Astra's Page on the Inspiration Mars Foundation

Introduction

The Inspiration Mars Foundation, a new nonprofit organization held a press conference on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 at 1 p.m. at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. The conference will last 45-minutes and be followed by question and answer period. This announcement has created quite a buzz in the space community, especially those interested in the planet Mars.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation is headed up by American entrepreneur Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist. The Foundation is sponsoring the press conference that will detail its plans to launch an historic journey to Mars and back in 501 days. Because the next close opposition of Mars is July 27 in 2018, the mission must be launched in January 2018. The press release called it the "Mission for America". The hope is that the mission will generate new knowledge and momentum for a new great era of space exploration. The Future In-Space Operations (FISO) Working Group Held a teleconference with Inspiration Mars on April 3.

The Foundates wishes to encourage all Americans to believe in doing the hard things that make the nation great. The hope is to help inspire American youth to work toward Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and careers.

Astra's Response

Mars has been an inspiration to me since I was a small child. I wrote a Mars Mission educational program that was used at an Explorers Post for three years, based on the NASA Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 and previous studies. I am anxiously awaiting to learn about this new mission and applaud this effort. I will be following the progress on this and reporting on this page so pop back in a few days after the press release. In addition, Mr. Tito presented a paper on March 3, 2013 called "Feasibility Analysis for a Manned Mars Free Return Mission in 2018" at IEEE Aerospace Conference in Big Sky, Montana.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation has already inspired a lot of talk about Mars. Hey, guess what? If the Foundation can finance this mission, than it doesn't matter if other people think the money can be spent better elsewhere, or it's a crazy idea. It's not important if someone thinks that we should colonize the moon first. This is a private mission and it is not up to the governments of people who live in any country on the planet. I am constantly amazed at the people who seem to think that the money that is used for space exploration disappears in to some kind of blackhole. There is really an industry out there that feeds the money that is spent right into the economy where the people who fund the space activities live. And if you think that robots can do the job better than humans - - just don't go.

Who is Inspiration Mars?

Participants at the Mars Mission press conference:

  • Dennis Tito - First Tourist in Space and Founder of Wilshire
  • SpaceX - Commercial Space Launch Vehicles and Space Craft
  • Paragon Space Development - Paragon develops environmental controls for life support systems and thermal controls for humans in space.

Inspiration Mars Mission and Others

Webpages with Good Information on this Topic