Zubrin, Ares and NASA

Canadian TV last night aired a program on the efforts to get to Mars.
They focused on Zubrin (and some other guy, Metha ?) efforts to find a
way and then push for it. He is the one who came up with the "Mars
Direct", which he later had to change to 6* Mars direct by having to
send many ships to Mars separately).

What struck me is that in the late 1980s, he is the one who coined the
"Ares" term to name the rocket, made from Shuttle components (tanks,
SRBs, SSMEs) that would launch the ships to Mars. And what the program
stated was that a few weeks after Zubrin appeared at some congressional
hearing on the furture of space exploration, Bush came out with his
current policy on exploration (dump suttle, goto mars, with moon being
first goal).

NASA named that new rocket Ares 1 and 5, and initially, they were to be
like Zubrin's original idea of using the ET, SSMEs and SRBs from the
shuttle program (this was done to make it look more achievable to
politicians).

It appears that once NASA reviewed Zubrin' plans (originally rejected)
and included the multiple flights, it became a NASA standrd reference
plan to go to Mars.


Is the current NASA project for the "CEV" (Ares, Orion etc) really the
result of one man's crusade inside and outside of NASA ?


Has NASA really adopted the Ares/Orion concept internally, or would this
be the case of Zubring and friends having done their magic with
politicians who then soved that plan into NASA ?

Or am I totally off-base here and Zubrin's plans have nothing to do
with the current Ares/Orion projects ?

It strikes me as odd that Zubrin originally thought he could bring
everything to Mars on one such rocket, and today, they seem to be having
trouble making Ares get to LEO with just a small capsule.

John Doe wrote:

What struck me is that in the late 1980s, he is the one who coined the
"Ares" term to name the rocket, made from Shuttle components (tanks,
SRBs, SSMEs) that would launch the ships to Mars. And what the program
stated was that a few weeks after Zubrin appeared at some congressional
hearing on the furture of space exploration, Bush came out with his
current policy on exploration (dump suttle, goto mars, with moon being
first goal).

What the program didn't tell you is that Bush's new policy had been
months in the planning.

Or am I totally off-base here and Zubrin's plans have nothing to do
with the current Ares/Orion projects ?

You are, as usual, totally off base.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL