We’re going to Mars. Well not us, obviously. Some of us are. And they’ll be American.

Anyway, President Bush today announced plans to colonise the Moon and thence go to Mars.

Going to Mars has been seen as mankind’s next logical step, and Mars has featured prominently from authors like Philip K. Dick, as well as countless films. But will we end up with a future like Total Recall or more like Capricorn One? Well, as a geek and childhood stargazer the idea of interplanetary exploration is a romantic one, but I’m increasingly sceptical.

For starters there’s the cost. The US Government reckons the next 5 years’ R&D will cost $12bn, $11bn from NASA and $1bn in extra state funding. Sounds a lot, but when you put in the context of Bush’s $1.8trn tax cut, it’s buttons. And you could it’s money going into scientific research and development rather than being stuffed into the pockets on millionaires, so it’s not entirely wasted, and NASA are proud of the benefits of the space programme - although beware that old chestnut about Teflon being invented by NASA - actually DuPont invented it in 1938. NASA just used it a lot.

Anyway, back to the space programme. Let’s not lie to ourselves about that scientific research too much - NASA is part of the military-industrial complex. Man would have never gone to the moon in 1969 if it hadn’t been for the Cold War arms race. And that $12bn can easily be spent being given to universities, or in tax breaks for non-military R&D. So spare me the fringe benefits defence.

The core science behind the space programme is much more valid - after all, there are fewer bigger questions in science than “Are we alone in the Universe?”. But as the recent success of the ESA Mars Express and NASA Mars Rover projects (though sadly not Beagle 2, by the looks of things), the exploration of Mars could be done better (and cheaper) with robots. Aside from the transportation problems - cheap, sustainable travel into orbit is still a long way off (a modern replacement for the Space Shuttle is some way off), sending people to Mars would take ages (over a year, there and back), and we have yet to develop sustainable self-contained environments for that amount of time - coincidentally, the Biosphere 2 project today was reported as on the blink of oblivion. As well as that, there is the enormous risk involved, and given the highly critical report on NASA’s working practices after the Columbia disaster (detailed excellently in last week’s Observer) I don’t hold faith in NASA being able to pull off such a grand aim.

Finally, there is also the political doubt. The Apollo missions in the 60s had enormous popular backing, not least because of the late President Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon by 1970. But will the citizens of 2020 look back at George W. Bush and feel so inspired? Or will Steve Bell’s take be a more accurate description of how they look at him? And anyway, we’ve been here before - the previous George Bush made similar pledges as part of his re-election campaign.

As much as it would be very cool to have a man on Mars, I think man’s space exploration priorities are better served with unmanned exploration, for the time being. When getting into orbit is not much harder or unsafe than flying across the Atlantic (actually, that time might be now) - which could take fifty or even a hundred years rather than twenty - then maybe we can think about walking on Mars. For the moment we’re trying to run when we’ve barely even mastered walking.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2004 at 23:48:49 and is filed under General.