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About Moon Mars Working Group
The time has never been better to investigate human and robotic Moon and Mars exploration, and the need has never been greater for Moon and Mars enthusiasts, university students and young professionals to work together. It is clear that the next few decades of exploration will be exciting ones. What is not clear, however, is which paths will be taken, who will participate, what the exploration goals will be, and whether the worldwide policy makers, industrial and business sector and general public will choose to embrace these goals.
These are some of the questions that the MoonMars Workshop will attempt to answer. We believe that the youth of the world should be empowered to work together, alongside the current experts, to discuss our vision of MoonMars exploration. After all, those currently beginning their careers, those participating in University degrees and those who are in the school classrooms of the world are the ones who will be doing the exploration.
If you are a MoonMars explorer and you want to participate in our initiative as a delegate, a member of the organization team or an expert advisor, we would like to hear from you. Please take a moment and send us your name, country, and email address. Then start by exploring these pages to learn about the upcoming MoonMars Workshops.
We want to involve as many people from as many countries as possible. The advantages of working as an international team towards the Moon, Mars and beyond are clear. We will undertake online work, produce papers, have interaction with experts and present our findings in conferences, workshops and finally to decision makers.
As was observed in the SGAC's success with the European Space Policy, youth can make a difference at a policy level, and it is important that the representatives of the workforce that could be the generation that will work on Moon/Mars manned and robotic programs have a say now, as policy is being developed that will decide their futures.
History of Moon Mars Working Group
In October 2002 at the Space Generation Summit of the SGAC (Houston, TX), a recommendation was put forward that collaboration between youth and experts, Moon and Mars explorers, needed to be established. With this in mind the MoonMars Workshop initiative began, and a small international team of youth organizers set out to make this forum a reality.
By any measures of evaluation, the first MoonMars Workshop (MMW), held in Bremen, Germany from September 26th to 28th of 2003, was a resounding success. Sixteen youth delegates from eight countries, together with four MoonMars experts, and six moderators/organizers met for a three-day intensive program of brainstorming, discussion, refinement, and articulation of the combined youth/expert vision for exploration of the Moon and Mars. The results of this novel workshop were presented at the 3rd European Mars Conference (EMC3) and the 54th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), held consecutively in Bremen. A description of the MoonMars Workshop in Bremen and a summary of the results are available here:
Enabling Technologies pdf
Enabling Technologies presentation pdf
In-Situ Resource Utilisation pdf
ISRU presentation pdf
Overall Design of MoonMars Colonies pdf
Colonies presentation pdf
In October 2004 the second MoonMars Workshop, held during the IAC Vancouver Conference was a fact. The Vancouver IAC workshop was to focus on bringing students together to brainstorm on topics for study in 2005. Combine dedicated lectures, brainstorming sessions and using the IAC as a resource for collecting information on hot topics in the Moon/Mars community, talking with experts in the session, all in an inspirational setting of the IAC. From the Workshop three groups have emerged from the Workshop: Education, Global Cooperation & life Science
With this success behind us, the Moon Mars Working Group team wishes to continue, with other WorkShops.
Cornerstones
The Moon Mars Working Group takes the approach of defining four major "cornerstone" areas of Moon/Mars exploration, utilization and settlement. It is believed that having topics chosen each year that will fit into these cornerstones will help guide participants and organisers as well as promote stability, i.e. a unified and clear approach. These four cornerstones are:
MoonMars Programs and Scientific missions
This cornerstone involves looking at national plans, (i.e. US, European, Chinese, Russian, Japanese etc,) including objectives and implementation methods within these plans with the overall goal of identifying redundancies and cooperative opportunities.
Enabling Technologies and advanced concepts
This cornerstone involves all enabling technologies for a sustainable Moon/Mars program and other advanced concepts. Topics will include life-support, habitability, microgravity countermeasures, advanced propulsion, robotics, navigation, launch vehicles etc.
Policy, Law, Economics and Society
This cornerstone involves the political, legal and social aspects of current and future Moon/Mars programs. This area will examine how these programs benefit society including improved standard of living, economic, industrial, and scientific development.
The overall aim will be to answer the question: “WHY GO TO THE MOON OR MARS?”
Also included in this cornerstone is space law, examining the strengths and weaknesses of the existent regime of ratified treaties.
On the surface
This cornerstone examines what do will do once we are on the surface of the Moon and/or Mars/ Topics will include Lunar/Martian base design and architecture, resource extraction and utilization, power generation, astronomy, geology, tourism and other futuristic ideas.
Every year, topics will be chosen to from these areas. Not only does this allow a structure to the enormous amount of information and interesting research opportunities for project work, it also allows us to combine knowledge from each cornerstone in a structured methodology of defining a Moon Mars Working Group's definition of a MoonMars Program.
