Space: The final frontier — or perhaps just a place to blow a lot of money

May 21, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

I grew up on the original “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.” In the mid 1970s, I was also captivated by an obscure British sci-fi series called “Space: 1999” that dealt with a bunch of people with disco hair who wore flares and lived on a moonbase.

Yes, I was a geek — and still am in some ways. To this day, I love robots and ray guns. Long-suffering friends have heard me discourse on why B-9 from “Lost in Space” could kick Robby the Robot’s behind and did, in fact, do so once.

Therefore, it pains me to write this post, but here it goes: A manned mission to Mars is a dumb idea and a huge waste of money.

What got me on this topic was a recent article in The Washington Post Magazine by one of my favorite writers, Joel Achenbach. Titled “To Infinity and Beyond,” the piece deals with “the Vision” — NASA’s plan for the next wave of space exploration. The centerpiece of the Vision is a manned mission to Mars. President George W. Bush has endorsed the idea, and we’re ready to go, right?

Well, not really. There are a couple of problems. For starters, a round trip to Mars would take two to three years, cost $500 billion to $1 trillion, and once the astronauts arrived — presuming they weren’t first killed by deep space radiation — they would find little to do. Mars’ atmosphere is so hostile the astronauts, even bundled up in their spacesuits, would find it difficult to leave the shelter of their ship. They would also be bombarded with cosmic and solar radiation that even their suits may not defend against. The trip could be a death sentence.

And for what? Just to say we did it? There is a better way: If we really want to explore Mars, we can send robot probes.

And of course we already have. In 1976, two Viking landers descended on the Red Planet and tested the soil for evidence of life. Twenty-one years after that, the “Pathfinder” probe landed and sent forth a cool little robot named Sojourner.

Sojourner didn’t care what the temperature was like on Mars, or how severe the radiation was. As Robert Park notes in his excellent book Voodoo Science, “Slow but steady, the little robot did not break for lunch or complain about the cold nights. Sojourner was the first of a new breed of rover telerobots that will give scientists a virtual presence in places no human could ever venture.”

Best of all, Sojourner did it for about one-forth the cost of a single space shuttle launch. Right now, the probe Opportunity is on Mars, having landed in January of 2004. (The probe has run into a few problems lately, partially sinking in a sand dune, but NASA scientists are optimistic they can free it. And since the probe’s original mission was only supposed to last three months, what we’re getting now is gravy.)

Please understand that I’m not slamming the entire space program. There are things out there to learn, and we should learn them simply because we’re a curious species. For example, if we did find evidence of life on Mars, even simple bacteria, the implications of that would be staggering. It would fundamentally change the way a thinking person views the universe.

I’m not attacking the entire space program; my point is that it’s time to put aside the “Star Trek” fantasies, live in the real world and do what’s practical. The fixation on manned missions is a mistake. It may capture the public imagination, but it’s a waste of money and resources.

Forty-five million Americans do not have health care. Our inner cities are crumbling. Our social safety net is in tatters. Our public schools are underfunded. The retirement system is wobbly. We have problems to solve here on Earth. In light of them, I can’t justify blowing $1 trillion just so an astronaut can stand on a dead planet and bring back some rocks.

I know, I know — going to the moon was cool, and John F. Kennedy’s vision inspired us all. Fair enough. I still remember staying up late in my PJ’s to watch the landing. But going just because it’s cool doesn’t cut it anymore — especially when we’re so deeply in debt.

We don’t have to send a man or woman to Mars. What’s the point? Robots are telling us what we need to know and doing a much better job than humans would.

But what about colonizing space, screams the Big Space crowd. What about domed cities and terraforming and sending our excess population off planet? Get a grip. There is no breathable atmosphere on Mars, and the radiation is a killer — literally. There is no such thing as terraforming, except in science fiction movies. “Star Trek” made the idea of “warp drives” so popular that some people believe this method of propulsion actually exists. It doesn’t. Nor does terraforming. Certain laws of physics govern the universe. A science fiction writer can ignore those laws if they get in the way of a good story. A real scientist cannot.

So Mars is a bust. What about Venus? Forget about it. We can’t even land a probe there. As Park points out, Venus is shrouded in clouds made of sulfuric acid, and its surface is hot enough to melt lead. It’s much worse than Miami in July.

We’re stuck here. But that’s not so bad because we have imaginations, a drive to learn and the technical know how to figure things out (within the limitations of the laws of physics). Except for low-orbit jaunts, we’re not leaving this rock. The machines we make are not so limited. Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 transmitted data until 1997, traveling more than six billion miles from Earth. It has since been surpassed by better probes, such as Voyager. We can take on the Final Frontier — by proxy.

Enjoy “Star Trek.” Ponder why women in the 24th Century wore mini-skirts and had beehives or, if you’re a “Next Generation” fan, try to figure out why the Federation designed uniforms with “shirt creep.” (Is it just me, or is Capt. Picard always tugging at the bottom of shirt?) Journey through cosmos at warp factor eight. Stun a Klingon or two for me. Just remember, it’s all in good fun. It’s not a documentary.

It’s important to remember that back in the 60’s sending humans to the moon was the only realistic way to gain direct knowledge of it’s surface.

Robots? It wasn’t until 3 years after the first moon landing that TI introduced it’s first electronic calculator for consumers. That baby cost over $100 (in 1972 dollars) and performed 4, count ’em – 4, functions. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. Whoo – hoo!!

Until we have better propulsion than strapping people to a rocket and popping it off at Mars, send the robots.

  • It pains me to agree — I vividly remember reading “Rocket Ship Galileo” and “Starman Jones” in the 5th grade. A few years later, when “2001 A Space Odyssey” came out it was so real (Howard Johnson’s in space) I was ready to book a vacation to the moon.

    Today, when I read this, I am cynical enough to wonder if Haliburton has a space division.

    I think we would be better served by the government funding a number of “X-Prize” like competitions — say $25 million for repeat flight to LEO, $50 million for x passengers to GEO. We could use some of those “worthless” IOU’s molding away in that WV file cabinet.

  • I could not agree with you more, even though I had just graduated from high school when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It was inspiring and did capture the public’s imagination, and much of our modern understanding of scientific collaboration was developed and harnessed in that project. And think about it: we were at the height of the cold war, and it was widely deemed necessary for the U.S. to get to the moon first — the old Soviet Union was also in a push to do so, and had been the first to put a sattelite and later a human into space — in order to preserve space from military weaponry and use.

    Today, Bush is continuing Reagan’s folly by wanting to put nuclear weapons into space. What short-sighted fools. In addition, a manned trip to Mars is unlikely to yeild the scientific cornucopia of possibilities as did the moon shot, especially for practical applications here on earth.

    How much more practical, and potentially life-altering here on earth, if the same zeal, time and money is put into finding clean, cheap, reliable and adaptable replacements for carbon-based fuels and energy. As W’s father coined the term, that’s the “vision thing.” It is a crying shame that ALL of the politicians since Carter have scoffed at energy conservation (hell, Reagan named a Secretary of the Department of Energy whose primary instruction was to get rid of the Department itself, in its entirety!).

    Preach it out, Morbo. We need a Trinity project to create new and renewable energy sources; if it is even one-half as successful as the creation of Fat Man and Little Boy, our freedom from the oil pirates is assured.

    P.S. Not to be too condescending, but for those of you too young to remember of haven’t studied it, the “Trinity” name was given by Project Director Robert Oppenheimer to the U.S. project at Los Alomos, N.M., to develop the atomic bombs (nicknamed “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” because of their physical shapes) that were eventually dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6, 1945, and August 9, 1945).

  • Is it significant that the post and first three (now 4) responses are all of the same generation? I remember going to the school gym so we could watch Gemini and Apollo splashdowns. In junior high, I spent weeks doing research for a term paper on SkyLab. In high school, Martin Marietta rented my school’s auditorium for a planning conference on the Viking program. (It remains a mystery to me why they couldn’t find more suitable convention facilities.)

    Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy does a pretty good job presenting a scientific vision of how Mars could be populated. It’s still a fantasy, though. Success hinges on a number of breakthrough technologies. It those technologies present themselves, we can re-evaluate, but in the meantime, the human population of Mars is a pipe dream.

  • Our counrty simply can NOT afford to do this. We have way to many money problems. The people in charge now though don’t care about the majority of Americans. They live in a dream world populated by only the RICH.
    I bet your right. Haliburton probably does have or will start a space division as we know how much our current leaders LOVE feeding Haliburton our money.
    Can you say KICKBACK’S

  • Okay, I was 8 years old and we watched the moon landing in television in Uruguay, where we were living at the time.

    I don’t agree with the “We’re stuck here.” Do you think the founding fathers really believed that someday there would be airplanes flying around the world, that even regular people could afford to ride in? Did the idea that something that heavy even make sense?

    And all of you people my age — did you think you’d be typing on a computer, posting comments on something like the internet when you were growing up? I know that all I aspired to at 8-years-old was an electric typewriter.

    Just because terraforming doesn’t look close, doesn’t mean it can’t happen someday. The problem with this $1 trillion program is that it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose toward advancing us to those goals. As you say — what can a man do that a robot can’t? At the moment — not a thing. But putting a small slice of that budget toward experiments in terraforming — now that might lead us a few steps down the road toward the future we dream of.

  • Can I join the crowd with you boomer space race era kids? At age 8 I was certainly glad to get time out of class to watch the all the rocket launchings and the landing on the Moon, but I don’t think that I had the capacity to realize the significance of the events at the time.

    To think that the world had gone from the introduction of the automobile to the landing of a vehicle on the surface of the Moon in 60 some odd years is awe inspiring. The huge concerted scientific effort that went into the space race gave the United States not only the benefits of the research but a perception that we were a country of innovation.

    Catherine – I agree that we should keep on making a well thought out and prudent investment in this program, we are starting to fall behind the 8 ball in the area of sciences this could get us on a better track. Even though I am somewhat of a computer geek I disagree with the commentators above that a robot can handle any task that a human can, computers are extremely limited in what they can do as far as reasoning on the fly.

    As a parting shot, if we must go down this road of an ill thought out plan to go where no man has gone before, can I suggest that our fearless leader be the one leading the charge. Just imagine Georgie stepping out of a Mars lander with an American flag in his hand declaring that Freedom is on the march.

  • The real issue here is not manned versus unmanned. It’s whether we’re in space to learn or to colonize, and the key issue is the discovery of life beyond earth. The robotic science probes are an efficient use of our resources and seem positioned to make these discoveries within a few years. If there’s evidence of life beyond earth, we’ll find it.

    Imagine the effect this discovery would have on the religious orders underpinning the right wing! They must shut down the efficient pursuit of this research, quickly. And rather than engage in the difficult national discussion of the issue, the easiest path is to divert resources inefficiently. Let’s spend those billions sending humans to the moon – been there, done that, no dangerous scientific knowledge to be discovered. And if much of that money comes back through Bush/Delay campaign contributors, so much the better.

  • What about Venus? Forget about it. We can’t even land a probe there.

    Back in the day, 2 USSR spacecraft landed on Venus and sent back some photos. John Bolton would be the perfect ambassador.

  • I was in 7th grade when Sputnik went up, have worked on Viking and SpaceLab, and yet I agree with the general message of your post, as things now stand. However, there’s a wildcard in the deck that could render most of your points completely moot.

    Around 1990, we discovered several new forms of carbon molecules, a spherical shape called “buckyballs” and a long, thin form called “carbon nanotubes” (CNT). Carbon nanotubes are strong the way diamonds are hard (and for much the same reason). In fact, they’re so strong that there’s a possibility that they could be used to build an amazing thing called a “space elevator,” a cable anchored on the Earth’s equator and stretching so far into space (60,000 miles) that it’s held up by centrifugal force from the Earth’s rotation. Truck-sized vehicles called “climbers’ would be able to pull themselves up that cable and deliver cargo to geosynchronous orbit for one thousand times less than the current cost using rockets.

    We don’t know yet if we can make a CNT cable strong enough; theory says that the individual molecules are about five times as strong as we need, but we don’t know if we can make them into a cable that retains enough of that strength. That’s why I called it a “wild card;” the way to create a cable might be found tomorrow, or it might never be found.

    If we do find it, a fairly detailed engineering study done with NASA funding shows that we’ll be able to build an SE in about five years for about $6 billion. (Bill Gates or Paul Allen could do it by writing a check.) With space elevators in place (you need more than one because there are a number of dangers that could sever them; the second one would cost $2B), a substantial manned mission to Mars could be mounted for less than a billion dollars. Universities could send unmanned probes to Jupiter. Boy Scout troupes could send up satellites the size of that original Sputnik. In the longer term, millions of people could migrate to lunar colonies or space habitats at places like the Lagrange points.

    There’s nothing wrong with the idea of a manned space program; the trouble is that rockets are a bad way to implement it. The Space Elevator would be a great way.

  • What’s wrong with sending people to Mars?

    Why can’t we back this?

    A trillion dollars? But a robot costs half a shuttle launch!

    …And just the tab for a week in Iraq is more than the entire NASA budget.

    We don’t explore new places with robots, we merely take photos and tiny tests. One human can do more than Sojourner in mere minutes.

    There’s no comparison – robots are good for telling us there’s something there… But until we go, we don’t really know what’s there.

  • We have a most amazing alien planet on our doorstep and it encompasses the earth’s oceans. It is a mostly foreign world which has huge impacts on the planet we are milling about on, yet we abuse it and ignore it to our great peril. Fantastic, truly unimaginable creatures inhabit this world and it contains richs that could be intelligently utilized to to inform and enrich the gillless crowd. Knowing Mars will be fun but knowing the oceans may…..will, save our hiney’s.

  • Aren’t there some people out there who think that the country has to be destroyed so the Big Kahuna can come back and tell them how good they’ve been while roasting everyone else? And wouldn’t bankrupting the country be one dandy way of accomplishing that? And aren’t these same people holding the leashes of a huge number of politicians who keep throwing money down the rabbit hole like drunken sailors on shore leave?

    Thought so.

  • Question: what’s the average return on government investment into space programs? Suppose that a manned mission attracts more attention and coverage than anything we’re doing now with the largest sums of money, most notably the ISS. Wouldn’t that in itself spur further investment, research, and development in areas that have dual-use capabilities, creating a better quality of life? I imagine it would. The average response to any sort of new expenditure is, of course, we have so many problems like healthcare that we can’t afford this, but the fact is, every year we find something to spend money on that is much less productive than a manned space effort.

    It’s nice making jokes of Bush saying “What, is he trying to liberate the Martians,” and although he doesn’t have a serious plan for making it a reality, like most things, it is a worthwhile venture and a return back to what the space program has always been about: space exploration, with manned space missions as an integral component.

  • I agree with Jay.
    The only reason we can have for spending more money on space exploration than exploring our oceans and unexplored territories, is pretty much that we plan on moving to a different planet after trashing ours. (which isn’t really that reasonable, but I don’t think you can disagree looking at the state of our environment these days)
    ‘Space’ is always going to be out there. The fact that we explore it now, instead of 2100, isn’t going to make much of a cosmic difference on what we find.
    That having been said, I still view NASA as an important agency in bringing about change to our lives. There are many many technologies and innovations NASA has developed for space exploration, that are changing the way we live. And when we do have the right technology (for instance, radiation shielding for long-term space exploration) and there aren’t other pressing matters, exploring Mars isn’t a bad idea. Sending astronauts now, when we are sure that they will receive massive doses of radiation, and don’t know what is going to happen, is (a bad idea).

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