There are all sorts of groups worth talking to, ranging from engineering societies, political clubs, and Rotary Clubs to veterans groups, senior citizens, schools or scout troops. Naturally, you may want to adjust your talk depending upon the group. But no matter who you are talking to, after your speech, be sure to ask anyone who is interested in helping to sign up their name, postal and e-mail addresses on a contact sheet, then get a copy of that sheet to both your local chapter and to headquarters. We need to grow the Mars Society, and every man, woman, boy or girl who wants to help is welcome, and needed.

So use the script as is, or change it completely - but either way, go and spread the word; It's time to open the new world!

1. Painting of Mars explorer encountering the Viking Lander (NASA painting by Pat Rawlings) Title: Open the New World!

Hello, I'm X, with the Mars Society. I'd like to thank you for inviting me here to talk to you about the chance we now have to open a new frontier for humanity, and why we need to do it.

2. Photo of JFK at Rice University, Sept 12, 1962. Photo of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, July 20, 1969. (NASA photos)

But first, let's take a look at where we've been. Here's President John F. Kennedy, speaking a Rice University, Houston, Texas, Sept. 12, 1962. He says:

"We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win...

"This is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not know what benefits await us….But space is there and we are going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has every embarked."

This is an incredible speech. 'Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.' 'An act of faith and vision.' This was real leadership. You'll note the date, Sept 12, 1962, a week after labor day, right at the beginning of the campaign season for the 1962 mid-term elections. He calls upon the nation to embrace challenge, and have the faith and vision needed to open a new frontier whose potential benefits are unknown.

And we did. So here, just seven years later, Buzz Aldrin is walking on the Moon. And the incredible thing is, if you look at the Apollo period, which really stretched from 1961, when Kennedy made his first speech launching the program, to 1973, when the Skylab program that was basically an Apollo follow-on ended, the average NASA budget was only about 20 percent larger than it is today ($16 billion in 1999 dollars, verses $13 billion). But in that time, they developed heavy lift rockets, hydrogen/oxygen rocket engines, nuclear rocket engines, radioisotope generators, in-space life support systems, spacesuits, space rendezvous techniques, soft landing techniques, interplanetary navigation, re-entry techniques, and a bunch of other technologies, and flew a whole raft of missions including Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Ranger, Mariner, Surveyor, and Pioneer, and did most of the development for Viking and Voyager as well. In other words, for only 20 percent more money than NASA is currently spending, they accomplished hundreds of times more both in technology development and actual flight missions, and had an enormous social impact by inspiring millions of youth to enter science so they could become part of the great push outward into space. Why was the program so much more productive? The answer is simple. Because they had a goal.

3. Photo of Shuttle Launch (NASA Photo)

But following that there was a failure of vision, and we retreated from space. Most of the blame for this must fall on the Nixon administration, which scrapped the Apollo program even as the president posed with the returning triumphant astronauts. This was a failure of vision of incredible dimensions, comparable to what might have happened if when Columbus came back from his first discovery of America, Ferdinand and Isabella had said; "So what. Let's burn the fleet." The Nixon administration burned the fleet. They scrapped the Saturn 5 assembly lines and all the rest of the Apollo program, which they considered "Not invented here." Instead, claiming that the key to space was to invent a new cheaper, reusable space launch system, they canceled all human exploration of space beyond Earth orbit and channeled what funds were left into developing the Space Shuttle.

For the three decades that have followed that fatal decision, no astronaut has gone beyond low Earth orbit. We have literally been going round in circles for 30 years.

4. Viking Mosaic photo of Mars (NASA Photo)

But now a new world presents its challenge. Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun has a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, and possesses all the resources necessary for life and civilization.

Unlike the Moon, Mars has plenty of water, enough to erode vast networks of river channels. In fact, it is now believed by planetary scientists, that there is so much water on Mars in the form of ice and permafrost, that if you smoothed the planet over and melted the water out, you would have enough water to put the entire planet under an ocean 600 ft deep. That is dry compared to the Earth, which if it were smoothed over would be under 6,000 ft of water. But if you got rid of the salt water oceans and just considered the fresh water, Mars and Earth would have about the same.

In addition to water, Mars has carbon dioxide as the majority gas in its atmosphere, and also as carbonates in the soil. It also has nitrogen as the minority gas in its atmosphere, and probably nitrates in the soil too. So carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen - the four primary elements of life - are all present in abundance on Mars. There are also large quantities of all the secondary elements of life, including sulfur, phosphorus, and calcium, and all the elements of industry, such as iron, aluminum, titanium, silicon, copper, nickel, etc. are also widely available. Mars has a 24 hour day-night cycle, which is what plants need to grow in natural sunlight. It has experienced all the volcanic and hydrologic processes needed to concentrate geochemically rare elements into mineral ore.

So the long and the short of it is that Mars has all that is needed to support life, and technological civilization as well. It is unique among all the bodies of our solar system other than the Earth in this respect. It offers the potential of becoming humanity's new world.

5. Photo of Water channels on Mars and Martian Meteorite ALH84001 (NASA Photos)

I'm sure that almost all of you will have heard about the Martian meteorite, ALH84001, which made news in August 1996. This rock is known to have come from Mars, probably after ejection from the planet by meteor impact, because its isotopic composition matches that found on the Martian surface by the Viking lander. We have other rocks that have been delivered from Mars to Earth the same way. The thing that was really exciting about this one, though, is that it showed evidence for life on Mars in the distant past. That evidence includes carbonates that indicate that the rock was once in a liquid water environment that might have been life-friendly; actual organic material; mineral residues that on Earth are normally the result of bacteria; and tiny structures that resemble fossilized bacteria. None of this evidence is conclusive, as there are alternative explanations for all of it. But it is strongly suggestive of past life.

However, long before the Alan Hills meteorite showed up, Mars was a suspect for life. While cold and dry today, Mars once had abundant flowing liquid water, as proven by water erosion features that cover its surface. Here are some images of water erosion features taken by the Viking and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. There are such features all over the planet. There are no canals on Mars - those were a telescopic illusion - but there are plenty of dried up river and lake beds. In fact, it is believed that the early Mars even had oceans. So Mars once had plenty of liquid water, and did so for a longer period of time than it took life to originate on Earth. If the theory that life evolves naturally in water-rich temperate environments is correct, then life should have appeared on Mars. If we can find it or its remains, it would prove that the development of life is a high probability event wherever appropriate physical or chemical conditions exist. Since we now know that many stars have planets, there are probably many such places.

Mars is thus the Rossetta stone for determining whether life is unique to the Earth or general throughout the universe. It will tell us whether we are alone, or part of something much larger than anything we currently imagine.

6. Mariner and Viking (NASA Photos)

We need to go to Mars to find out. So far, the only tools available for the search have been robotic spacecraft. These started with the Mariner 4 flyby in 1965, and continued with the Mariner 6 and 7 flyby missions in 1967. In the 1971, the Mariner 9 orbiter first imaged water erosion features on Mars and discovered the Valles Marineris - a canyon three times as deep as the Grand Canyon and as long as the United States. Then, in 1976, while two Viking orbiters imaged the planet, two Viking landers tested the Martian soil for life and returned ambiguous results. Chemical reactions in test samples released gases in a way that was somewhat similar to what might be expected from life, but direct assessment of the soil by a gas chromatograph indicated a complete absence of organic material. The majority - but not unanimous - conclusion of the science team was that the sample gas releases were caused by inorganic chemistry, not by life.

However, the science team also cautioned that "the absence of evidence for life produced by the Viking mission cannot be interpreted as evidence of absence."

7. Pathfinder and Sojourner (NASA Photos)

In 1997, Pathfinder was sent to Mars, and landed using an airbag landing system that allowed it to survive 70 mile per hour bounces across the Martian surface. It then released a small rover called Sojourner to explore a water runoff channel in Ares Valles. Sojourner found evidence of long-duration water flow, including rounded cobbles and conglomerate rocks.

Also, in 1997, Mars Global Surveyor arrived in Mars orbit and discovered a large area in the Northern hemisphere of topographically depressed land that was relatively crater-free and which is flatter than any regions on Earth except the ocean bottoms. It was concluded that the planet had once had a northern ocean..

8. Mars Sample Return Mission (NASA painting by Pat Rawlings)

NASA plans to send more orbiters, landers and rovers over the next few years. In the fall of 1999, the Mars Climate orbiter will arrive in Mars orbit to begin a 2-year mission imaging the planet and watching its atmospheric phenomenon. In December 1999, the Mars Polar Lander will arrive at the South Pole, where ice deposits may hold evidence of past life. Two penetrators that will impact the surface to try to sample soil several feet underground will also be released.

In 2001, an orbiter carrying a gamma-ray spectrometer capable of evaluating the planet's surface chemistry will be launched, together with a lander carrying a small rover named "Marie Curie" and an experimental package including a subscale device for making rocket propellant out of the Martian atmosphere.

In 2003, the United States plans to send a capable long distance rover called "Athena" to Mars, equipped with a large set of scientific instruments. The U.S. also plans to fly a camera carrying airplane on the Red Planet during the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk. Also, in 2003, the European Space Agency plans to launch the Mars Express mission which will include both a French/Italian orbiter and the British Beagle 2 lander, which will carry experiments supporting the search for life.

In 2004 the Japanese Nozomi radar probe will arrive. Designed for sounding the Martian ionosphere, this probe may also be able to use its radar to penetrate the ground to search for subsurface liquid water. The Mars Society is currently conducting a study of that possibility. Then, in 2005, a joint NASA-European mission will be launched to return a nearly a kilogram of Martian rocks and regolith to Earth.

9. Field Geologists on Earth and Mars (Photos by Pascal Lee, NASA painting by Pat Rawlings)

But while extremely useful, robot probes have their limits. Sojourner, for example, was a small vehicle with wheels 6 inches in diameter that could only move at a rate of 6 feet a day. Even the powerful Athena rover will only be able to travel a few hundred feet a day, and will be quite limited in the types of terrain it can traverse.

On Earth, fossil searches require hiking long distances through unimproved terrain, scaling difficult slopes, doing heavy work like digging and pick-ax work, and doing delicate work such as carefully splitting shales edgewise to reveal hidden fossils pasted between the thin pages of rock. It also requires the use of a great deal of on-the spot intuition, perception, and judgment in sniffing out the subtle clues present in the environment to make the find. These abilities are all far beyond the capabilities of robotic rovers.

If we are serious about searching for life on Mars, real live rockhounds - human explorers - will have to go.

10. Battlestar Galactica (Painting by Michael Carroll)

Some Mars plans developed in the past have involved the use of gigantic spaceships built in Earth orbit within the hangars of large orbiting space bases. Such complex and costly plans have created the impression that a humans to Mars program is beyond the technological and financial capabilities of the current age. But this is untrue.

Of course, you can always design something to be much more expensive than it needs to be. In 1989, NASA did so with its "90-Day Report," which called for spending 30 years and 450 billion dollars to create orbital spaceports upon which gigantic interplanetary spaceships could be built. But that plan, which killed President Bush's Space Exploration Initiative with sticker shock, made no sense.

11. Lewis and Clark at Three Forks (Courtesy of the Montana Historical Society)

The 90-day Report and similar Mars mission designs of the past required huge ships because they carried to Mars all the fuel and oxygen required for the round trip. But this is not how people have explored on Earth. Lewis and Clark hunted their way across America with 25 men, taking advantage of all the native knowledge they could in order to maximize their access to local resources. Imagine the baggage train they would have needed if they chose instead to bring all the food, water and air needed for themselves and their horses. Hundreds of wagons would have been needed, and all those wagon drivers and their horses would have needed further supplies, involving thousands of more wagons, etc. The way to explore cheaply is to live off the land.

We can do the same sort of thing on Mars. For example, a small amount of hydrogen brought from Earth can be reacted with Mars' atmosphere to produce a variety of fuels, water, and oxygen. One way to do this is to react the hydrogen with the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere to produce methane, or natural gas, which is great rocket fuel, and water. This is known as the Sabatier reaction and has been practiced on Earth in the chemical industry for over 100 years. The methane is stored as fuel, the water is electrolyzed into oxygen, which is needed to burn the fuel, and hydrogen, which is recycled back into the system to make more methane and water. An additional reactor can be used to split Martian CO2 into carbon monoxide, which can be vented as waste, and additional oxygen, which can be used as propellant or for life support purposes. Using these techniques a single ton of hydrogen brought from Earth can be transformed into 18 tons of methane/oxygen propellant on the surface of Mars.

It is the same sort of leverage as that obtained by a pioneer who acquires the useful mass of a bison for the transported mass of several bullets and cartridges, or the useful product of a corn field for the transported mass of several barrels of seed.

Living off the land is how people have explored and settled new frontiers on Earth, and it is how we can open Mars. Used in this way, the same rich resources that make Mars interesting also serve to make it attainable. And the techniques required to access them are not rocket science, but century-old chemical engineering. Miniaturized automated chemical plants for making propellants on Mars have already been tested in the lab.

12. Launch Vehicles: Photo of Saturn V, artwork of Energia, and shuttle derived vehicle (Photo/artwork NASA)

If the mission's return propellant is made on Mars, no giant spaceships are needed. Instead, comparatively modest spacecraft can be employed, which can be launched directly to Mars using boosters with the same capability as the Saturn V moon rockets employed in the 1960's. Such vehicles could be quickly developed using either revived Saturn V, Shuttle-derived, or Energia technology.

13. Mars Direct (Painting by Robert Murray)

.In 1990, at Martin Marietta, a plan called "Mars Direct" was developed which used such a direct launch/local propellant production strategy to greatly reduce the cost and complexity of human Mars exploration.

In the Mars Direct plan, two launches are employed. The first sends to Mars an unmanned and unfueled Earth Return Vehicle, which deploys a small nuclear reactor for surface power and then uses its onboard chemical synthesis unit to make its return propellant. This process requires about 10 months, which together with the 8 months the ERV takes to fly to Mars, means that 18 months after the ERV is launched, a fully fueled Earth Return Vehicle is available on the Martian surface. Launch opportunities to Mars occur every 26 months, so well before the next launch window opens up, the propellant production process will have been completed.

That being the case, at the next launch window two more vehicles are launched off to Mars. One carries another ERV/fuel factory payload just like the first. The other carries a tuna-can shaped hab module with a crew of four. After a 6-month outbound voyage, the crew land their hab on Mars in the immediate vicinity of the first ERV. They will use the hab as their house and field laboratory and workshop on Mars for 500 days, after which they will perform a 6-month return transit to Earth in the first ERV. The second ERV is available as a backup for the first mission, but its primary purpose is to provide return transportation for the second expedition which will follow 26 months later.

Thus in the Mars Direct plan, two boosters are launched every two years; one to open a new exploration site with a pre-positioned ERV, the other with a crew-carrying hab to investigate the site opened two years earlier. Two launches every two years is an average of one major launch per year to conduct a continuous program of human exploration of Mars. That is something that the US - or any major nation or combination of nations can easily afford.

14. Mars Semi-Direct (Artwork NASA Johnson Space Center)

NASA has adopted a modified version of Mars Direct, called the Semi-Direct plan, as its Design Reference Mission. The Semi-Direct plan employs local propellant production and three direct launches per mission to send a crew of six to Mars and back.

The first launch sends to Mars an unmanned Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which makes propellant in similar fashion to the Mars Direct mission. The second launch sends to Mars an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle which is parked in a highly elliptical Mars orbit, complete with enough methane/oxygen chemical propellant to return it to Earth. The third launch, which occurs 26 months after the MAV, delivers a tuna-can shaped hab module carrying a crew of six to rendezvous on the Martian surface with the MAV. Simultaneously, another ERV and MAV are launched to provide backup and prepare for the next hab module which will arrive two years later.

As in the Mars Direct mission the crew then spends 500 days on the Martian surface exploring the Red Planet. At the end of that time, they board the MAV and ascend to rendezvous in Mars orbit with the ERV, which then transports them towards Earth. Approaching the home planet the crew boards the Apollo-shaped MAV capsule which then serves as their re-entry and landing vehicle.

Either plan could put the first team of human explorers on Mars within 10 years, at a total program cost in the $20 to $40 billion range- much lower than that needed to reach the Moon in the 1960's.

15. Solar Flare Storm Shelter, Artificial Gravity, Shannon Lucid (Photo NASA)

With proper design, the mission provisions can be used to create an onboard storm shelter to provide protection from solar flares in transit. While capable of delivering a deadly dose of several thousand rems to an unshielded astronaut, solar flares, which are composed of large numbers of protons with energies of about 1 million volts, can be stopped by five inches of water or food material. The ship will have enough provisions on board to provide a small area with more than that amount of shielding. Solar flares occur irregularly, with dangerous events happening for a few hours perhaps once a year. During their year in space (six months in transit each way) the crew will only have to endure one or two brief periods of tight confinement in the storm shelter

Cosmic rays, which are made of particles with billions of volts of energy cannot be stopped by such thin shielding. However the magnitude of the dose that will be incurred is only about 50 rem per year. This will cause no immediate hazard. Rather, a statistical risk of cancer will result, comparable to smoking cigarettes for the same period. This may be regarded as an acceptable level of risk.

If desired, the hab module can remain connected with a tether to the spent booster upper stages, and then the assembly spun up to create artificial gravity on the way to Mars. Doing this will allow the crew to avoid any ill effects from long-duration zero gravity exposure. Although, in 1996, astronaut Shannon Lucid showed that if a strenuous exercise program were strictly followed, zero gravity for the six month flight time to Mars could be endured without harm.

16. Human Field Exploration (NASA painting by Pat Rawlings, Computer art by NASA JSC)

After a six month flight to Mars, the crew will stay on the planet for 18 months, exploring it thoroughly to find evidence of life past or present, and prospecting it for the resources needed to settle it in the future. A key asset for such far ranging field exploration will be pressurized roving vehicles, capable of supporting week-long field trips for several members of the crew. Making fuels on Mars would allow the use of ground vehicles employing combustion engines, which will give them much greater range than that possible if they were limited to battery power.

Typically, two members of the crew might use the rover to engage in a long-distance field sortie. Meanwhile, the other crew members would stay back at the base, studying samples brought in by previous rover sorties or doing various kinds of engineering or greenhouse research.

At the end of their year and a half on Mars, the crew will take off for a six-month transit back to Earth. In both the Direct and Semi-Direct plans, their hab modules are left behind on Mars. So as one mission follows another, hab modules will be added to the base, gradually building up the basis for the first human settlement on a new world.

17. Building the Base (Painting by Michael Carroll)

At a developing Mars base we will learn how to extract water from Martian soil, or, better yet, drill for geothermally heated water from the subsurface liquid water table, which if reached, could provide us with both copious supplies of water and a powerful local source of power. We will use greenhouses to learn how to grow crops in Martian soils. We will do engineering research to learn how to make bricks, ceramics, glasses, plastics, metals, wires, tubes, habitats … in short we will develop the craft needed to turn the substances found on Mars into usable resources.

By developing the craft of self-sufficiency on Mars, we can open the Red Planet to human settlement.

18. Terraforming survey team and terraformed Mars (Paintings by Michael Carroll)

The dry riverbeds we see on Mars show that it was once a warm and wet planet, a place friendly to life. By producing an artificial greenhouse effect, human colonists could someday make it warm and wet again.

Studies done to-date show that if halocarbon gases similar to the CFC's currently causing problems on Earth (but without the ozone-damaging chlorine) were released on Mars at the same rate they are currently being produced on Earth, the average temperature of the planet could be raised as much as 10 centigrade within a few decades. This temperature rise would cause large quantities of carbon dioxide to outgas from the soil. As CO2 is also a greenhouse gas, this would add to the warming, which would cause the rate of CO2 outgassing to increase further. Within 50 years of the start of the terraforming program, a CO2 atmosphere about a third as thick as Earth's could develop. Temperatures in the Martian tropics would be high enough for liquid water to exist.

While humans could not breath the atmosphere of such a partly terraformed Mars, they would no longer need spacesuits, only oxygen masks, to travel outside. Available shirtsleeve habitation could be greatly expanded as only airtight, but non-pressurized structures such as huge inflatable domes, would now be required to create human-livable areas. Plants could be introduced to spread across the planet's surface, and over long periods of time put enough oxygen in Mars' atmosphere to make it breathable by humans and other animals.

Humans may not only bring life to Mars, but Mars to life. Future ages will regard this as one of the noblest enterprises ever undertaken.

19. The Mars Society Convention.
The Mars Arctic Research Station (Painting by Robert Murray)
Panoramic Photo of the Founding Convention of the Mars Society.

But that is for the future. The task today is to get the human exploration of Mars underway. In order to make that happen, an international organization has been formed, the Mars Society, dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means. The Founding Convention, held in Boulder Colorado in August 1998, drew 700 people from all over the world. Over 80 local chapters have been established worldwide since.

The Mars Society's public efforts involve meeting with large numbers of political figures in both the US and other countries to urge expansion of government funded Mars exploration efforts. Currently, the US government spends about 2 cents a week for every American on Mars exploration. If that were expanded to 25 cents a week, we could have people on Mars in 10 years. Other nations can easily afford to participate as well, and should if they wish to participate in the shaping of the future.

At the same time, we are initiating a series of escalating private projects, each designed to earn credibility needed to raise sufficient funds for a more ambitious program to follow. Our first project is to build a simulated Mars exploration base in the Arctic, on Devon Island, where the climate and geology resembles that of Mars. The Mars Arctic Research Station, will be operational by the summer of 2000. We plan to follow this in 2003 with a hitchhiker payload on a NASA or European Mars probe. One such hitchhiker could be a balloon equipped to perform aerial photography on Mars. If this is successful, funds should become available sufficient to support a full-scale robotic Mars mission of our own in 2007, and continuing in this mode, eventually raise our credibility to the point where initiation of human exploration, either on our own, or on a cost sharing basis with NASA or other government agencies becomes possible.

20. Conclusion
(NASA painting by Pat Rawlings)

"The people are going to miss the frontier more than words can express. For four centuries they heard its call, listened to its promises, and bet their lives and fortunes on its outcome. It calls no more …" -Walter Prescott Webb, 1951.

Many writers have pointed out that the dynamic optimistic character of western civilization since the renaissance stems from its history as a society willfully taking on the risk and opportunity presented by an open frontier. In the past, open frontiers have been key to progress, because, in encountering them, people have been presented with challenge and opportunity filled environments in which they have been both forced and free to innovate in both technological and social spheres.

Civilizations are like people, they grow when they are challenged; they stagnate when they are not. We need to embrace challenge, and the challenge of Mars is one that can truly inspire our youth while mobilizing the best of our inventive capabilities.

We need to go to Mars, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. We need to go for the science, for the knowledge, and for the challenge. But most of all, we need to go to Mars for the future.

Mars can be settled. Someday millions of people will live there, constituting a new branch of human civilization which will have added its chapter to the human story. They will have their own dialect and culture. They will have contributed new and great ideas to human thought, art, and literature. They will have performed their own "Noble Experiments" in developing new forms of human social organization, added their history of heroic deeds to human folklore, and contributed their ingenuity to inventing a host of new technologies.

And when they look back at our time, what will they remember? Will they care whether we had a national health plan or a balanced budget, or who was in power in Kuwait or Nicaragua? Or who was in and who was out? No, they will neither know nor care about any of those things. But what we did to make their civilization possible, that indeed they will remember. That is something that will matter to the future. And because it will matter to them, it should matter to us.

The Earth's frontier may be settled, but a new frontier awaits our pioneering spirit.

It is time to open the new world.