ok to dump bi products of fuel creation, such as Carbon monoxide into the Martian atmosphere! These people don't seem to care about anything, apart from their mission.

[@executivesteps]

Harvesting Helium 3 from Saturn Uranus and Neptune for fusion power on Earth. I would prefer this guy spent an hour lecturing just on that. And to pass around what he’s smoking too.

[@chmmwv457]

Zubrin 2024? 🤔

[@jshepard152]

The media have made that job a living hell. No one credible wants the job.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

This is more SpaceX PR than a lecture.

[@iceyred6668]

yea/ Nd.D

[@edwardfoehring8827]

Taxes LoL, checks in the mail !

[@GaySideWinder]

it's absolutely f'n unbelievable 1 of the first questions they ask is would they be paying taxes on mars. SMMFH!

[@gerrylacelle8965]

you compare columbus to exploring MARS ???????? ,,,,,its not the same ,,,,,,are you really PHD lolllllllllllllllll

[@greennights2388]

Can I just have my own place, nothing fancy, just something better than homelessness. You waste that much, you would not even notice a dent to end homelessness. Long as there is this level of apathy for people, evolution eludes you. Appalling.

[@JFrazer4303]

The old canard about trashing the Earth and running off into space never comes from those who advocate it. It only ever comes from a position of ignorance, and is expressed from a desire to find something (anything) to feel morally self-righteously superior to others for. It's always about using space to help down here. Musk says to become a multi-planet civilization and then goes on to say "that means this one too". Bezos says to use resources of space, end heavy polluting industries down here and turn the Earth into a giant wilderness park. Mining the NEAs ends scarcity of resources, energy and room for growth, forever. No more oil wars or budget crunches, forever. Directing your ire towards space efforts is misplaced for another reason. Everyone thinks that going to space must be this huge budget-busting effort. Not true. During the timescale of Apollo, the US spent as much on cosmetics, and large States spent more on liquor. The bailouts of '08 were greater than the entire historic running grand total NASA expense. Including Apollo, the Shuttle and ISS. The bailouts of 2020 were very much more. Today our DoD annual budget is ~80% of that running total, not counting "black" military spending and ongoing military operational expenses. $17 trillion on military spending between 2003 and 2021. The solution to homelessness is to give them housing. Everywhere it's tried, the costs to them and to society are lower, and they stop destructive habits and pick up their lives. This is proven, just as public spending like food and medical and housing and education subsidies always pays back into the economy and helps everyone. This costs nothing like a small oil war or a space mission. We don't do it, because of very misguided ideologies. Aside from mining NEAs, we end budget problems by taxing the rich and big corporations and ending military adventures like fake wars started on lies, expending our troops as cheap mercs for profit and graft.

[@wheredmyelectrongo3613]

Space flight, Mars missions...apauling? Well let's think about this for a moment. I don't know of one homeless person who also works a full time job. And I know a few, including myself a couple years ago. So you're implying we use these funds to supply homes for homeless people, the majority of whom do not work. I currently own a modest condo and work 50 hours a week to support it, as do the tens of millions of homeowners across the country. Unless we get our homes paid for too so we don't have to drag ourselves to work everyday, then your demands sound pretty unfair. But if everyone gets a house and stops dragging themselves to work, who's going to stock the shelves at the grocery store, work at the factories, supply the electricity...etc.? So I don't see what's so appalling. In fact, the Homeless Problem is far less a financial one and more a mental health one.

[@JFrazer4303]

@@wheredmyelectrongo3613 The ethos of working hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps to riches, is busted a long time ago. Vagaries of personal experiences, or ill-fortune destroy many who do work. And many people who do work full time are either homeless or precarious. The idea that if people don't have to struggle at wage slavery to survive, then civilization will collapse because no one will stock the shelves, is ridiculous -as in worthy of ridicule. Experience in every place it's tried to give homeless people a place and what they need to get by, shows that everyone benefits. The economic benefits apply to everyone. Similarly with every place that's tried UBI. Healthy people do not settle back and suck off a government teat. They go back to school or work on making something or starting a business or something else that benefits everyone. The unhealthy ones who don't lift themselves higher when they don't have to scrabble to survive, are a problem of medical mental health. Drug abuse also tends to go away when people are taken off the streets and given housing even with no strings attached. Yes, it happens, in the majority of individuals, every time it's tried in a society. Those who say that the unhealthy ones who don't try to make themselves better when given a decent chance should just be allowed to starve in the streets or rely on corporate capitalism to help them, are unbalanced and indoctrinated. The professionally lazy class of "takers" inherited their millions, and never have to work for a living.