FORGET THE MOON -- GO DIRECTLY TO MARS

The Earth, as we have known for only a small part of the trajectory of the human species, hangs in an inconceivably vast space. That void isn’t entirely empty, however; it contains other planets, moons and stars. The planets of our Solar System, which orbit the nearest star, our Sun, have all been visited by robot probes now – with the sole exception of tiny, distant Pluto. These preliminary reconnoiters have revealed a diversity of spheres so dazzling that many can hold their own with the wildest science fictional imaginings. The planet Mars, to take only one example, may never have possessed a civilization, as was once entertainingly theorized – but it could have possessed (and may still host) life. Robot explorations have revealed that it is a manifestly fascinating place, rife with staggeringly huge canyons, towering volcanoes, whirling “dust-devil” tornadoes and globe-girdling dust storms. Although smaller than Earth, Mars has no oceans, and therefore possesses something like the total land area of this planet.

One result of the gathering awareness of our true situation in both space and time during the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the emergence of radical new schools of thought about humanity’s destiny. Russian space flight visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the man who first determined the velocity required to escape Earth’s gravity, famously predicted that “Earth is the cradle of the mind – but humanity can’t remain in the cradle forever.” Seminal British science fiction writer H. G. Wells flatly stated that “the choice is the Universe, or nothing.” Another British science fiction writer, the distinguished futurist and father of the communications satellite, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, has written that our current level of evolution suspends us “between the sea of salt and the sea of stars.” Quoting geographer Ellsworth Huntington’s observation that civilization’s march has been “coldward and stormward,” Clarke has consistently argued that we have a spiritual need for new frontiers, which he locates in the Solar System and beyond.

This point of view would seem to be supported by the recent wave of public interest in NASA’s successful placement, just weeks after the centennial of the Wright Brother’s first powered flight, of the first of two sophisticated desert rovers on the cold and stormy Martian surface. These intriguingly crab-like, stereo-eyed devices are intended to determine once and for all if water (and therefore, potentially, life) exists or existed just under the ocherous sand of our most Earth-like planetary neighbor. They are only the latest fruit of a determined effort over the last four decades, by a relatively small but highly talented coterie of scientists and engineers, to make the best possible use of that small part of NASA’s budget allocated for true Solar System exploration. (Another recent highlight of this effort was the successful rendezvous with the comet Wild 2 on January 2nd; the Stardust probe gathered dust particles from the comet for eventual return to Earth.)

Almost all the rest of NASA’s money has gone to crewed space flight, which has been limited exclusively to low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 returned from the Moon in 1972. There are two ways to put the activities of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station into the proper perspective. One is to contrast the endlessly reiterative circularity of their terracentric flight paths with the vaulting, outward-bound trajectories of NASA’s interplanetary robots. The other is simply to observe that even during its highest orbits, the Space Shuttle achieves only two thirds the altitude of the far more technologically primitive Gemini missions of the mid-60’s. It’s as if, after sending Leif Ericsson to the Greenland and what would later be North America, the King of Norway had decided to withdraw from these places and Iceland as well, thereafter keeping his longboats safely within sight of Oslo harbor.

In the mid-90’s I asked the planetary scientist Gregg Hoppa, then involved in decrypting the mysteries of Jupiter’s bizarre, ice-capped moon Europa, what he thought about crewed space flight. Hoppa and his team at the University of Arizona had been beneficiaries of a torrent of information from NASA’s late, lamented Jupiter-orbiting Galileo spacecraft – data which, among other things, indicated that Europa most likely possesses a vast liquid-water ocean under its fissured ice shell – and I expected to hear that robots can do everything that astronauts can do, only better and more cheaply. Instead, Hoppa contemplated the question for a moment and finally said: “Well, I wish they’d go somewhere.”

It is in this environment that President Bush has unveiled a somewhat muddled, election-year vision of where to take America’s crewed space program. At a time when a single, decisive, clear goal is crucially necessary, Bush would like to have things various ways. Decades after the declining interest in lunar exploration exhibited by the public caused NASA to cut the Apollo program short of its full number of planned missions, Bush argues that we should – well, return to the Moon. This time the purpose would be to establish a permanent base, intended to provide a kind of “stepping-stone” to Mars – the same shaky argument used to justify the troubled International Space Station (a program which the Bush initiative retains, despite its considerable expense). According to the new administration plan, a trip by astronauts to Mars itself would be decades away, and even the putative Moon base would be more than a decade in the future. The only truly sensible element of the plan is the eventual replacement of the Space Shuttle by a vehicle capable of taking astronauts beyond Earth orbit.

If the human exploration of space is really the goal then moving astronauts out of their low Earth orbit rut is critically necessary. And certainly NASA has stood in dire need of a goal-oriented long-term plan for decades now. But the Bush proposal is not the way to proceed – in fact it’s almost the same non-starter plan unveiled, with a similar dearth of actual funding, by Bush Sr. almost a decade ago. Much of the expense of space-flight comes from the sheer quantities of propellant required to get crews and payloads out of the “gravity well” of the Earth or other planets. It therefore makes no fiscal or engineering sense to use the Moon, which possesses its own considerable gravity field, as a way-station to Mars. Even purely on the level of public relations the bleak Moon – memorably described by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk there, as possessing a “magnificent desolation”— should not be our first destination this second time around.

Over the last decade an alternative and far more focused and achievable vision of crewed space flight has been elaborated. Called “Mars Direct,” it wouldn’t even require an increased budget for NASA – if the shuttle program and International Space Station are cut back or eliminated, that is: the shuttle costs half a billion dollars per flight, and the “Mars Direct” cost is estimated at between 20 and 30 billion dollars. Mars Direct envisions three launches directly from the Earth to Mars, starting with two large auto-piloted Earth-return vehicles designed to precede human astronauts to the Martian surface and manufacture propellant for the return journey from that planet’s carbon dioxide atmosphere. The Mars Direct model has been thoroughly conceptualized and is widely recognized as feasible, and it doesn’t require any substantial breakthroughs or new technologies: it can be accomplished largely with proven, existing space shuttle engines and solid rocket boosters. And in contrast with the hit-and-run moon landings of three decades ago, it is designed to place humans on the surface of Mars for a full year or more – long enough to get some serious exploration done. Perhaps most critically, a trip to Mars is by far the best way to capture the public imagination – not the “been there, done that” Moon.

Further, the Bush administration proposal runs the risk of draining more cash from NASA’s ambitious, largely successful but woefully under-funded robotic space exploration program – while achieving little beyond some fat research contracts for the aerospace industry. It’s hard to imagine the dogmatic Bush team re-examining the substance of their new initiative, particularly since, given its lack of a concrete timetable and real funding, it runs the risk of appearing to be largely rhetoric – an election-year exercise. So it may take a change of administrations, and a more streamlined and realistic – and therefore truly ambitious – vision to respond to the nascent siren song of the Red Planet, thus finally partly fulfilling the vision of Tsiolkovsky, Clarke and the other prophets of the Space Age.

-- Michael Benson, January 10, 2004