Countywide : Earthlings Talk of Mars as Refuge

Earthlings should pack their bags and head for Mars because this planet’s a goner.

That’s the solution to the Earth’s pollution problem, according to some students who attended a national teleconference Thursday at Rockwell International.

“If something happens to this planet, like global warming, where all the animals and plants die and we can’t live here anymore, then we’ll have to go to Mars,” said Jeniffer Wu, a sixth-grader at McAuliffe Middle School in Los Alamitos.

Classmate Katy Esposito agreed. “We’re not going to get everyone to stop polluting, so we need to go to another planet and start again,” the sixth-grader said.

About 100 students from six schools in the Los Alamitos School District listened in as astronauts, aerospace engineers and even a couple of elected officials outlined the need for a mission to Mars during discussions of what problems science will have to solve before humans can colonize the “angry red planet.”

In the teleconference sponsored by Rockwell International, the students gathered at its Seal Beach headquarters to watch a brief video on Mars and listen to speeches by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and state Sen. Marion Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) in support of space exploration, before being treated to lunch and then the teleconference.

After the students had finished their turkey sandwiches and soda pops, they were linked up via satellite to the PBS studios in Pittsburgh. The broadcast, called “Marsville--The Cosmic Village,” was sponsored by the Challenger Center for Space Education in Virginia and aired live on PBS affiliates throughout the nation.

The broadcast featured Endeavour astronaut Mae Jemison by satellite from Chicago and Michael Griffin, NASA associate administrator for Mars exploration by satellite from Washington. James A. McDivitt, astronaut on Gemini and Apollo missions and senior vice president at Rockwell, was at the Pittsburgh studio.

Students nationwide at conferences such as the one in Seal Beach were able to call in by telephone and ask the space experts questions. The questions covered a variety of subjects, from the effects of zero gravity to whether Mars colonists should use cars or space ships to travel on the planet.

One student from Maryland pointedly asked Griffin where the funding for a Mars mission will come from. Griffin said that if every taxpayer paid an extra $1 a day in taxes, the space program could advance to the point of colonizing Mars. “Some people waste as much as $10 a day in wasteful and leisure habits,” he told the students.

The students at Rockwell, representing fifth through eighth grades, were generally attentive to the broadcast and many said afterward they enjoyed the experience.

April Orlando, an eighth-grader at McAuliffe, said she was most impressed with Rohrabacher and Bergeson.

Filiz Gumusaneli, a sixth-grader at McAuliffe, wasn’t as impressed with the politicians or the space panel.

“They all seemed so positive that we’re going to go to Mars,” she said. “I just don’t know that that will happen. It’s going to take a lot of money and hard work.

“But then if something goes wrong here with this planet I guess we’ll need somewhere to go.”