Citizen Explorers

Editor’s note: Despite all of the counterproductive and self-serving rhetoric (“Moon bad, Mars good”) that Bob Zubrin loves to enterain us with (his last editorial in Space News is a classic in this genre), many of the members of the Mars Society manage to take personal participation in Mars analog work seriously and prefer hard work to Zurbin’s arm waving. In particular, I never fail to be impressed with the extent to which foreign participants – and their respective space agencies – view these activities. The current team at the MDRS in Utah is supported by an astonishing team of 130 people on site in Utah and back in Austria. Check out the Austromars website for an overview and updates (English version on the right). And in the mean time, just ignore that man waving his arms in the distance. But do pay attention to the actions of the members he claims to represent.