Both SpaceX and NASA have ideas about how to get humans to the Red Planet, but the founder of the Mars Society says there’s a better way to do it.
In a colorful talk here at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) on Oct. 23, Robert Zubrin made the case for his long-standing “Mars Direct” plan. Mars Direct, Zubrin argued, makes more sense than SpaceX’s current Starship architecture and the plans of NASA, which may use the Gateway lunar space station as a staging point for human Mars missions.
Mars Direct, which Zubrin first proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, calls for an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) that launches uncrewed to Mars and arrives at the Red Planet six months later. Aboard this spacecraft will be a nuclear-powered rover that generates rocket fuel from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere. This rover’s work will ensure that the ERV’s fuel tank is topped up on the Red Planet.
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