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Starring the planet Mars ; In wake of Rover landing, Museum of Flight's Mars Fest '04 draws a charged-up crowd

Posted on: Monday, 12 January 2004, 06:00 CST

These are heady, almost giddy days for fans of space travel in general and Mars in particular. But 7-year-old Danylo Kurgan still has his feet firmly on the ground.

The first-grader at Challenger Elementary School in Issaquah toured the Mars Fest '04 celebration at the Museum of Flight on Saturday, but said he has no interest in actually going to the Red Planet.

"No. Never," he said. "Because you might die there. You can't breathe. There's no air."

Young Kurgan, who hails from Ukraine in the former Soviet Union, said he likes jets and reading about Mars but plans to content himself with merely observing the stars and planets from afar.

Greg McCormick of Sammamish, on the other hand, already is making plans for daughter Laura, 6, or son Kyle, 3.

"I'm trying to have one of them be the first to be on Mars," said McCormick, a geologist. "Thirty-five years from now is when we'll probably be going. So they should be about ready then."

The Jan. 3 Mars landing of NASA rover Spirit is what's causing jubilation among fans of space travel. That and the Jan. 24 landing of a second rover, Opportunity.

Moreover, President Bush this week will announce plans for a permanent space station on the moon and an eventual trip to Mars, according to administration officials.

Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer (a bona fide "rocket scientist") and founder of the International Mars Society who has pushed for a manned mission to Mars, said he's holding off sending the president a thank-you note.

"I'll wait until I hear what he says this week," said Zubrin, keynote speaker at Mars Fest.

The estimated price tag for such a venture is estimated at $600 billion to $750 billion, and that would be over more than a decade.

Zubrin's organization and its 6,000 members, with the help of money from the Discovery Channel, have built $1 million stations in the Canadian Arctic and a Utah desert to simulate habitats for Martian exploration.

At the museum near Boeing Field, Laura and Kyle took turns lifting bricks of varying weights that were on display to demonstrate the differing gravitational pull of the Earth, the moon and Mars. Randy Rumley of Kirkland, vice president of the Puget Sound chapter of the Mars Society, was wearing an orange "space suit" and fielding questions from the kids.

"Mostly, they ask me is this is a real space suit, and the answer is 'no,'" Rumley said. "But I tell them you'd have to wear a suit something like this if you went to Mars."

Inside the museum theater, Ron Hobbs of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed slides and videos of man's Martian explorations to date, including some from the robotic rover that landed eight days ago.

"We may find some water deep in the crust if there's still volcanic activity there," Hobbs said of the cratered area on which Opportunity is supposed to land in two weeks.

He also touched on a 1999 incident - he told the children in the audience that it was the "biggest boo-boo" of all time in Martian exploration - when another NASA satellite passed too close to Mars and burned up in the atmosphere. One set of engineers was working in pounds and feet, while another worked in newtons and meters, and they forgot to reconcile the two, he said.

"Those guys are probably still hanging their heads," Hobbs said.

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Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436

joe.turner@mail.tribnet.com

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SIDEBAR: What's next

The Pacific Science Center in Seattle will host a similar event, Mars Mania, on Jan. 24-25 to coincide with the landing of Opportunity, the second of two rovers that will be exploring the Red Planet for three to six months. For information, call 206-443-2001 or visit www.pacsci.org.

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