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Äàòà èçìåíåíèÿ: Wed Jan 30 02:24:21 2008
Äàòà èíäåêñèðîâàíèÿ: Tue Oct 2 03:51:17 2012
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Ïîèñêîâûå ñëîâà: apollo 11

Manned Space Exploration

Manned Exploration of the Solar System

There is reason for hope! Read EXTENDING HUMAN PRESENCE INTO THE SOLAR SYSTEM: An Independent Study for The Planetary Society by William Claybaugh, Owen K. Garriott (team co-leader), John Garvey, Michael Griffin (team co-leader and present NASA Administrator), Thomas D. Jones, Charles Kohlhase, Bruce McCandless II, William O'Neal, Paul A. Penzo.

As you might have guessed already, I support space exploration. I greatly admire NASA's Apollo project, the only manned exploration of the solar system that ever happenned. Two good complementary books on the Apollo program are "Man on the Moon", by Andrew Chaikin, and "Full Moon," by Michael Light.

Above: Neil Armstrong photographing Edwin Aldrin, as seen by Aldrin in the photo he took, below. From the Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal.

Enough about the past. I would like to go to Mars one day. And I guess some people I know would also like to see me going... Anyway, I do hope that Mars becomes the Frontier of the 21st Century, and that manned missions will occur before 2020. For an informed opinion on the subject, you can not skip reading Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars"(1996), probably the best book ever written on this issue. It was no surprise to me seeing NASA adopting his vision (The Mars Direct plan) as the new paradigm in the human exploration of Mars. This impression was confirmed by reading the recent articles in Scientific American (How to go to Mars, Why go to Mars, A Bus between the Planets, and the Mars Direct plan) on the future of mankind in space, which update some of the technical aspects of the colonization of Mars, like terraforming. These works show that far from being an utopic and unachievable goal, manned Mars exploration is possible with today's technology and with a budget smaller than that of the International Space Station. This happens because Mars has all the basic requirements to sustain human civilization (which doesn't happen at all with the Moon).

Check Robert Zubrin's Mars Society site. If you want to be overloaded by information on the Red Planet, this the place to go. I find this site fascinating. Check, for instance, the charts. I am a member of the Planetary Society, a non-governmental organization which is also advocating Mars exploration. This organization, however, corresponds more adequately to my profile: I am interested in the whole of the solar system.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the space plan that the Bush Administration is proposing. So I wrote up mine, you can read it below. A Spanish translation of this was published in "Foro", a supplement of the Puerto-Rican newspaper "Nuevo Dia".

I am one of those that believe that the human species has an innate drive to explore, to reach for what is beyond the smallness of everyday life. The millions of hits per day on the Mars Rover websites are elloquent testimony to this.
It is for this reason that I feel happy about George Bush's decision to re-start manned space exploration, 32 years after it was stopped by Richard Nixon. I am not with those that dislike this plan just because they dislike the present administration, this is, in my opinion, one of its few positive decisions to date. I wish it is not just electioneering.

How much does it cost?

Any scientific project has first to be faced with a key consideration, its cost. As ever, there are people that say that spending all these billions in space exploration is a bad idea, mainly at a time when there are so many problems at home, like terrorism, poverty, etc. The problem with this argument is that I can not remember a single time when there were not "serious of problems at home". Saying that we should wait until poverty vanishes from the face of the Earth, is the same as saying that space exploration will never be done.
But let us talk about this "colossal" cost. NASA's budget is 0.1% of the US GDP. According to Robert Zubrin, author of the most authoritative book on Mars exploration ("The case for Mars", a book that shows a brilliant technical solution to the problem of Mars manned travel), the cost of a very conservative manned Mars exploration program should be of the order of 20 to 50 billion dollars (He was not making this up; check this joint NASA/ESA study). Remember, this investment is spread over a period of 15 years, and if the present administration and NASA are serious about international cooperation, the expenses should be shared by many countries. This pales when compared with the war on Iraq, which cost the US alone $87 billion in a single year.
The present Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs have already cost more than $100 billion. This was an investment with no real goals or direction: for the last 30 years no one flew beyond the Earth's upper atmosphere, and from a scientific viewpoint they have been a colossal waste of money (one of the Shuttle missions registered as its biggest scientific exploit "the testing of a sping-powered guillotine", which was used to cut the heads of 20 rats. Considering the cost of a single Shuttle flight, $600 million, each rat head was cut for a cost of $30 million). This "backyard" (or, should I say, "backwards") space exploration was designed mainly to: a) keep aerospace corporations busy, b) maintain jobs and competences in areas critical to national security, c) to create jobs in the states that receive the contracts, i.e., "to stimulate the economy" and d) to enlist Russian aerospace technicians that could otherwise be working for "the Axis of Evil", a.k.a. "international cooperation". These goals have merit, but they can also be accomplished for less money by a manned Mars exploration program, which, on top of that, could make some of the most important scientific discoveries in Human history. It is the recognition of these obvious facts that sealed the fate of the International Space Station and the Shuttle Programs, which will be abandoned after 2010. This decision alone should provide enough funds for a Mars program. There are huge aditional benefits of a manned trip to Mars. Such a program will capture the public imagination like no Space Station or Mars Rovers can, it will inspire young people to study science and technology and therefore bring in, directly and indirectly, a new era of technological innovation.

Why go there anyway?

Mars and Europa are the only places in the Universe where humans might come into contact with alien life in the nearby future. Such a discovery would easily rank among the most important ever made. Should we search for this using robots or by sending humans? In the case of Europa, the option for humans seems remote at present.
A complaint commonly heard from scientists is that money should be put on robotic probes rather than manned expeditions, because probes have returned a lot more science than the manned programs. This is obviously true, but an unfair comment. The manned program had no opportunity to make anything scientifically relevant for 30 years because all astronauts have done in that time was floating in vacuum in low-Earth orbit in the shuttle or the Space Station. One can not look for alien life, or study geology, in low-Earth orbit.
But would humans make a difference on Mars? Why not send rovers? As I write (February the 3rd, 2004), the Spirit rover has arrived on Mars more than a month ago. In that time, it moved nine feet from its landing place, started to analyse one rock, stopped transmitting for a week, and it is now finishing the analysis of that same rock ("Adirondack"). I am slightly uninpressed. I am pretty sure that the accomplishments of astronauts in that same amount of time would be orders of magnitude better. Whoever suggests that the accomplishments of humans and robots are even remotely similar is defying all reason and empiric evidence. In fact, it is probable that the rovers will never be able to find life on Mars even if it existed. Only humans are likely to accomplish that.

But it is impossible!

There are those who say that flying to Mars is impossible because it is six months of flight away. This is just plain silly. People have been locked in the MIR space station, subject to cosmic radiation and zero gravity and with no physical contact with Earth, going nowhere, for more than a year! No one ever needed an emergency return to the Earth. No one died.
The silliest so-called "showstopper" is the "psicological factor". If anything useful came out of MIR or the Internation Space Station programs is the key learning that these worries are completely false: in the space stations, people have always cooperated with each other for very extended periods of time, independently of their personal empathies. The prospect of exploring another world, instead of the present situation (going nowhere) can only improve morale onboard.
The danger of contamination of Mars with Earth bacteria and vice-versa could unleash an epidemic on Earth and/or prevent the detection of life on Mars. It will be very difficult to deal with these problems, but I see no reason why it should be impossible.

Moon or Mars?

The only problem of the present space exploration plans is the idea that the Moon could be a base to reach Mars. Technically, it is easier to reach Mars from the Moon than from Earth. However, to reach Mars from the Moon, you still have to go to the Moon first. And going to the Moon is more difficult than going to Mars straight away, because larger velocity changes are involved and no one can do aerobraking on the Moon, as it has no atmosphere. The Moon diversion might reveal itself to be too costly and be fatal to the present plan.
As Robert Zubrin said in the November congressional hearings, you can not inspire the new generation by telling them that in 20 years we might return to the Moon, which the generation of their grandparents reached 30 years ago. Part of the reason why we have not returned to the Moon for 30 years is that, quite frankly, it is not that interesting (although still infinitely more interesting than the vacuum of low Earth orbit). Mars is far more rewarding, from any perspective you look at it, including cost.
With hardware designed to reach Mars, one can explore the Moon and the nearby asteroids. Hardware built for the Moon alone, though, will probably not have such versatility. So, the present program is slightly flawed. But it is better to have a slightly flawed space program than none at all. I hope that technical common sense makes the trips to the moon just a test of Martian hardware.

Is it worth the risks?

Many commentators make the point that we live in a risk-averse society. However, the Space Shuttle is a risky enterprise, as the Challenger and Columbia accidents have shown, and yet that did not prevent people from continuing the program. This means that there are still people and organizations in this planet willing to take the risks, even at no obvious reward. We can have no illusions about trips to Mars, they will be risky, although hopefully less so than the Space Shuttle.
If we are going to put human lives at risk, we should not do it just to have the vague statisfaction of knowing that someone is "in space". We should do it in the name of real science, real exploration, in the name of Mankind's collective future.