rabahy%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (10/30/84)
From: rabahy%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (David Rabahy)
Associated Press Mon 29-OCT-1984 15:41 Lunar Conference
Moon-Walker Schmitt Suggests Mars Expedition
By HARRY F. ROSENTHAL
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - While other speakers at a conference of
engineers and scientists spoke Monday of establishing a permanent
base on the moon, a former moon-walking astronaut brought up what
he thinks is the ``ultimate rationale'' for such a settlement: to
go to Mars.
Harrison Schmitt said a Soviet attempt to put cosmonauts in the
vicinity of Mars by October 1992, the 75th anniversary of the
Bolshevik Revolution, ``is not only possible, it is highly
probable.''
He said it would be sad ``if this adverse trend of political
history is established in the 500th year after the discovery of
America'' and suggested that the United States and Soviets ``may be
able to join hands in this great adventure.''
Schmitt was an Apollo 17 crewman and later served one term as a
Republican senator from New Mexico. He called a settlement on Mars
``the first great adventure for humankind'' of the next thousand
years.
Children now in elementary school will be ``the parents of the
first Martians,'' Schmitt said. He added that a self-sustaining
settlement on the moon is of importance to them because it will
provide the technical and institutional basis to go to Mars ``with
the purpose of establishing a permanent base on the first
expedition.''
Schmitt was among the first of about 150 speakers presenting
papers at a three-day conference on ``Lunar Bases and Space
Activities in the 21st Century,'' sponsored by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration.
He spoke of an ``Earth Orbital Civilization'' that will derive
its resources from lunar surface materials for both space
transportation and manufacturing.
``The demonstrated fertility of the lunar soil may be the basis
of an agricultural economy in space which will support both a lunar
settlment as well as Earth-orbit space stations,'' he said. Once
established, ``it should be possible to expand food production
steaily and to recycle a large poortion of the water and
nutrients.''
George A. Keyworth, President Reagan's science adviser, said
``the lunar base is one of the more obvious of the goals we can
reach,'' but decisions must be made on where the project will lead,
and why, before it is begun.
``Remember, much of the momentum of our space program was lost
after Apollo because we treated the moon as an end to itself,''
Keyworth said.
``A return to the moon would be a rational extension of our
program to expand human activities in space,'' said NASA
Administrator James M. Beggs.
He predicted the United States will return to the moon in the
next 25 years.
``We will do so, not only to mine its oxygen-rich rocks and
other resources, but to establish an outpost for further
exploration and expansion of human activities in the solar system,
in particular, on Mars and the near-Earth asteroids,'' Beggs said.