We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for this important announcement: Mars is closer to the earth than it has been in 60,000 years–right now.

That's right, people. The glowing red disk in the sky that you noticed on your stumbling way home late last night was not just another jagermeister-inspired hallucination. It was Mars. The Red Planet.

While the inhabitants of Earth were burning up in a fever of pre-emptive blood-feuds, perpetual religious wars and the heroic struggle to put a Hummer in every wage-slave's garage, the Red Planet closed in, and no one even noticed or cared.

Wait. Some people did notice. And they do care. Passionately.

Who? The people of the International Mars Society, that's who. This organization of several thousand scientists, artists, filmmakers, writers, janitors, bus drivers and other brilliant creative misfits has been waiting, and watching, and preparing for this close encounter with Mars.

And guess what? The International Mars Society has a lively and energetic Chapter right here in sleepy San Diego.

Dave Rankin, a criminal defense attorney by day and an interplanetary dreamer by night, founded the San Diego chapter of the Mars Society two years ago. "I liked how active the Mars Society was and I wanted San Diegans to be able to get involved in a really big dream. I mean, mankind started in Africa and we've evolved and spread over this whole planet. It's part of human nature to migrate, to explore. Mars seems a logical progression."

Mars Society member Gerry Williams is an independent filmmaker and photographer. "I grew up at the dawn of the Space Age. I remember in kindergarten watching space flights on television, then our class built space helmets out of 5-gallon ice cream drums and pipe cleaners for antenna. I’ve been hooked ever since."

While life kept propelling Williams in unexpected directions, something inside also kept him in touch with his childhood passions. He didn't become an astronaut, but through some mysterious alchemy, first triggered by his fascination with the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, he was transformed into a maker of the kinds of sci-fi and horror and raunchy comedy films that you'll find on late-night cable television.

And then he began writing an original screenplay about a military spaceship circling the planet Mars. "It's a kind of Das Boot in space," he says.

When doing research for his screenplay, Williams, who has a degree in physics, found himself looking for deeper, newer information on the Red Planet. That's when he found the Mars Society, an international organization started in 1998 by Robert Zubrin, a former NASA engineer.

"They were incredible," Williams says. "I mean, I wound up becoming very involved with them and even spent three days and two nights on a barren plain in Utah, video documenting the six-person crew who were living in a mock spaceship and living under conditions that closely simulated conditions to be found on Mars."

Jeff Berkwits could never shake his boyhood fascination with space exploration. "I believed by the year 2000 we would all be vacationing on the moon. As a teenager I started collecting plans to build my own hover car and imagined myself zooming around town in it."

Berkwits grew up to become a freelance science fiction writer and joined the Mars Society a year ago. "The Mars Society isn't just some organization that takes your dues and sends you a newsletter. I have a chance to really get my hands dirty. You don't need a Ph.D. to help out, to make a real contribution. Anyone can play a role in the Mars Society."

And "playing a role" is an apt way to define many of the Mars Society's projects. The San Diego chapter is working to build a mock-up space suit as similar as possible to the real ones that astronauts now wear. "We thought that when we're doing outreach," Berkwits says, "Talking to people about supporting space exploration and maybe getting involved with the Mars Society, it would be really cool to have someone walking around in a space suit."

While walking around in a helmet and space suit may inspire kids who did not grow up in a space-exploring era–and re-inspire their parents who did–the Mars Society is also engaged in conducting serious research. While dedicated to the private, independent exploration of space, the Mars Society has no objections if slower-moving, more bureaucratic government organizations of space exploration (read: NASA), find their ideas and research to be useful.

"Sure, some people within NASA may look at the Mars Society and think this is laughable science," Berkwits says. "But others may say, Hey, wait. Maybe we can use some of this."

Berkwits laughs, "I mean, you don't want to actually be on Mars when you discover that your toilet design doesn't work."

One member of the national Mars Society is a man named Eldon Musk. Musk founded an Internet company called PayPal, then sold it to eBay and became an unemployed 31-year old South African living in Los Angeles and in possession of 165 million American dollars. So he built the Eldon Musk Observatory in partnership with the Mars Society. Then he started another company, Space X, dedicated to developing inexpensive rockets to blast payloads into space–for profit.

If you're tempted to dismiss the Mars Society as a bunch of affable eccentrics with the occasional brilliant multi-millionaire entrepreneur or NASA engineer in their ranks, you may want to first consider their accomplishments.

The Mars Society has designed and built three Mars Habitation Modules, or "habitats". The first was placed on the rocky, barren plains of Mars-like Utah. The second habitat was the result of $400,000 of privately raised funds and is located on a remote island in the Canadian Arctic.

Shannon Rupert-Robles is a research biologist and professor at Miramar College. She has also been the Commander of a team of Mars Society members who spent four weeks living and working inside the Utah habitat. "I do it for the research, to push the biology research," Rupert-Robles says.

The goal of the habitat missions is to road-test ideas and technologies by diligently simulating, as closely as imagination, research and resources allow–the conditions and challenges that real astronauts might encounter on the surface of Mars. Rupert-Robles and her team of "astronauts" wore mock space suits and went on extra-vehicular missions to collect rocks and soil samples and to conduct real biological and ecological experiments.

Just returned from the 6th International Mars Society convention held in Canada, Rupert-Robles says, "The biggest challenge we face is how we're perceived. People think we're a bunch of oddballs trying to commune with life on Mars. There isn't any life on Mars! This is about science and research and one day exploring and living on another planet. I won't walk on Mars, but I believe I'll still be alive when other people do."

With this kind of diligent, if unorthodox, research and outside-the-box thinking, the Mars Society has steadily gained members, and is beginning to attract substantial corporate and university involvement–and funding. A third Habitat, called Euro-MARS, is already complete and will be situated in Iceland next year. It was designed and built and will be operated as a joint project of several European Mars Society chapters. Australia's Mars Society is now constructing its own Habitat, MARS-Oz, for deployment in late 2004.

Berkwits, the sci-fi writer and boyhood hover car dreamer, tells about another project. "The University of Michigan received 2.2 million dollars for a project in which the Mars Society is helping to design a pressurized vehicle that astronauts on Mars could use. With such a vehicle, they wouldn't be limited to exploring in space suits. Astronauts could live in a shirtsleeve environment and conduct research miles from their base. They could stay out for weeks."

But still, there's no getting around it: this is the Mars Society, not the government-funded behemoth NASA. So one starting point for developing a pressurized vehicle to explore the Red Planet was, Berkwits says, "An old bread delivery truck that we converted."

Shannon Rupert-Robles adds, "Before that we used my old Nissan Pathfinder."

Yet, if you've ever seen old films of 1950s slide-rule toting engineers sporting crew cuts, white shirts and Buddy Holly eyeglasses, excitedly huddling around miniature rockets, you'll remember that NASA had its own shoe-string and duct-tape beginnings. And they went to the moon.

The members of the Mars Society, here in San Diego and in dozens of nations around planet Earth, have seen those old films, too. They're convinced that mankind's next stop will be Mars.

Links

The International National Mars Society
http://www.marssociety.org/

The Purpose of the Mars Society is to further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet by:
1. Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars.
2. Support of ever more aggressive government funded Mars exploration programs around the world.
3. Conducting Mars exploration on a private basis.
Starting small, with hitchhiker payloads on government funded missions, we intend to use the credibility that such activity will engender to mobilize larger resources that will enable stand-alone private robotic missions and ultimately human exploration.

San Diego Chapter of the Mars Society
http://chapters.marssociety.org/SanDiego/

San Diego Astronomy Association
http://www.sdaa.org/

Stars in the Park
Hey, people: If you lay off the vodka shots, you'll have no problem seeing Mars with your own eyes from now through September 27th. But if you really want to see Mars, to observe Mars up close, you'll want a telescope. Good news: On the first Wednesday of each month at 7:30pm, members of the San Diego Astronomy Association set up their telescopes outside the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park for public access. Viewing is free. The next Stars in the Park is on September 3, 2003. Members of the San Diego Mars Society will be on hand to answer questions and inspire interplanetary dreams.

The Mars Society Habitats
FMARS
http://www.marssociety.org/arctic/index.asp
Devon Island, Canada, in the Arctic Circle. Fourth season just completed
MDRS
http://www.marssociety.org/MDRS/index.asp
Near Hanksville, Utah. Two seasons completed, will open again in late
October 2003
Euro-MARS
http://www.euromars.org/
Will be located at the Myvatn/Krafla (geothermal/volcanic area) in Iceland in 2004 and operated by the European Mars Society
MARS-Oz
http://www.marssociety.org.au/
Under construction. Will be located in the Australian Outback in 2004-2005 and operated by the Mars Society Australia

Cato Institute Study: Principles for Martian Law
http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/980815paper.html
Just in case you were thinking only the fun-loving eccentric artists, scientists, filmmakers and writers of the Mars Society are looking ahead and pondering the potential of Mankind on Mars, check out a study by the renowned Cato Institute that asks, "On what principles should Martian law be based?"
Excerpt:
Mars is a case of what political theorists would call a perfect state of nature. No one lives on Mars. No one currently has legal title to any part of Mars. Simply landing on the planet should not give an individual title to the planet any more than settling foot in the New World gave Columbus title to the whole of North and South America. No Earth government or group of Earth governments has any authority or sovereignty over Mars. Mars is currently a free planet.

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