Last year, in the wake of the Columbia shuttle disaster, President Bush outlined a new "Vision for Space Exploration" aimed at replacing NASA's three decades of drift with destination-driven missions -- exploring the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

In a major essay in the Spring 2005 issue of EPPC's journal The New Atlantis, space exploration advocate Robert Zubrin describes how President Bush's new policy got off to a rocky start under former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe. Zubrin contends that NASA's new administrator, Mike Griffin, will have to grapple with a policy that remains too wasteful, too complicated, and too slow. (Click here to read that article: "Getting Space Exploration Right.")

In this evening lecture at EPPC, Dr. Zubrin discussed and amplified upon his New Atlantis article, reviewing NASA's recent and current thinking, and making concrete recommendations to put NASA on the right track to fulfilling President Bush's vision. He also made the moral case for space, explaining the connection between the exploration of our solar system and the deepest values of our civilization.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Robert Zubrin is among the foremost advocates of human space exploration. In the early 1990s, Dr. Zubrin developed for Lockheed Martin a plan to put humans on Mars within ten years. This plan, detailed in Dr. Zubrin's 1996 book The Case for Mars, would use Martian resources to make a mission to the Red Planet much more affordable than NASA had previously estimated. An aerospace engineer by profession, Dr. Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a research and development firm, and president of the Mars Society, an international organization that supports the exploration and settlement of Mars.

His other books include the nonfiction Entering Space (1999) and Mars on Earth (2003), and the science fiction political satire The Holy Land (2003).