March 17, 2004

Desert research facility simulates Mars conditions The San Jose Mercury News

Posted by tourdemars to Mars Society at March 17, 2004 11:21 PM

It's an odd sight, even out here in the surreal high desert of southern Utah, where biting winds swirl around pimply mounds of dirt and rock, and sandstone bluffs cast creepy shadows. "Astronaut" Bob McNally is crouching on pinkish clay with teammate Louise Wynn, peering through his bubble helmet at the fine, dry soil. "It'd be nice," says a wistful McNally, "to find microfossils before we go in." He looks toward a squat white cylinder. It's the Mars Desert Research Station, a private space camp whose crews simulate something beyond human experience but not outside our imagination - living and working on Mars.
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Comments

Mars society has been during great research into the mars enviroment all on it's own. With not even a care from NASA. Now NASA wants to join in with some items of research that it wants to do. I would say that they are not very serious about what the society has been doing for years.

Posted by: Harold LaValley at March 18, 2004 11:56 AM

The Mars Society is a group of talented individuals, inspired by Robert Zurbin in developing understanding on the 'possibility' of human life on Mars. The theories and ideas, while on a 'shoe-string' budget--is producing results--that can benefit NASA. The Mars Society represents the private sector of human society and then NASA--the government sector. The knowledge that both share, could benefit each other. NASA, needs funding and Congress doesn't understand why Columbus needs it ships to sail to the New World. So, Columbus may be approaching the gondola builders in Venice--in its hope for one Ship? Metamophorically thinking.
Yet this is the 21st century, not the 15th. Some nation(s), in the next 20-50 years, will travel outward from the cradle of humanity. Russan is working with India, China has its aspirations and may work with India. The US is working with the Europeans. So more power to The Mars Society, a group of individuals who are making a difference--giving them credit for the many achieved visions that they have accomplished--on the 'shoe-string budget' that they have been working on. (If I had 20.00 and had a choice of where it would go, I would mail it to The Mars Society, instead of having the same 20.00 going in taxes to fight a war in Iraq--because of WMD--which didn't exist in the first place.) NASA has allowed humanity to see outward across the distance to space, given its budget--if it had 150 billion dollars humans would be on the Moon and Mars within 7 years. At least they are interested in sharing knowledged learned from both goups.

Posted by: J Weikle at March 18, 2004 05:11 PM