Thomas McCabe fires a broadside at Bob Zubrin, with an article about the irrelevance of the Martian frontier.

The links bad, Rand. And I just can't imagine someone wanting to take a swipe at Bob Zubrin.
I mean, all that hyper-partisanship for Mars to the exclusion of all else has got to be good for something, doesn't it?

(Not to poke too hard at him, I've read his books, he's got some good ideas, but he can get on your nerves after a while. Kinda like Carl Sagan could on occasion.

Well, it worked when I posted it. Maybe Bob got an injunction against space.com...

If I find it again, I'll update the link.

It appears that Mr. McCabe wrote up this idea several months ago.

At least, Zubrin provides a good example of how to immunize your follows against rival ideas. I know, for example, that if I were to introduce trollishly some argument about how we "need" to have say lunar colonies or a genetically engineered super-astronaut first before we can go to Mars, that at least his followers can handle the objection.

The more I learn about the possible composition of Ceres, the more I think that it might be a more suitable next step after the moon. Mars has a lot of downside risk associated with an expedition there. Outside of the much longer duration trip, Ceres would seem to have less risk and more advantages.

The link did not work, but I found the article with a Google search (McCabe +Zubrin +Mars): http://isdc2005.xisp.net/~kmiller/isdc_archive/fileDownload.php/?link=fileSelect&file_id=83

McCabe concentrates on challenging "two major
assumptions [of Zubrin]:
1. To thrive, the US and the Earth in general need a geographic frontier - Mars -
to challenge us.
2. That the challenges we will face in settling Mars are relevant to Earth."

IMO, these two assumptions are neither provable nor refutable - they belong to the "philosophy of history" field, which is not scientific. They are the romantic frosting on Zubrin's
cake, appealing to the American frontier nostalgia.
But Zubrin's case can be made without them.
The first settlements anywhere in space will in any case be dedicated to research;
and Mars is far more interesting than the Moon, and what's interesting may well prove useful. *If* (as Zubrin claims) Mars is also *easy* to colonize, that makes a very strong case. Useful criticism ought (IMO) to concentrate on *this* claim, and on comparable estimates for competing targets like the Moon and open space.

But McCabe as well as *concedes* this point: "He [Zubrin] argues that we can do so soon, using derivatives of current technology, and, most astonishing of all,
plausibly within current funding streams. Beyond that, he projects that Mars can
be settled, and suggests ways we can do it. So far, so good."

With opponents like this, Zubrin hardly needs any defense.

I ran the track at ISDC where Tom presented this idea. Basically, his point is that the US grew to prominence in the 20th century without a frontier. That's true, and in doing so it made use of one mechanism of technological advance: war, both hot and cold. The way I've always understood Zubrin is that war is one way to stress a society and cause it's advancement, but another which is less destructive is by having a frontier.

The article seems to have disappeared completely from the Space.com site. Today's email of their latest no longer contains a link to it, as yesterday's did. I wonder why they pulled it, without explanation?

McCabe says he doesn't see it. I imagine he never will. We have no idea what the Martians will do with their new home. Set aside the argument about using tax money for a moment... Suppose a vibrant growing self-sustaining colony is established on Mars (or several of them.) Does anybody here have an argument for why that would NOT be a good thing?

Odd that the article disappeared. However, I think the heading indicated that it was an Ad Astra piece. Space.com has an agreement to share content with them. I suspect that this piece was not part of that deal, or may have appeared earlier than planned by the magazine. Someone could e-mail the author and ask him.

As for the content, it was a pretty good analysis with some thought-provoking ideas. I was particularly impressed by his statement that technologies with extremely narrow margins have limited utility. If virtually any failure kills you, then it becomes very hard to learn from mistakes.

Zubrin has been making these frontier analogy claims for a long time and they are really absurd. He has claimed--I am not making this up--that the United States has stagnated technologically and socially after the close of the Western frontier. That happened in the 19th century, and to claim that the United States has not made technological progress since then ignores little things like the invention of the airplane, the atomic bomb, and the Internet. He has made other ridiculous claims, such as saying that aviation technology has not advanced in 45 years because airplanes now travel slower today than they did when the SR-71 was introduced, i.e. using speed as the only measure of aeronautical advance. Arguing that aviation technology has been stagnant ignores major advances in things like stealth, fly-by-wire, high-bypass turbofans, and sophisticated avionics, including navigation and communications advances. (For example, the concept of commercial airliners navigating by GPS, or of passengers making satellite phone calls, are recent developments.) Zubrin ignores all of this in order to make a point.

Zubrin has some really contorted logic to support his argument and ultimately this undercuts his message. It really makes him look absurd to outsiders. Outsiders (i.e. non-space enthusiasts) will listen to him claim that technological development is stagnant and dismiss him as a nut who cannot even recognize the world around him.

William,

I hadn't even thought about that angle about Zubrin's windmill tilt. It does make him come off a bit kooky to a non-enthusiast. I think there are good, valid reasons for goin gto Mars and the Moon that have nothing to do with it being the 'frontier'. Commercial reasons alone make it worth a serious investment to pull off. (Although, asteroid and comet mining might be even more lucerative) But I don't think that colonizing Mars should be the only goal of the space program. That just seems a bit short-sighted. Besides, do we really want NASA, the ESA, and the Russian space agency dictating how a colony mission should be organized and run?

Zubrin actually provided a vision of why Mars is a good goal. But he really took it too far. He did not know when to stop. Instead of arguing that Mars would be a good frontier and that we need a frontier, he then started making claims about how important a frontier was in the past. Worse, he made claims about American society that are simply false--that we are technologically stagnant, for instance. That just makes him appear kooky to anybody who does not already believe in space exploration.

But he hurts his message in a lot of other ways. He is not a good public speaker. Listen to him sometime. He has a lot of verbal ticks, like saying "Okay" every couple of sentences, and never looking his audience in the eye. He really does come across as messianic and a zealot. Not a good spokesman for his own movement.

Zubrin may not be the best spokesman for his own cause, but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss his argument about the need for frontiers. An alarming fall in the number of science and engineering graduates in the USA should be sufficient cause for concern.

Some writers claim that the golden age of science fiction had an important effect on the following generations reach for space. If true, it's the same thing... it's about vision and ordinary people thinking they can have a part.

The most encouraging thing today is that some people with vision have and are willing to risk there own money. I think we are finally at the beginning of a new era.

Sometime during Apollo the bureaucrats took over. You expect that with government, but if some groups of visionary scientist had not had the rug pulled out from under them, we'd already have colonies. Colonies that would have fired the imagination and driven the need for cheaper ways of providing logistics. To say that frontiers don't drive innovation is just plain wrong, regardless of how poorly the idea is expressed.

"An alarming fall in the number of science and engineering graduates in the USA should be sufficient cause for concern."

Er, maybe, if it was actually true:

http://www.rand.org/publications/MG/MG118/

"Despite recurring concerns about potential shortages of science, technical, engineering and mathematics personnel in the U.S. workforce, particularly in engineering and information technology, we did not find evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon."

And why would you link the number of science and engineering graduates to the lack of a frontier? I think that the only occupation that would be threatened after the closing of the frontier is cowboys.

Reasonable questions William, for which I admit I don't have the answer. I have read in numerous sources that while there has been a decline in graduates in this country there has been a rise in others; also that patents have followed this trend. I admit however that I can't really put my finger on a source for this belief. I'll try to pay more attention to footnotes the next time I read a similar comment so I can provide links.

As for the link between graduates and frontiers, my real point is that vision leads to results that otherwise are less likely to occur. I simply take this as a given... while I may be wrong, it's more an article of faith with me and it would take some convincing that it were otherwise. I think that science is of a visionary nature, also really an article of faith with me.

Sorry I couldn't be more definitive. I think your points are quite reasonable.

Lastly, I think we need more cowboys. I think it takes a real cowboy to strap a rocket to your ass and say, "light it up guy I'm going to spend a little time in an environment that's doing it's darndest to kill me and I'll be coming back in a ball of fire."

Those guys that tooks SS1 up were real cowboys, god love 'em. I'd like to see thousands more in the next decade.

btw, William,

I note that the url you reference is in regard to federal workforce, but I was referencing the trend in overall science and engineering graduates, which is a different thing of course. Again, I haven't found the census data that would provide evidence one way or the other.