Mars Mission: The Unwise in Pursuit of the Unknown

Talk about optimism: At a time when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration can’t get a satellite in orbit, the recent report of the National Commission on Space recommends all-out commitment to manned exploration of Mars, culminating in permanent settlement by 2027.

Thomas O. Paine, commission chairman and a former NASA administrator, predicted that a century from now 100,000 people will be living on the red planet, and “young Martians (will be) pressing for additional settlements beyond the asteroid belt.”

Paine is not alone on the Mars beam. A congressional delegation headed by Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the House space science subcommittee and a shuttle-flight veteran, visited Moscow to discuss a joint U.S.-Soviet mission. Sen. Spark M. Matsunaga (D-Hawaii) has written a book endorsing Mars travel; Carl Sagan, in his capacity as president of the Planetary Society, one of the largest scientific associations, recently began pushing for a Mars mission. An influential “Mars Underground” of activist scientists has sprouted within the aerospace community. NASA is about to begin an expensive Mars flight study; President Reagan is to respond to the commission’s Mars recommendations by October.

If all this sounds crazy, remember that they called Columbus crazy. They called the Wright Brothers crazy. They called Juan Ponce de Leon crazy. Of course, they were right about Ponce. Is Mars a fool’s goal, or the next human horizon?

Mars dreams are as old as the space program. In the 1950s, Werner von Braun urged that Earth ignore her lifeless moon and proceed directly to Mars. He proposed construction of what was then--and remains today--a fantastic fleet of 10 space vessels, with seven astronauts each. In 1956, Von Braun and space visionary Willy Ley wrote “The Exploration of Mars,” calling for a mission slightly less fantastic: two nuclear-powered ships with 12 men each.

Others were equally optimistic. During the 1960s, NASA awarded some 60 contracts for the study of Mars missions, many under the umbrella name of Project Empire. An American Astronautics Society conference predicted a Mars expedition using souped-up Apollo moon mission hardware in 1972.

Soon, however, Mars travel began to look more difficult. Increased knowledge of solar flares revealed that Mars vessels would require heavy shielding to protect crews from solar radiation. (Spacecraft near Earth are protected by the planet’s magnetosphere.) Researchers in the Antarctic found long confinements could be dangerously stressful. Cosmonauts abroad the Salyut mini-space station have been forbidden to play chess since a Soviet scientist at Antarctica killed a colleague during an argument over a match.

Most telling, nuclear engines didn’t work. Although nuclear reactors produce considerable zing from a few pounds of uranium, translating that zing into forward motion has gotten nowhere. The space shuttle’s main engines, powered by liquid hydrogen, are considered as efficient as “chemical” or conventional rocket motors will be. But their potential for interplanetary flight is modest, their practical maximum speed low by space travel standards. Starships powered by chemical rockets would be taken over by the vast bulk of fuel to be carried. Without more advanced propulsion, Mars travel could take years.

Meanwhile, experience indicates that the long-term effects of weightlessness may be more pronounced than once thought. Lack of gravity causes resorption of metabolic calcium, a condition resembling osteoporosis or brittle-bone disease. So far there is no known antidote. Also worrisome is space-born muscular atrophy. Cosmonauts on long Salyut stays exercise almost to the point of fanaticism, yet are weak on return. Such factors suggest that Mars vessels would require simulated gravity--using spoke-and-wheel designs that spin. Unfortunately, such designs must be big, and in space big means expensive.

Finally “closed” life-support systems, recycling water and food byproducts, have turned out to be no mean trick--no one has built one yet. A Mars fleet must carry tens of tons of water, food and oxygen--another staggering expense.

It’s a safe bet that had the 1976 Viking robot probes on Mars found evidence of life, we would be mounting an expeditionary fleet at this moment, and hang the expense. But public enthusiasm for Mars waned when Viking scooped up only the faintest hint of biotic activity.

At this low juncture, the Mars Underground was founded by Carol Stoker, Christopher McKay and Penelope Boston, three graduate students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Discoveries of bacteria living in rock formations at the South Pole, defying all odds, persuaded the three that Mars might not be barren.

In 1981, Stoker, McKay and Boston organized a conference titled “The Case for Mars.” Its manifesto declared, “NASA (has no) long-term focus . . . the past decade has been a time of piecemeal programs with no clear direction . . . .” The conference results, in book form, became a hot seller in science circles.

Unfunded students were improbable spurs to NASA’s para-corporate structure. Besides being outsiders, all three looked like Woodstock refugees. Stoker was especially forceful in berating NASA, a double annoyance to the status quo. NASA admits women into the visible astronaut corps, but there are few women in policy-making positions--which is fine for the old-boy network in Houston and Huntsville. Here was a woman blasting NASA leadership for lack of resolve, for not being man enough!

The Mars Underground found a following in the U.S. Senate. In 1983, Matsunaga--whose home state of Hawaii is considered one of the world’s best locations for a spaceport--proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet Mars mission. Remarkably, budget grouch William Proxmire (D-Wis.) endorsed it. Proxmire’s reasoning was that while a waste of money, it would cost less than a space arms race. By 1985, Matsunaga was able to get six other senators for a bipartisan resolution calling for a Mars venture. A second Case for Mars conference was a big affair, bustling with Establishment scientists. And the Mars Underground, no longer waiting for NASA, proposed its own mission.

The path to Mars is not a straight line, or even one line. Various courses have been proposed, taking advantage of different “hills” in the solar system’s gravitational topography. Certain fast trajectories, using the steep gravity hills, might get a ship to Mars in only a few months--but the ship would need to be perhaps 90% fuel. A six-month travel time now appears the practical minimum.

As envisioned by the underground, a Mars expedition would consist of a large wheel-shaped ship carrying 15 astronauts, with automated cargo vessels flying alongside. The wheel ship would have three spokes, each holding a lander.

On arriving at Mars orbit, the crew would detach the landers and, accompanied by the automated cargo vessels, descend to the surface. There, pioneers would empty the cargo carriers and then convert the empty hulks into habitats.

One important cargo item would be a bulldozer, for covering the living quarters with dirt. Plain old extraterrestrial dirt, the underground says, would be the cheapest protection against solar flares and cosmic radiation--Mar’s magnetosphere being much weaker than Earth’s, and its atmosphere only 1% as thick.

Dirt would also protect the crew against Martian weather--a typical day offering highs of -10 degrees Fahrenheit, and absolutely no chance of rain--plus the planet’s mysterious dust storms.

Next the crew would set up a nuclear reactor, also burying it, this time to keep radiation in. Electricity from the reactor would light the makeshift habitats and manufacture something rather precious--fuel to get back home.

It seems that for Mars mission mathematics to work, the landers must use up all their fuel coming down. If they carried along return fuel, there would be no room for anything else.

In theory, it should be possible to make crude rocket propellents on Mars by squeezing trace oxygen and carbon monoxide from the thin air. Carbon monoxide is widely available on Earth, but not used because it is an inefficient fuel. On Mars it will have to do.

Refining trace gases from the sparse environment will take time. But time is something the crew has plenty of. They are to spend two years on the surface.

A second Mars convoy will be launched even as the first settles in. On the second convoy’s arrival, some of the first crew departs; others stay, relieved by a third convoy. The second set of cargo carriers is used to expand the base, and so on.

“We’re not talking about an Apollo-style mission where you pick up some rocks and come home,” Stoker said. “We’re talking about a continuing human presence.”

Bearing in mind that the aerospace community has an ardent self-interest in exploring space with expensive manned shots, it’s important to ask--just what would Mars arrivals do ? Unless some astonishing discovery is made, nearly all the soil analysis, climate observations and other technical work crews would perform could be done at a fraction of the cost and risk by robots.

Even Mars enthusiasts concede this. Sagan has repeatedly said, “A Mars mission simply cannot be justified on scientific grounds.”

Some Mars dreamers talk about space colonies as places where mankind could realize higher forms of existence. Physicist Gerard O’Neill gained fame in the 1970s by advocating vast tube-like colonies situated roughly halfway between Earth and the moon. There, O’Neill hypothesized, multitudes could dwell in pollution-free demilitarized bliss. O’Neill has said a colony half the size of Switzerland could be constructed in space today .

But if being locked up in a metallic tube is somehow spiritually efficacious, why do the containers have to be millions of miles away, at astronomical (as it were) cost? Why not build them in deserts?

Jesco von Puttkamer, a NASA official, has estimated it would cost $220 billion (roughly this year’s federal deficit) for a prototype colony near Earth, to say nothing of a functioning one on Mars.

Lately O’Neill has moderated his vision, talking of cut-rate colonies made from discarded space shuttle fuel tanks and declaring that space should not be inhabited unless colonists can perform a useful free-market function, such as maintaining solar-power collectors.

Cost is something Mars advocates do not like to talk about. The Mars Underground won’t make a prediction. Neither would the Space Commission. Paine said it wasn’t appropriate. “Congress doesn’t need the Space Commission to give advice about the budget,” he said. “They needed us to offer a bold vision.”

Unless there is a bold vision that can be paid for in Green Stamps, all Mars discussion seems moot. The Apollo program cost $40 billion in today’s money; a 1984 Congressional Research Service study predicted a Mars voyage might cost “several times as much.” Based on current space shuttle payload costs, merely putting the Mars Underground’s proposed fleet in orbit--to say nothing of building or operating it--would cost $9.8 billion.

Where could this kind of money come from in an age of Gramm-Rudman and record deficits? Only from the defense budget or from Social Security; categories that, combined with interest on the national debt, make up more than 80% of all federal spending.

Matsunaga contends that if the defense budget is seen as a “Soviet-relations budget,” then directing some of it toward a joint Mars exploration makes sense as long as the Soviets curtail defense spending to the same degree. Sagan’s recent conversion to favoring a Mars mission was premised on the notion that it be joint.

The red herring in this, in more ways than one, is Soviet Mars interest. The Soviet space program has used “Forward to Mars” as a slogan since the 1960s. When it became obvious that the United States would beat the Soviet Union to the moon, the Soviets decided to feign disinterest in lunar matters. For several years, space-at-all-cost proponents dined out on rumors that the Kremlin was aiming towards a Mars spectacular in 1992, the 75th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

But recently a robot probe to the Martian moon Phobos was announced for 1992; this may serve as the party’s spectacular. Few serious commentators believe the Soviets will be able to mount a manned Mars attempt in this century. No hardware directly linked to interplanetary flight has been tested. And the same daunting cost issues face them, too.

Over the long term, of course, voyages to Mars are almost certain. Settlement is also likely. At nearly every juncture in human history, movement to remote and supposedly untamable regions has led to new flowerings of life. Such expansions have increased human well-being through invigorated commerce, natural-science discoveries, political reformation and inventions flowing from new necessities.

The dilemma facing space exploration advocates is whether a fundamentally new concept is around the corner, or will take centuries.

“I look at it this way,” McKay explained. “Suppose Amundsen and Scott (first men to the South Pole, in 1911 and 1912) had known that if they just waited 20 years, they could fly to the South Pole in comfort, instead of having to make that horrible foot trek. Would they still have gone? I think so. And I feel the same way about going to Mars now, even if it means similar hardship conditions.”

On the other hand, Scott and his entire party died on the return march, and the timing of their discovery had no lasting significance. Twenty years later would have been plenty soon enough.