Opinion

Don’t plan on exploring Mars

On Monday, Eric Berger wrote a column in The Houston Chronicle concerning whether or not we should try and fly humans to Mars. The idea is novel; we would break the atmosphere and land humans on another planet.

But according to some, the risks are not worth the reward.

Berger wrote in his column that a trip to Mars under current conditions pertaining to our national budget and space technology would have to be a one-way trip.

“In a budget-constrained world, given the challenges posed by radiation and launching with enough propellant to blast back off Mars once we get there, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that if we’re going to go to Mars in the next half-century, it probably will be a one-way mission,” Berger said.

There hasn’t been much in terms of interest from NASA regarding this one shot idea. Also, according to Berger’s column, the interest among college students is low as well. While visiting a UH journalism class he asked the students if they were interested in space flight.

“In a class of 15 to 20 kids, not one raised his or her hand. They were excited about things like medical research and artificial intelligence,” Berger said.

The lack of interest from NASA may be due to the difficulties of the mission and the fact that they’ll have to sell a space mission with no likely possibility of return. The lack of interest from students, though, is probably due to the fact that human space travel and human space exploration is something that belongs to a past generation.

Touching the soil of another celestial body was a revolution that will forever belong to the year 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Apollo 11’s landing was at least ten to fifteen years before any of the students in that journalism class were born.

The current generation has yet to see a feat of that nature from NASA, and they’re likely not going to anytime soon; because of this, the current generation has nothing to be inspired by and very few heroes to watch make history.

2 Comments

  • This article is listed under the opinion section, but aside from a mess of unrelated assertions, there's not really any opinion presented.

    The author seems to forget the political force that was required to motivate this country to pursue the moon landings. The primary factor was competition with the Soviet Union. On top of that, you had a US President travelling nationwide to stump for a manned mission to the moon (who was then 'martyred' lending a deep emotional connection to the cause for the nation).

    To blame NASA for the lack of interest (of which no actual evidence is offered) is absurd. The Obama Administration has turbocharged the ongoing politicization of NASA by selling out US Manned Spaceflight to Elon Musk (a massive campaign supporter) so that he can use NASA's budget as a propaganda engine for climate change. NASA has PhD's on staff whose entire purpose is to 'communicate' about global warming – not *do research* but do *outreach.* If this was going on in the Pentagon there would be a front page article in the New York Times, but at NASA it's business as usual.

    The plan for Mars existed; it was terminated by the Obama Adminstration (against the advice of his own expert panel, the Augustine Commission) so that Obama could continue to purchase influence with more social programs.

    The final factor to consider on why Mars isn't an option: at its height (in the mid to late 60's) NASA received around 4% of the federal budget. Today, that would be the equivalent of more the 120 Billion dollars per year (they currently receive just over 20 Billion per year).

    Right now we spend in excess of 600 Billion on national defense and two wars. As a nation we spend over 150 Billion on Highways annually. The Postal Service receives subsidies in the low single digit billions. And yet there is no room for the greatest endeavour to be undertaken by man?

    The only thing to be "hopeful" about is that one day the Chinese, if we are especially well-behaved, may allow us to buy seats from them on their manned Mars mission. I don't mean this as a jingoistic attack on China – but China has will, where the US would rather spend money on ED medication and bribing retired voters to vote Democrat.

    (Sorry the opinion was not more cohesive, I was just following the example of the author).

  • "The author seems to forget the political force that was required to motivate this country to pursue the moon landings. The primary factor was competition with the Soviet Union. On top of that, you had a US President travelling nationwide to stump for a manned mission to the moon (who was then 'martyred' lending a deep emotional connection to the cause for the nation)."

    okay so the point of landing on the moon was to establish superiority over the soviet union. whats the point of going to mars? when it became clear that the russian economy could no longer sustain a space program that could threaten the US, the lunar missions no longer had a point. so whats the point of a manned mission on mars again.

    "To blame NASA for the lack of interest (of which no actual evidence is offered) is absurd. The Obama Administration has turbocharged the ongoing politicization of NASA by selling out US Manned Spaceflight to Elon Musk (a massive campaign supporter) so that he can use NASA's budget as a propaganda engine for climate change. NASA has PhD's on staff whose entire purpose is to 'communicate' about global warming – not *do research* but do *outreach.* If this was going on in the Pentagon there would be a front page article in the New York Times, but at NASA it's business as usual."

    haha it's obama's fault, wasting money on frivolous things like climate change

    "The plan for Mars existed; it was terminated by the Obama Adminstration (against the advice of his own expert panel, the Augustine Commission) so that Obama could continue to purchase influence with more social programs."

    if not for that wasteful healthcare bill or consumer protection legislation, we could be getting mad rutty with green women in our martian plantations RIGHT NOW

    "The final factor to consider on why Mars isn't an option: at its height (in the mid to late 60's) NASA received around 4% of the federal budget. Today, that would be the equivalent of more the 120 Billion dollars per year (they currently receive just over 20 Billion per year). "

    the final factor to consider is the astronomical (lol pun) cost. to send a manned mission to the moon has nowhere near the cost of sending a manned mission to mars. we're not talking about taking the cost of the iraq war and pushing it over into mars colonization. we're talking about reworking the global industrial complex where instead of producing goods and services our primary economy becomes the colonization of space.

    additional concerns: the low gravity on mars can't support us (up to 2.6% bone loss per month!). the sunlight can't support food crops. any artificial colony would be less versatile, adaptable, and survivable than earth's ecosystem.

    this is all we have, so we should start taking care of it instead of promoting the manifestation of our childhood fantasies as the solution to the human condition.

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