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'Think Mars:' Online petition urges manned mission

SANTA BARBARA, California -- A group of space enthusiasts are pushing ahead with a petition calling for a manned flight to the red planet, undaunted by the failure in recent months of two unmanned missions to Mars.

The Mars Petition, which sets 2015 as a goal for humans to set foot on the planet nearest Earth, has received more than 10 thousand electronic signatures since Think Mars, the Mars Society and other space-related Web sites launched it earlier this month.

"The target of one million names by November 2000 is well within reach. This is really catching on," said Justin Talbot-Stern, co-founder of Think Mars.

Students from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in greater Boston are the driving force behind Think Mars, but a high school student from Santa Barbara, California, came up with the idea of the petition.

Daniel Kliman, an 18-year-old senior at Dos Pueblos High School, said he created the petition after learning this past summer that NASA faced severe budget cuts that threatened Mars ventures.

"I couldn't sit by and watch as Congress limited America's future. Something had to be done to bring space and especially Mars to the majority of the public, so budget cuts would be met with widespread public outcry instead of silence."

He acknowledges that recent setbacks in NASA's Mars exploration program could make the job tougher for Think Mars. The space agency suffered a double blow in late 1999, losing the Mars Global Orbiter in September and Polar Lander in December.

"Having two probes fail certainly hasn't made getting the public to support a human mission to Mars any easier," Kliman said.

Kevin Leclaire of Think Mars agrees, but offers another perspective. "The argument can be made that humans at the controls could prevent accidents that computers can't."

The planetary petitioners hope to demonstrate to government, academic and industry leaders around the world that earthlings everywhere support "the next epic milestone" in exploration.

About 11,000 people have signed on as of late December. More than 20 percent of them come from outside the United States, representing some 70 countries. If enough signatures are collected, the petition will be presented to Congress and the president in 2001, Kliman said.

Leclaire, who manages the business concept of Think Mars, believes that a consortium of governments, corporate sponsors and large investors could pay for a manned Mars mission, which he said could cost as little as $10 billion.

For his part, Kliman, using simulated martian soil from NASA, has gone so far as to design agricultural techniques for the first colonizers on the red planet. Perhaps he will be among them.

"I hope to some day step onto the rust-red dunes of Mars. I want to feel the freezing sand slide through my gloved fingers, and stand in awe of the edge of canyons that dwarf Earth's greatest," he said.

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