The other day writer Tom Junod stated that he “does not think humans will step foot again on the Moon, much less Mars, not just what’s left of (my) lifetime, but ever. Sort of a bummer, put like that, but it just emphasizes what an unlikely miracle the original walk was.” I must say that I find myself pretty well aligned with his sentiments. Notwithstanding NASA’s stated intent to move forward with the Constellation project (which is supposed to return a four astronaut crew to the Moon by 2020), my skeptic’s sense is that on January 1, 2021, Gene Cernan will remain the last person to have walked the lunar surface.
Constellation was announced in 2004 which means that the project was given a 16 year timeline. Keep in mind that the U.S. space program took less than 12 years to go from launching its first satellite to Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind. For the past 30 years, the program has focused on the Space Shuttle, a craft which reaches altitudes roughly 240 miles off the surface of the Earth. Keep in mind the Apollo astronauts had to travel nearly 1000 times that distance in order to reach the moon. Although we keep our astronauts in space far longer than we did during the Apollo days, we sure don’t send them very far. And I have to wonder if the reasons there hasn’t been more of a push to send people back to the Moon or a more aggressive emphasis on sending people to Mars over the last 30 years is because the risk vastly outweighs the utility. Did the Bush administration feel that a new manned moon mission would once again electrify the country as Kennedy’s push for lunar exploration did in the 1960’s? Different times; much different mindsets.
In the era of rapidly unfolding technology – especially in the areas of robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, it seems to me – admittedly a very unscientific person – that unmanned missions to the Moon and Mars (assuming these missions have cost-sensible value in the first place) are the least risky and thus the most likely way to move forward with space exploration. I cannot believe that something drastic has changed between 1974 (when NASA officially ditched plans for the final four proposed manned moon landings) and 2004 that would compel us to get back to the Moon. Furthermore, given the fact that we have exponentially better technological knowledge and resources at our disposal than we did in 1958, I am struggling with the reasons why it would take us nearly 125% longer to get a human back to the Moon than it did over 50 years ago when we were starting virtually from scratch. Perhaps I am missing something here.
Mars? Not a chance. The Mars Rover program has been very successful, however it’s important to keep in mind that those buggies landed on the heels of four colossal failures – the Mars Observer which fell out of radio contact in 1993 and was presumed lost upon approach to the planet, the Mars Climate Orbiter which burned up in the Martian atmosphere in 1999 and the Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 probe which both crashed into the planet later that same year. The overall landing success rate for unmanned Mars missions is so poor that there is simply no way to justify sending human beings there anytime in the foreseeable future. Not in our lifetime and likely not in any forthcoming lifetimes. If it is going to take 16 years just to repeat what we were able to do 40 years ago with less than a cell phone’s worth of computing power then I have my doubts that we’ll be able to swing a trip of anywhere from 150 to 1000 times the distance of the Apollo missions anytime soon.
If there is value to be had from additional studies of materials on the surfaces of our two closest, non gas-choked heavenly neighbors, then our focus should be on getting as many research tools up there as possible and getting to work. But, rather than focusing on how to get those tools up there and also figuring out how to simultaneously sustain human life and ferrying it back to Earth, we should concentrate on durable and reliable unmanned methods of utilizing those tools.
In the mean time, it’s nice to see we have made significant advances in the area of space-toilet repair. Baby steps, America.
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I'm a big believer that the simple fact we ONLY had a cell-phones worth of data was why we tried to go to the moon at all. I think now, we know how (literally) astronomically lucky we were to have made it at all, much less several times.
ReplyDeleteI'm relatively sure what we determined the last time we were there was that it was a giant dry rock. And aside form Atlanta's Stone Mountain, none of those have ever been any fun. And Stone Mountain is only fun because of the kitsch of the laser show and "celebrating" confederate "success."