![]() But if landing on the Moon taught us anything, it’s that taxpayer enthusiasm for rock collecting has hard limits. How long such a program could last is anyone’s guess. They would become the real explorers of Mars, and if their luck held, its first colonists. Only the microbes that lived in the spacecraft, uninformed of the mission rules, would be free to go wander outside. When the great moment finally came, and the astronauts had taken their first Martian selfie, strict mission rules meant to prevent contamination and minimize risk would leave the crew dependent on the same robots they’d been sent at enormous cost to replace. Like the Space Shuttle and Space Station before it, the Mars program would exist in a state of permanent redesign by budget committee until any logic or sense in the original proposal had been wrung out of it. To borrow a quote from John Young, keeping such a program funded through fifteen consecutive Congresses would require a series “of continuous miracles, interspersed with acts of God”. Sticking a flag in the Martian dust would cost something north of half a trillion dollars, with no realistic prospect of landing before 2050. But if you think rockets, adventure, exploration, and discovery are more fun than counting tumors in mice, then the slow and timorous Mars program will only break your heart. drift around doing bone studies in deep space. If your main complaint about the International Space Station is that it’s too exciting and has a distracting view of Earth out the window, then you’ll love watching ISS Jr. The buildup to Mars would not look like Apollo, but a long series of ISS-like flights to nowhere. It would no more open a new era of spaceflight than a Phoenician sailor crossing the Atlantic in 500 B.C. Landing on Mars with existing technology would be a destructive, wasteful stunt whose only legacy would be to ruin the greatest natural history experiment in the Solar System. The goal of this essay is to persuade you that we shouldn’t send human beings to Mars, at least not anytime soon. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.Įntrance to underground cavern on Pavonis Mons.
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