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Moving Towards Mars

© Robert Davis

There has been some speculation in the news media lately about a manned mission to Mars. Nothing much, certainly nothing overt, but still significant. Just a few years ago the very phrase "manned mission to Mars" was anathema to most everyone, but after a few crummy movies and with an operational International Space Station, it seems that people's minds are opening once more.

The specific incident I am thinking of has to do with the media's fascination with the second crew of the ISS. The trio stayed aboard Alpha for 167 days, the second-longest mission ever undertaken by NASA astronauts (although station commander Yuri Usachev was an old hand at long-duration flight thanks to his career in the Russian space program). As far as I can tell, it suddenly occurred to everyone that if they could stay in space for close to six months, why not seven? Or eight? It's not much of a mental leap to make the connection between a long stay on the space station and a long trip to Mars--which I suppose is why even reporters have been able to do so. And do so they have.

Even CNN got into the act. And of course the astronauts themselves responded with the "right stuff"--long duration flight is a cakewalk, it's a matter of eat right and exercise, and if we went to Mars we'd get off easy because when we landed we'd endure gravity barely one-third of Earth's. No reason not to go. Et cetera, et cetera.

Being the dedicated advocate of manned Mars exploration that I am, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a monstrous fear in the pit of my stomach. The fear was that with all this sudden talk, seemingly out of nowhere, the media was going to overinflate the whole business (as it so often does) and the sight of astronauts weakened after months in microgravity would suddenly burst the bubble. I could just imagine the naysayers who would leap upon the sight of Jim Voss or Susan Helms being carried off the shuttle on a stretcher--which is always the plan for their return, by the way--and gleefully asking them, "Still game for a trip to Mars?"

But then they walked off the shuttle.

It has since occurred to me that although the International Space Station itself is something of a boondoggle--although fundamentally worthwhile, it has become a money pit that is notorious for wringing resources out of equally worthwhile programs in order to make up for its voluminous red ink--it is creating an opportunity like no other for those of us who advocate a program of manned Mars exploration. That opportunity is the chance to point at every single astronaut who walks off the shuttle after months in orbit and say, "See? Human beings aren't sissies."