Tag Archives: exploration

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One-way ticket to Mars, redux

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Earth-Mars montageThe one-way mission to Mars is becoming one of those hardy perennial stories, earning a mention here back in the spring of 2008 when former NASA engineer Jim McLane spoke out in favour of the idea.

Now it’s the turn of Lawrence Krauss, who sums up his attitude to Mars missions with the phrase “to boldly go where no one has gone before does not require coming home again”.

The most challenging impediment to human travel to Mars does not seem to involve the complicated launching, propulsion, guidance or landing technologies but something far more mundane: the radiation emanating from the Sun’s cosmic rays. The shielding necessary to ensure the astronauts do not get a lethal dose of solar radiation on a round trip to Mars may very well make the spacecraft so heavy that the amount of fuel needed becomes prohibitive.

There is, however, a way to surmount this problem while reducing the cost and technical requirements, but it demands that we ask this vexing question: Why are we so interested in bringing the Mars astronauts home again?

His arguments focus on finance (a one-way mission is far cheaper and more logistically simple) and anthropological pragmatism (the journey might well reduce the astronauts’ lifespans considerably, so why waste the remainder of their lives dying in an Earth hospital when they could be doing useful stuff on Mars?). It’s a very cold set of equations, of course… but as has been pointed out before, there’d probably be no shortage of volunteers, be they elderly scientists or younger bold adventurers. Hell knows I’d love to go.

Furthermore, Krauss is probably correct in suggesting that Congress and NASA would never take the political risk of a mission that could be seen as signing a definite death warrant for American citizens, even if they chose to go. So perhaps that one-way ticket will be supplied by a private company… if it’s ever supplied at all. [via SlashDot; image by Bluedharma]

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Kim Stanley Robinson on why space is a bad idea… and a good idea

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Planet EarthSpace exploration tends to be a black-and-white debate, with interested parties falling into either enthusiastic advocacy or strident denouncement. But as with most things, there’s a considerable middle-ground to explore – and over at the Washington Post, Kim Stanley Robinson brings the humanist pragmatism as he argues that space exploration is a worthy goal provided it helps us become a species that doesn’t have its finger hovering perpetually over the self-destruct button:

Eventually, if things go well on Earth, we may begin to inhabit the moons and planets of the solar system more completely, with populations living their entire lives off Earth. At this stage, Mars will always loom as the best candidate for a viable second home. If we alter that planet by importing Earth’s organisms into a rehydrated Martian landscape, that would make it safer for us to live there long-term. These big possibilities, described at length in my Mars novels, will make the planet one of the best 22nd century answers to the question, “Why space?”

And later, if things are still going well on Earth — always the necessary condition — we might live throughout our solar system. This civilization would be a great thing, as a healthy Earth would have to exist at its heart. But given all we have to do first, the full flourishing of such a civilization is surely centuries away.

So why even talk about this? Because it is useful to take the long view from time to time. This is what science fiction does, and though science fiction has been bad about space, it has been good about time. Taking that long view, we no longer seem like the most sophisticated culture ever; indeed, much that we do now will look silly or even criminal in the future. The long view also reminds us that we are a species only about 100,000 years old, evolving on a planet where the average lifetime of a species is 10 million years. Unless we blow it, humans are going to be around in 1,000 years — and if we make it that far, it’s likely that we’ll last much longer than that.

So, what actions, taken today, will help our children, and theirs, and theirs? From that perspective, decarbonizing our technology and creating a sustainable civilization emerge as the overriding goals of our age. If going into space helps achieve those goals, we should go; if going into space is premature, or falls into the category of “a good idea if Earth is healthy,” it should be put on the science fiction shelf, where I hope our descendants will be free to choose it if they want it.

What do you think? Is escaping the gravity well a means to an end in itself, or should we concentrate on tidying up our own back yard before heading out into the local neighbourhood? [via BoingBoing; image courtesy NASA]

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Obama budgets for moonshot

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Space Shuttle Endeavour launchingWell, at least one sector of the web is in a cheery mood at the moment – the space buffs are pretty stoked that President Obama’s budget includes a nice boost for NASA:

The budget calls on NASA to complete International Space Station construction, as well as continue its Earth science missions and aviation research. Yet it also remains fixed to former President George W. Bush’s plan to retire the space shuttle fleet by 2010 and replace them with the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would fly astronauts to the space station and return them to the moon by 2020.

Good news for extropians and forward-thinkers, then – though it’s almost surprising to see a spending increase on something that, by definition, doesn’t garner immediate tangible results at home. Perhaps Obama”s  gang are thinking that this is the ideal time to sneak by a budget increase that might otherwise cause much angst and wailing; US$19billion may sound like a lot, but it’s a tiny fragment of that bailout package… [image by jurvetson]

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Should Mars be treated like a wildlife preserve?

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MarsFinding life on Mars would be pretty awesome, right? Of course it would – but it would also mean we’d have to change the way we work on the red planet, because of the ethical can of worms presented by contaminating a whole new biosphere.

We’ve already contaminated it, though – all of our probes and landers are likely festooned with Earthside microbes. Now some planetary scientists recommend that, should life be found, we remove or destroy our Martian hardware and keep things pristine:

He warns that Earth life could be reawakened if weather conditions on the planet change. This could happen as a result of periodic swings in the planet’s tilt, or if humans purposely alter the Martian environment, which, ironically, they might do to make conditions cosier for any Martian life they might discover. Microbes on subsurface drills in search of liquid water could also contaminate potential Martian habitats.

Here’s Jamias Cascio’s response:

… if life is found, definitely. No question. If fossilized life is found, also definitely, since that could mean dormant life, waiting for a Mars Spring.

If there’s no evidence of past or present life found… the question becomes more difficult. I always kind of sympathized with the Reds over the Greens in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, but I also believe that establishing a human foothold off of Earth is a wise long-term survival strategy.

Could we justify changing the Martian climate, knowing that — as with Earth — such changes are irreversible?

The answer to that will depend on circumstance, I guess; it’s worth considering that the sort of political climate that would lead to greater exploration of Mars might well be the sort of climate that produces colonial attitudes. And the colonial era was pretty big on resource exploitation… [image by chipdatajeffb]

What do you think – should Mars be preserved pristine?