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humans to mars In September 2003, as I prepared to leave the San Francisco Bay Area to deliver a presentation at an aerospace conference in Long Beach, one of my professors in International Relations asked, "Why do you want to send people to Mars? Is it not better to focus on robotics for now?" human mission to mars It is cheaper to explore with robots, but not necessarily better. Despite the advance of technology, there remain tasks that humans can better accomplish using machines in situ than via remote presence. humans to mars In 1969, NASA presented a plan to the Nixon Administration to send humans on Mars 12 years later. The report by President Richard Nixon's Space Task Group concluded, "NASA has the demonstrated organizational competence and technology base, by virtue of the Apollo success and other achievements, to carry out a successful program to land man on Mars within 15 years." Since that time, there have been no insurmountable barriers to landing humans on Mars... except the societal will. With each robotic mission to Mars, with each new advance in technology, the technical problem of sending humans to Mars becomes easier. What once were "known unknowns" become "knowns," and "unknown unknowns" become "known unknowns." Once we know that we don't know something, we can research the problem and master it. human mission to mars This is not to say that it will not be a difficult, dangerous, and expensive endeavor. It will be. However, at this point, we are far better prepared to send humans to Mars than we were to send humans to the Moon when John Kennedy made the decision to do so in 1961. At the time that Kennedy issued his stirring challenge to the nation, America had only 15 minutes of experience in human spaceflight--none of it actually in orbit around the Earth--yet eight years later humans walked on the Moon. In 1961, we had not sent a single successful robotic mission to the Moon--much less to any planet--yet eight years later humans walked on the Moon. In 1961, we had launch vehicles capable of putting only a couple of thousand pounds into orbit around the Earth--yet eight years later humans walked on the Moon. humans to mars In the 35 years that it has been feasible to launch a humans to Mars program, we have chosen not to. We will do so when the necessary social and political forces align, and that is something that is difficult to predict. It could happen tomorrow, or it might not happen for generations. human mission to mars Perhaps the desire to go to Mars can be explained in part as a cultural afterimage of Lowellian Mars. Victorian civilization was convinced that it was on the verge of making "Contact." It was an age when the New York Times reported Nikola Tesla's plans to send radio waves to Mars and communicate with its inhabitants. As we better acquainted ourselves with Mars in the scientific sense in the course of the 20th century, there came, as H. G. Wells wrote, "the great disillusionment." We came to realize that in terms of sentient species, we are alone in the solar system. Yet a faded echo of Lowellian Mars remains. We cling to the hope of a neighboring planet that harbors, if not canals and an advanced civilization, at least some primitive forms of life. If Mars contains even nanobacteria--or indisputable evidence of past life of the simplest forms--this will profoundly change our conception of our place in the universe. If there is--or was--another Genesis here in our own solar system, then life must be common throughout the universe, and "Contact" with another civilization is therefore inevitable. humans to mars Do we need to send humans to Mars to discover this? No, not necessarily. It is possible that robotic missions to Mars could make such a starting discovery. But machines alone are not as capable as humans and machines working together in situ. So, if robots do not find life on Mars, the question remains open, even if just a crack. Eventually, we humans must go to Mars ourselves to definitively satisfy our curiosity. human mission to mars As forbidding an environment as we have come to know Mars to be in the past few decades, it is nevertheless the most Earth-like planet in the solar system, the most readily accessible from Earth, and given sufficient technology and infrastructure, it will be able to support human life. It is true that Mars is a far cry from our own abundant, life-giving world. The photographs returned by the first robotic fly-by probes in the 1960s should have erased forever the previously held romantic, softer, mental images of Mars, but perhaps they have not erased them entirely. Perhaps these are the true "ghosts of Mars," the spirits of our own past imaginings, and perhaps this is because we want to have neighbors on another world, because we do not want to be alone. Perhaps this is because, even if we cannot make "Contact" with the Other, the Alien, in our own solar system, we do not want to be confined to this Earth. humans to mars Is it worth spending tens of billions, possibly hundreds of billions of dollars, to send humans to Mars? In considering this prospective question, it is useful to ask a retrospective one: was it worth it to send humans to the Moon? human mission to mars There are certain indelible images of the age of photography: Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Zapruder film of Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. These not only capture specific events, but also define the specific locales and eras in which they occurred. But the images of the Earth that we brought back from the Moon are timeless and universal, because they are the first images of all of us. Ever since then, because of those images, we have looked at ourselves, each other, and the Earth in a new way. The image of the full Earth brought back by the last crew to return from the Moon is an enduring icon of environmental responsibility and human unity. Was it worth going to the Moon to bring back even one of those photographs of Earth? I believe that it was. humans to mars The most important thing that we discovered on the Moon was part of ourselves. In the few hours that a few of us spent on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, we became better Earthlings. As the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, we were "riders on the Earth together." We realized that we were our brother's keeper, and we remembered that God had appointed us stewards of the Earth. And yet, a third of a century later, we must reflect on how pitifully less we have done with that revelation than we should have. It is high time that we journeyed outward to that distant perspective, to see again how close we really are to each other, and to relearn those lessons that have faded with the passing of a generation. There are new lessons to be learned on Mars. There are new poems waiting for us on Mars. human mission to mars If Mars is dead now, but was once alive, understanding how Mars died may give us a crucial understanding of how close we are coming to killing the Earth. Also, just as no one could have foreseen the transformation of human consciousness that going to the Moon would bring about, no one can predict the further transformative experiences of going to Mars. However, history suggests that this will be the case. humans to mars How we go to Mars is as important as whether we go. In the 20th century, a single nation went to the Moon on a Cold War double dare. In the 21st century, let it be a united Earth that goes to Mars. Going to Mars, then pushing outward to the stars, will be a parallel process with other human developments in a push-pull relationship. Going to Mars together will go hand in hand with coming together here on Earth. Bringing life to Mars will go hand in hand with assuming responsibility for the competent stewardship of life on Earth. Bridging the gulf of space to meet and understand the Alien will go hand in hand with tearing down the obstacles of greed and prejudice that are the source of alienation on Earth. human mission to mars The science fiction novelist Robert A. Heinlein wrote that "the Moon is a harsh mistress." All of the new worlds will be harsh. We will live close to the edge of extinction out there, and learning to survive on those other worlds will bring us closer to immortality. We will learn to depend on each other for our very lives as never before--Africans, Americans, Asians, Australians, Europeans, all of us. The New Frontier will be punctuated by tiny habitat modules, not sprawling with the wide-open spaces of the American Old West. We will live in enclosed places, in each other's faces. All the pretentious barriers that we erect here on Earth will melt away in space. We will come to know each other--and ourselves--as we have never done before. We will push the outside of the envelope of what it means to be human. Living together so closely, so intimately, so inescapably, will tear down social and psychological walls that we need not and dare not consider here on our comfortable, capacious, suburbanized, subdivided Earth. There will be new challenges to human dignity, privacy, individuality, intimacy, and polity. One wonders whether Kennedy grasped the full import of his own words: "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won." humans to mars I am an engineer, and I am studying to be a social scientist. I am supposed to be dispassionate and logical. But after pondering my professor's question for four months, and indeed, pondering it for most of my life, I find that I come up short. Exploration is always to some degree a leap of faith into the unknown; it touches the human heart, which cannot be weighed on a double-entry ledger of risk and profit. As many are the rationales that can be offered in favor of exploration, as many can be counterposed. Faith cannot be explained or defended rationally. Bounded only by the ever-expanding limits of the possible, the greater the challenge, the greater the human appeal for the endeavor. human mission to mars Our parents' generation went to the Moon. Now it is our time. Will we go to Mars? Will we let our children dance among the stars? Will we take the leap? humans to mars FastCounter by bCentral |