(Hat Tip: The Mars Society)

Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society has produced a DVD highlighting the case for Mars and envisions the first settlement being established by 2018 (note: is it me or is that date somehow familiar?).

You can watch the video below, although you can also check it out over on The Mars Underground web site.

Although he makes an interesting case for settlement of Mars within the next ten years, his organization does not seem to be brave enough to produce a road map highlighting the journey towards the red planet.

Many people have debated whether we should skip the Moon and heads towards Mars, or to colonize our lunar neighbor first. Although settling on Mars (within our lifetime) would be a step forward for our species, simply going without “beta testing” on the moon would be disastrous.

It would only take one serious problem on Mars to end human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit, as the public would probably lose heart watching their own die on a world millions of miles away.

The Moon, however would provide a more fitting choice, as it would prepare for the eventual leap towards Mars, allowing us to colonize the planet for the long term.

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India is considering launching an unmanned probe on the Martian surface to see whether or not life really does exist on the red planet.

(Mars Daily) Indian space scientists plan to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2013 to look for evidence of life, a news report said on Sunday. The six-to-eight-month mission, likely to be launched in the next seven years, would cost three billion rupees (67 million dollars), the Hindustan Times reported.

“Mars is emerging on our horizon. The geo-stationary launch vehicle can take a payload to Mars and our Deep Space Network can track it all the way,” G. Madhavan Nair, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told the newspaper.

India is already becoming very active within the space field, as they are already preparing to visit the Moon (although they only intend to do this via robots). Searching for life on Mars will probably raise India’s global status as a major space player, although such a search may be futile as Martian soil is not friendly towards life.

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China is using a new telescope to track down possible NEO (Near Earth Objects) that may threaten planet earth.

(Space Daily) China has built a new Schmidt telescope, the largest of its kind in China, to keep track of near-earth objects (NEO) that could threaten Planet Earth. The telescope, measuring one meter in diameter, has been tested in a branch observatory belonging to Mount Zijin Observatory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in east China’s Jiangsu Province. [...]

“It is quite likely that some asteroids and comets hit the earth in the past, and it might happen again in the future,” said [Yang Jiexing, a researcher with the observatory].

“We built this detector to know in advance of any approaching danger, and be able to figure out how to deal with it,” he said.

Cataloging these dangerous space rocks is of great concern not only for our planet, but for any others we are fortunate enough to colonize. Although the Earth is blessed with an atmosphere hostile towards incoming objects, it may not be enough to stop planet killers, which may be as small as a half of mile wide.

Protecting Earth will become a priority, even after we begin to colonize and terraform other worlds. Earth is a unique world in our solar system, and it is good to see another space power lending her efforts in defending our fragile paradise.

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Russia is eyeing first place in the “telescope space race” and plans on building a telescope that would not only rival Hubble, but surpass its American cousin completely.

(Space Daily) Russia will build a deep space exploration telescope that will outstrip the U.S.-made Hubble Space Telescope, a Russian astronomer said Tuesday. Hubble, orbited in 1990, has been the most successful and expensive project in astrophysics, costing over $6 billion.

“In cooperation with our colleagues from Germany, the United Kingdom, China and Spain, we have set ourselves the task of building the Spectrum-Ultraviolet telescope, which will surpass Hubble in some aspects,” Boris Shustov, director of the Astronomy Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told a news conference.

Russia it seems is planning on adding on a “ground version” to complement the one in orbit. Combined, these telescopes would be powerful enough to “read a newspaper on the Moon” according to Shustov.

Although focused mainly on the Universe, such a telescope may prove useful on highlighting features or potential resources on asteroids and lunar bodies.

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Throughout our history, humanity has built technology to enable faster, cheaper or larger transportation from one point to another. Although many of these feats faced great difficulties from the drawing board to the final product, our world has been blessed by these inventors efforts decades later as the airplane, train and automobile can testify.

But before any of these inventions were fully developed, skeptics and doubters have mocked either the possibility of an invention or the need for one. Since the Space Elevator definately falls into this category, here are ten reasons why a space elevator should not be built to benefit humanity.

10) Too complex to succeed: The technology behind a space elevator has too many moving parts. It lacks the simplicity of a rocket engine.

9) It’s too expensive: It would be better to spend $10 billion on developing new ways to kill each other on dozens of projects than to pool our money into this single one.

It’s a dumb idea: The space elevator has only existed in science fiction novels. Since when has anything from a science fiction novel become reality?

7) It will take too long: If such a feat can not be built in my generation, why should the next one have the honor to benefit from it?

6) It’s too hard: We should focus on solving easier topics such as ending war and global poverty.

5) It would ruin Star Trek: The writers never envisioned a space elevator in their television series. Building one would ruin the story line, enraging fans across the scifi community.

4) We need Space Powers: If too many nations have access to space, people might get the notion that we are all created equal, leading to chaos.

3) Rockets are doing a fine job: Despite 95% of their weight being fuel, rockets are doing a great job hauling up cargo and people. Who needs change?

2) Space is for the elite: Only the healthy and wealthy deserve to visit the stars. The poor and unhealthy deserve their lot on Earth.

1) The English language has too many words: We have too many “ports” on planet earth already, such as seaport, airport, carport, etc. Adding LiftPort to the dictionary would only increase the cost of dictionaries worldwide.

Note: These are the best reasons I could come up with. Does anyone else have a better excuse?

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