MISSION CONTROL: Copy that E.L. Com.

All systems are 'go' for entry, decent and landing.

Stand by.... Stand by.

ASTRONAUT: We are looking fine, flight. Data is good.

NARRATOR: At the dawn of the 21st Century,

space agencies in Europe and America

began making plans to land the first humans on Mars.

But manned missions to the red planet

have been proposed before.

For some, Mars holds the answers to

mankind’s future in space.

Others say Mars is too far, too dangerous,

and too expensive for humans to explore.

And in a world torn by troubles, some say there is no need,

or will, for mankind to reach into space anymore.

More than 30 years after the last Apollo astronaut walked on the moon,

the American-manned space program seems to have lost its way,

unable to reach beyond even low-earth orbit.

ZUBRIN: We’ve got a problem, NASA has been literally going around in circles

with the space program for the past 30 years.

NARRATOR: Astronautically engineer, Dr. Robert Zubrin,

has been arguing for years that sending humans to Mars

is the mission the space program needs.

ZUBRIN: It’s time that we set goals for NASA

that were worthy of the risks of the human space flight.

Mars is the next logical step in our space program.

It’s the challenge that’s been staring us in the face for the past 30 years.

It’s the planet that’s most like the Earth,

it’s the planet that has on it the resources needed to support life

and therefore some day technological civilization.

It’s the planet that will provide us with the answer

as to whether life is prevalent in the universe or exclusive to the Earth.

And it’s the planet that will give us the critical tests as to whether humanity,

can breakout out of the planet of our birth

and become a space-faring species.

In the early 1990s, Zubrin was the head of the 'Mars Direct' program

at Martin Marietta Astronautics.

His team developed a mission to Mars that could be done at the fraction of Nasa’s projected costs.

Using only existing technology, Zubrin argues that the first steps on Martian soil

could be made within 10 years.

ZUBRIN: There is absolutely nothing in this that is beyond our technology.

DR. EDWARD WEILER: We are not ready to send humans to Mars right now.

We don't know how to keep them alive.

There are people out there, right now, that say we can go to Mars tomorrow.

One of my requirements, one of NASA’s requirements,

is that if we send humans to Mars we bring them back alive.

For the past 15 years, Zubrin and his colleagues have waged a campaign

to convince society and the political class

that humans-on-Mars should be the goal for NASA now.

This is the story of our cold neighboring planet

and the debate over whether man’s fate it tied to the red world.

It’s the story of an engineer’s journey – and the battle of ideas

over which direction in space will truly benefit mankind.

ZUBRIN: We’re at a crossroads today.

We either muster the courage to go

or we risk the possibility of stagnation and decay.

The victor in this debate could determine the fate of mankind.

Will we become a space-faring species?

Will we live on more than one planet?

In the Winter of 2003, the Chinese put their

first tikenaut in space.

The European’s space agency has outlined a plan for humans to the

moon by 2024. And to Mars by 2033.

And the Russians, building on years of experience

are conducting test for long duration Mars missions.

In America, with the impending retirement of the shuttle fleet and

the completion of the International Space Station, the Bush

administration announced in 2004.

the Constellation Program.

A plan that would return America to the moon by 2020.

But the program was never fully funded

and was eventually cancelled.

In 2010, the Obama Administration announced it’s

vision for NASA and human Mars exploration.

NARRATOR: With a new timeline for humans to Mars, sometime

after 2035, and with administrations changing every 4 or 8 years,

it is far from certain that such a plan will be realized.

20 years earlier, the first President Bush

also proposed a long-term human exploration program, under great fan-fair.

The program quietly died in Congress a few years later.

ZUBRIN: If you want to go to Mars, you cannot do it

in 30 years, you can't do it in 20 years.

You gotta do it in 10 years or less from program start or

you are more or less guaranteed political failure.

To date, only the Apollo Moon Program - which was announced in 1961

and had men on the moon 8 years later -

has succeeded in getting astronauts beyond low earth orbit.

ZUBRIN: I was 5 when Sputnik flew.

And while, to the adults, Sputnik was a terrifying event,

to me, as a child, who was already reading science fiction,

it was exhilarating.

Cause it meant that this possibility

of a space fairing future was going to be real.

And I was 9 when Kennedy gave his speech committing us to the moon...

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade

and do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

ZUBRIN: I grew up during the 60’s when it was Mercury,

it was Gemini, it was Apollo. Every month NASA was doing something

more impressive than the month before. We were

going to be on the moon by 1970, Mars by 1980, Saturn by 1990,

Alpha-Sintari by the year 2000.

We were moving out and I wanted to be part of that. And so, I got

myself an scientific education. But then in the early 70s this all

collapsed. We achieved the first part of the program: Moon by 1970.

But the Nixon administration shut down the rest and we did

not move out into space. And for a while I accepted that, grudgingly.

I became a science teacher. But then, in the early 80s, something

hit me and I said, “I’m not going to accept myself doing

less than what I had dreamed of doing when I was a boy”

NARRATOR: Zubrin went back to graduate school getting

advanced degrees in Engineering and Aerospace. He then went on

to work at Martin Marietta, which later became Lockheed Martin,

designing interplanetary missions.

It was here that Zubrin’s obsession

with the red planet began to take hold.

While at Martin, in the 1990s, Zubrin and his colleagues

developed a plan for sending human to Mars

that changed NASAs thinking on the issue.

But the plan has languished on the drawing boards ever since.

Now, as president of the Mars Society, Zubrin is a center stage in

the debate over the future of manned space flight.

Known as a smart, visionary scientist, he’s authored several books

on exploring space and is the self-appointed spokesman for the

possibility of colonizing Mars.

Mars is where the future is. Mars is the closest planet to the Earth

that has on in the all the resources needed to support life

and therefore technological civilization. It has water, it has carbon,

It has nitrogen. It has a 24-hour day. It has a complex geological history that has

created mineral ore. It has sources of geothermal energy.

Mars is a place we can settle.

One reason for such optimism over a frozen world like Mars,

is evidence that 2 billion years ago

Mars was a much warmer and wetter place.

DR. PENELOPE BOSTON: We think that at one time in the ancient past

Mars was very similar to the condition of early Earth.

NARRATOR: This Martian warm age lasted for over a billion years

and could have been a suitable environment

for the development of life.

DR. CHRISTOPHER MCKAY: If we go to Mars and find evidence of a second

genesis on Mars, I think we can conclude that the universe is

full of life. We can probably conclude that on some planets that

life evolves to more complex forms. And I think we’d be reasonable

to conclude that intelligence could also emerge on some planets as well.

It really does answer the questions, "are we alone?"

And that to me, is a question that transcends science.

It’s a philosophical, societal, as well as scientific question.

To me that’s the big prize,

that’s why Mars is interesting.

That’s why human exploration makes sense.

Space programs are often criticized for the huge sums of money

they require. Although the American space program is less than

1% of the federal budget, a human mission to Mars

may have to wait for better times.

There are those who say that we have many problems to deal with

here on earth, and we need to postpone adventures such as the

human exploration of Mars until these problems are solved.

Well, there were many problems in Spain in 1492,

and there still are.

There are problems that need to be dealt with here on Earth

and should be dealt with.

But, we also have to think of the future.

We also have to think about opening up

new volumes in human history.

I believe that it’s essential for a positive human future

that humanity expand into space.

The greatest value that we got out of Apollo

was the creation of intellectual capital through the inspiring

of millions to go into science and engineering,