Author, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin to visit

Dr. Robert M. Zubrin, aerospace engineer, writer, and principal author of ?Mars Direct,? the plan developed to send a group of American astronauts to the red planet, will give two talks at Skidmore College this week.

Zubrin will discuss ?Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil,? at noon Friday, Oct. 19, in Ladd Hall, room 307. At 8 p.m. Oct. 19, he?ll discuss ?Mars Direct: Humans to the Red Planet with a Decade? in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Both talks are free and open to the public.

Zubrin will be at Skidmore as keynote speaker for ?Planets: Geophysical and Astrophysical Perspectives on their Structure and Formation,? the joint meeting of the New York State Section of the American Physical Society and the Astronomical Society of New York.

In his afternoon talk, Zubrin will describe a plan for breaking OPEC?s economic stranglehold on the United States and the world. He argues that if Congress passed a law requiring that all new cars sold in the U.S. be ?flex-fueled??that is, able to run on any combination of gasoline or alcohol fuels?the oil cartel?s monopoly on the globe?s transportation fuel supply would be destroyed. According to Zubrin?s estimates, within three years of enactment, such a regulation would put 50 million cars capable of running on high-alcohol fuels on the road in this country, and an equal number abroad.

Zubrin will draw on his forthcoming book Energy Victory (due this fall from Prometheus Books) to demonstrate how fuel dollars that now go to OPEC could be used to boost our own economy, if this plan were enacted. He also will describe the plan?s positive implications for the environment. The afternoon lecture is co-sponsored by Skidmore?s First-Year Experience Program.

On Friday night, Zubrin will discuss ?Mars Direct,? a plan that has attracted international attention and wide media coverage. The proposal followed the announcement by the first President Bush that America should renew its pioneering push into space with the establishment of a permanent lunar base and a series of human missions to Mars. The president made this recommendation in July 1989 on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.

Although many said that such an endeavor would be excessively costly in both funds and time, a small team at Martin Marietta drew up a plan that would contain costs and further America exploration of space. The recent revival of the call for a human space exploration initiative puts the ?Mars Direct? plan at the center of the debate. As principal author of the plan, Zubrin will share its details in his talk.

Formerly a staff engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Zubrin now heads his own company, Pioneer Astronautics. He recently founded the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means. In that capacity, he led the construction and operation of a human Mars exploration training station on Devon Island, an uninhabited island in the Canadian Arctic 900 miles from the North Pole. Prior to his work in astronautics, Zubrin was employed in areas of thermonuclear fusion research, nuclear engineering, radiation protection, and as a high school science teacher.

He holds master?s degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and a doctorate in nuclear engineering. He is a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and former chairman of the executive committee of the National Space Society. He also has invented several concepts for space propulsion and exploration. In addition, he is the author of a number of non-fiction books, including The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (Simon and Schuster, 1996), Entering Space (Tarcher Putnam, 1999), and Mars on Earth (Tarcher Penguin, 2003); and two novels, The Holy Land (Polaris Books, 2003) and First Landing (Ace, 2001).