Musing About Mars

I have mixed thoughts about the recent announcement by President Bush to put an American back on the moon with the long term goal of a manned mission to Mars. A lunar base is all well and good, but I am not entirely convinced that a manned mission to Mars is cost effective. There really is no good reason to put a person on Mars other than for scientific exploration and national prestige.

It is more cost effective to send robots like Spirit to the martian surface. The support systems necessary to move living, breathing human beings to Mars can be replaced by a whole boatload of scientific instruments into what would be a smaller payload. Granted, you don't have the flexibility or problem solving ability of a human, but on the flip side, robots don't need to return back to earth.

The cost of robotic missions is an order of magnitude (or two) less than manned missions and the loss of human life is zeroized. Traveling to the moon cost of three men's lives in the loss of Apollo 1; traveling into orbit has cost several lives. 22 missions have been attempted to or around Mars, and 8 have been considered successes (discounting Spirit and Opportunity). That is a success rate of just over 36%*. One can only guess what the casualty rate would be for attempted manned missions. Traveling to Mars simply entails more risk.

Exploration is not without hazard, but a balance between risk and reward must be struck.

Until we have established a viable space presence, with corresponding advances in engineering and technology, the cost of a Mars manned mission simply is not worth the risk right now. In the meantime, more effective unmanned missions can be accomplished.

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*I can appreciate why the success rate is so low: it is really very difficult to put together a complex system that is 100% reliable that must operate without operator intervention over the period of years in environments that we only are just beginning to understand. Some think that failure is "just the luck of the draw".