The Mars Society is an international space advocacy non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. It was founded by Robert Zubrin and others in 1998 and attracted the support of notable science fiction writers and filmmakers, including Kim Stanley Robinson and James Cameron. The organization works to educate the public, the media and government of the benefits of Mars exploration, networking the communities involved and exploring the possibilities of privately-funded missions to the red planet.

The Society was formally established in August 1998, when over 700 delegates – astronomers, scientists, engineers, astronauts, entrepreneurs, educators, students, and space enthusiasts – attended a weekend of talks and presentations from leading Mars exploration advocates.

Since then, the Society, guided by its International Steering Committee, has grown to over 4,000 members and some 6,000 associate supporters across more than 50 countries around the world. Members of the Society are from all walks of life, and all actively work to promote the ideals of space exploration and the opportunities for exploring Mars.

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in subgroups.

Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.

A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.

Robert Zubrin (born April 19, 1952) is an American aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of the manned exploration of Mars. He was the driving force behind Mars Direct—a proposal intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission. The key idea was to use the Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen, water, and rocket propellant for the surface stay and return journey. A modified version of the plan was subsequently adopted by NASA as their "design reference mission". He questions the delay and cost-to-benefit ratio of first establishing a base or outpost on an asteroid or another Apollo Program-like return to the Moon, as neither would be able to provide all of its own oxygen, water, or energy; these resources are producible on Mars, and he expects people would be there thereafter.

Disappointed with the lack of interest from government in Mars exploration and after the success of his book The Case for Mars as well as leadership experience at the National Space Society, Zubrin established the Mars Society in 1998. This is an international organization advocating a manned Mars mission as a goal, by private funding if possible.

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American business magnate, engineer and inventor. He is best known for co-founding SpaceX, Tesla Motors and X.com, which later became Paypal after acquiring the service. He is currently the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. While at those companies, Musk co-designed the first viable electric car of the modern era, the Tesla Roadster, a private successor to the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9/Dragon, and the world's largest Internet payment system, PayPal.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian-American mother and a South African father. His maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model, appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and a Time Magazine supplement in 2010.

Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.

James Dalton Bell (born 1958) is an American crypto-anarchist who created the idea of arranging for anonymously-sponsored assassination payments via the Internet, which he called "assassination politics". Since the publication of the "Assassination Politics" essay, Bell was targeted by the federal government of the United States. He was imprisoned on felony charges of tax evasion in 1997. In 2001, Wired called Bell "[o]ne of the Internet's most famous essayists" and "the world's most notorious crypto-convict".

In April 1995, Bell authored the first part of a 10-part essay called "Assassination Politics", which described an elaborate assassination market in which anonymous benefactors could securely order hits of government officials or others who are violating citizens' rights. Following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, Bell was arrested and subsequently jailed for 11 months on felony charges of harassment and using false Social Security numbers.

After his April 2000 release, Bell publicly announced that he believed that there was extensive Federal Government corruption associated with his 1997–2000 criminal case, and that he was going to research the facts and file a lawsuit. Bell filed this lawsuit in 2003. Bell was put under heavy surveillance and rearrested for harassment and stalking of federal agents, charged with intimidation and stalking and again imprisoned, this time for a decade-long sentence. Bell protested vociferously against the conduct of the trial, going so far as to file civil lawsuits against two judges, at least two prosecutors, his former probation officers and his defense attorneys, but ultimately to no avail. He was released in December 2009, only to be rearrested in July 2010 for violating his parole conditions. His parole violation hearing resulted in another sentence which didn't see Bell released until 2012.