While 2020 has been largely a huge sandwich in many ways, it’s hard to deny that it’s been a very big year for space news. We saw astronauts ascending the ISS from American soil in a rocket made in the United States for the first time in almost a decade. And when he wasn’t sending people high, Elon Musk was literally launching hundreds of satellites, both his own and those of commercial customers, into space. But both NASA and the private sector have had their sights set on larger targets. There are plans underway to put people back on the moon in the coming years, but Mr. Musk has his eyes set on Mars.
Can we do both? Should we? That’s the question David W. Brown asked and answered this week in the Wall Street Journal. Brown argues that the moon is a goal that was for a previous generation of pioneers. He sees Mars as a “bigger and more appropriate target” for our space program. But the dream of putting people on Mars has alternately been adopted and rejected by a succession of presidents. Both George HW Bush and his son George W. Bush adopted Mars as their target. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama rejected the idea in favor of targets that were closer to home. Donald Trump prefers the moon as his target, but NASA still claims Mars is on the menu.
Brown argues that doing one of the two is a big challenge when it comes to budgeting, so it should be one or the other. And he clearly prefers Mars. (Subscription required)
The big advantage of the moon, of course, is that it’s easier to get to and we’ve done it before. But, for all the hardships of landing on Mars and establishing a human presence on it, it is clearly the top prospect for sustainable exploration. Mars is a planet in good faith with air, ice, wind, time and useful resources. It also has real similarities to Earth. A day on Mars lasts just over 24 hours. The planet, on average, is only 30 degrees colder than Antarctica. Its gravity is one-third of the Earth (as opposed to the moon, which is about one-sixth). It has moons and its own complex geology, from the highest mountain in the solar system to a network of canyons that make the Grand Canyon seem like a simple local attraction by comparison. It could be a home for people in a way that the moon will never do.
The American space program has always aimed to put people on Mars. Before the word astronaut had been coined or there was an agency called NASA, there was “Das Marsprojekt,” a speculative work of fiction written in 1948 by Wernher von Braun, who developed rocket technology for Nazi Germany before to escape the arms of the American army. . He built the rocket that would put Explorer 1, the first American satellite, into space and became the chief engineer and best-known promoter of the first space program in the United States.
While I’m a big fan of space exploration, I’m always a little more cautious when it comes to supporting manned missions rather than remote-controlled robotic efforts. While we are well stocked with heroes willing to risk their lives due to the advancement of science, these lives should never be stupidly wasted and I would say that a trip to Mars still far exceeds our ability to complete. -safe it and return it. the astronauts return home in one piece.
Many of the things Brown says about Mars are true. There is air (in fashion) and ice, weather and some resources. But this description draws a tremendously pink image of a place that is much closer to being hell than heaven. The “air” on Mars is totally unbreathable, with no measurable levels of oxygen. And the air pressure at the surface is about six millibars. This accounts for just half of the 1% pressure on Earth at sea level. It’s not a complete void, but if you came to the surface of the planet without a proper pressure suit and air supply, you would die of depressurization long before you died of suffocation. And while there are points on Mars where the temperature rises to about 30 degrees during the day, it drops to hundreds of degrees below zero at night.
In other words, Mars is really no more surviving than the moon unless you have technology that keeps you alive. And if this technology fails and is exposed to the environment, it’s all over. The longer you stay away from Earth and in an environment like this, the more likely you are to fail your technology. Even Elon Musk has admitted that people who go on their planned excursion to Mars will almost certainly never return to Earth alive.
It’s also worth noting that arriving and landing safely on the red planet isn’t exactly routine yet. Yes, we have had excellent results with a lot of rovers, but even so, more than half of the missions sent to Mars have failed to land. And you only get one shot.
I’m all set to go to Mars, but it looks like it will have to be done in stages and the process will take much longer than some of the sunny projections we’re hearing. To do this in a smart way, robotic missions would have to land first, with an abundant supply, including oxygen, water, food, and everything you need to survive. A returning vehicle should also land there and remain operational and ready for use before the first astronauts leave Earth. Even then the prospects are far from certain.
I’m not saying we can’t do that. I think we can and I hope so. But we have to be smart about it. And that will take a long time and an amazing amount of money.