While 2020 has largely been a huge mess in many ways, it’s hard to deny that it’s been a really big year for space travel news. For the first time in nearly a decade, we saw astronauts take off from US soil to the ISS in an American-made rocket. And when he didn’t send people up, Elon Musk launched literally hundreds of satellites, both his own and those of commercial customers, into space. But both NASA and the private sector have their eyes on bigger targets. There are ongoing plans to put humans back on the moon in the coming years, but Mr. Musk has his eyes on Mars.
Can we do both? Shall we? That is the question that David W. Brown is asking and answering this week in the Wall Street Journal. Brown argues that the moon is a target for a previous generation of pioneers. He sees Mars as a “bigger, more appropriate target” for our space program. But the dream of putting humans on Mars has been alternately embraced and rejected by a succession of presidents. Both George HW Bush and his son George W. Bush embraced Mars as targets. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama rejected the idea in favor of goals closer to home. Donald Trump prefers the moon as a target, but NASA still claims Mars is on the menu.
Brown argues that either is a huge challenge in terms of budget, 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 is easier to reach and we have done that before. But despite all the difficulties in landing on Mars and establishing a human presence there, it is clearly the superior prospect for sustainable exploration. Mars is a bona fide planet with air, ice, wind, weather and useful resources. It also has real similarities to the Earth. A Mars day lasts a little over 24 hours. The planet is on average only 30 degrees colder than Antarctica. Its gravity is one-third that of the Earth (versus 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 canyon network that makes the Grand Canyon seem like a mere local attraction by comparison. It could be a home for humans in a way the moon never will.
The US space program has always aimed to get people to Mars. Before the word astronaut was coined or an agency called NASA existed, there was ‘Das Marsprojekt’, a work of speculative fiction written in 1948 by Wernher von Braun, who developed rocket technology for Nazi Germany before escaping the arms of the US Army. . He built the rocket that would put Explorer 1, the first US satellite, into space and became the lead engineer and best-known promoter of the early US space program.
While I am a huge fan of space exploration, I am always a little more careful about supporting manned missions as opposed to remotely controlled robotic activities. While we are well stocked with heroes willing to risk their lives for the advancement of science, those lives should never be foolishly wasted, and I would say that a trip to Mars is still far beyond our ability to complete it safely and return our astronauts home in one piece.
Many of the things Brown says about Mars are true. There is air there (after a fashion) and ice, weather and some resources. But that description paints a terribly rosy picture of a place much closer to hell than to heaven. The “air” on Mars is completely inhale and has no measurable oxygen levels. And the air pressure on the surface is about six millibars. That is barely half of one percent of the pressure on earth at sea level. It’s not a full vacuum, but if you got to the surface of the planet without a pressure suit and an appropriate air supply, you’d die of depressurization long before you died of asphyxiation. And while there are places on Mars where the temperature rises nearly 30 degrees during the day, it drops to hundreds of degrees below zero at night.
In other words, Mars isn’t really more survivable than the Moon unless you have technology that keeps you alive. And if that technology fails and you are exposed to the environment there, it is over. The longer you stay away from Earth and in an environment like that, the more likely your technology will eventually let you down. Even Elon Musk has admitted that the people who go on his planned field trip to Mars will almost no doubt never return to Earth alive.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that getting to the red planet and landing safely isn’t exactly routine yet. Yes, we’ve had great results with quite a few rovers, yet more than half of the missions sent to Mars failed to hold the landing. And you only get one shot at it.
I’m going all the way to Mars, but it seems like it has to be done in stages and the process will take a lot longer than some of the sunny projections we hear. To do this in a smart way, robotic missions must land first, with enough supplies, including oxygen, water, food, and everything else you need to survive. A return vehicle would also have to land there and remain operational and ready for use before the first astronauts ever leave Earth. Even then, the outlook is far from certain.
I’m not saying we can’t. I think we can and I hope we do. But we have to be smart about it. And that’s going to take a long time and a staggering amount of money.