If we're going to get to Mars, we're going to have to clear the maps. The dragons, cyclops, and other monsters of the mind must be killed, and the si… - Robert Zubrin

While disputes about overpopulation, racial equality, pesticides, resource limits, nuclear power, biotechnology, and global warming may appear to be about different subjects, they are ultimately but different faces of the same conflict: a fundamental debate over the worth of humankind.

Virtually every element of significant interest to industry is known to exist on the Red Planet. 1 With its twenty-four-hour day/ night cycle and an atmosphere thick enough to shield its surface against solar flares, Mars is the only extraterrestrial planet that will readily allow large-scale greenhouses lit by natural sunlight. Mars can be settled. For our generation and many that will follow, Mars is the New World.

When a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the “carrying capacity” of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet. JOHN P. HOLDREN and PAUL R. EHRLICH Global Ecology (1971) 1 Here is the difference between the animal and the man. Both the jay-hawk and the man eat chickens, but the more jay-hawks the fewer chickens, while the more men the more chickens. HENRY GEORGE