Looking to the Stars for Creation of New Society : Final frontier: A national space group insists the future is there and urges more funding of exploration efforts.

Beautician Wilva Ehlers, 46, wants to see Mars colonized before she dies.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s inevitable,” Ehlers said. “It’s our future.”

Registered nurse Marnie Snowden not only hopes to see such a colony, she also would like to be part of one--even if it means never returning to Earth. “I would give up my life given the chance to do so,” Snowden said.

Ehlers and Snowden are members of the small but avid Ventura County chapter of the National Space Society, a group of more than 20 earthlings determined to boldly go where no one has gone before.

With membership spanning the globe, society members want mankind to conquer the heavens and colonize the final frontier during their lifetimes.

“I personally believe that our venturing into space is as important as when the first fish crawled out of the ocean and became land creatures,” Snowden said.

To some, the group’s quest may seem out of this world.

Snowden acknowledges some space fanatics are a bit wacko, but she said she isn’t one of them.

“I don’t believe there are little green men that the Air Force caught 20 years ago,” Snowden said. “I like the type of feeling that ‘Star Trek’ portrays as far as the possibility of all people on our planet working together.”

The society’s methods are actually quite down to earth.

First, National Space Society members in the United States are focused on loosening the federal purse strings that could make space colonization possible. They have targeted the Pentagon’s budget and want the peace dividend to be redirected to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Such a great leap forward would be possible, Ehler says, “if we created jobs in space programs instead of building missiles.”

Second, society members are lobbying state and federal lawmakers to support legislation that would provide tax breaks and other incentives for the space industry.

Finally, members are trying to encourage private investors to put their money into the space-related companies.

Society members support a bill introduced by state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) that would open a government office in Sacramento to boost commercial space activities and encourage the space industry to locate in California.

“California would be at the forefront of the world again,” Snowden said. “We are going into space and whether we’re going to be the ones left behind is another question.”

Charles Radley of Ojai is planning personal visits to Reps. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) to lobby for the Omnibus Space Commercialization Act of 1992.

Society members helped draft the space commercialization bill that would give tax incentives to private space-related companies such as the American Rocket Co. in Camarillo.

“Those are the kind of companies we believe could represent one way of getting there,” said Radley, who is an aerospace engineer and vice president of the county’s National Space Society chapter. The chapter recently held one of its meetings at the Camarillo rocket plant.

While society members look for private companies that could launch into space, they are also big boosters of the U.S. government’s plan to begin building an orbiting space station in the next few years. Space Station Freedom, with its price tag of at least $40 billion, would serve as an orbiting science laboratory, and eventually, as a launch pad for manned missions to the moon and Mars.

Critics of the space program have said the station’s astronomical cost cannot be justified by its benefits to science.

But supporters argue that a space station has untold potential, such as solving global energy problems. Radley said space stations, for example, could be equipped to harness solar power and beam it back to Earth.

“It’s good for the economy,” he said. “In the long term, it could bring untold, virtually unlimited wealth to humanity.”

Radley believes it would also be simple to shave costs. All NASA engineers have to do, he said, is go to the moon, heat up lunar soil so metals can be extracted and then build the space station in orbit. That way, the United States could save on the cost of launching heavy metal components into space.

The station has been under development since 1984, and Congress has approved $2.25 billion in funding for the program in 1993. If it stays on schedule, the first elements of the station are to be launched into space in November, 1995.

While some society members lobby politicians, Ehlers tries to share her dreams with her beauty salon customers at The Oaks resort in Ojai and with colleagues in her Ventura College astronomy class.

One of Ehlers’ personal goals is to see more women involved in the space program. “I think women need to bring their intuitive, compassionate view to it because you’ve seen what we’ve done to our globe,” she said.

Not all of the National Space Society’s efforts are focused on nonbelievers. Society members tend to debate the merits of different space ventures, with differences cropping up between chapters and even among members of the same chapter.

For instance, Radley does not agree with Snowden and Ehlers that putting a society on Mars is a good thing.

“Personally, I think it’s a bad idea,” he said. He said he sees no profit in it.

But the difference of opinions between the National Space Society and the federal government is ever greater. “Many people in the NSS think the federal government is moving too slowly,” Radley said.

NASA has been concentrating its efforts on launching a successful space shuttle, while the Department of Defense has been working on the Star Wars defense system, both costly projects.

Meanwhile, some Japanese businessmen are saying that their country’s space program could send astronauts to Mars by 1999, or by 1996 if they use Soviet launch vehicles.

The question posed by National Space Society members is: Who will get there first?