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Why Mars Instead of the Moon?
Maybe I am influenced by having read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress when it was first published, but I am wondering about all the recent PR for a manned mission to Mars — even by some people who are not named Robert Zubrin — and whether it is just the romance of going to another planet. The Moon seems to make much more sense for a first permanent base (i.e. not an orbital space station) for a number of reasons:
- It’s closer.
- There is micro-gravity.
- If you go underground, you might be in decent shape for protection against high energy particles.
- There appears to be water ice in some of the craters.
- Mining on the Moon might, or might not, be worth the effort of going there. (Isn’t a useful isotope of Hydrogen available on the Moon and not on Earth?)
- The Moon, being out of the deepest part of Earth’s gravity well is, from a propulsion energy perspective, about halfway to anywhere in the inner solar system.
So what are the arguments in favor of Mars and against the Moon, besides “been there, done that?”
Published in Science & Technology
It depends on what you need a base for, and — basically (heehaw) — you only need a manned one for PR and inspiration.
And to misquote Jim Morrison: “We just did the Moon!”
Mars is more romantic. Neither will probably ever be done with humans. Machines don’t need expensive life support systems or quintuple backups.
Couple thoughts from a non-scientist, in no particular order. The moon isn’t outside Earth’s gravity well; it’s just moving across the gradient at a speed that keeps it from falling on in or moving on out.
For colonies, the surface of the moon isn’t optimal; L4 and L5 are. It takes a potful of energy to get back up the Moon’s gravity gradient. Getting colony structures big enough to have a non-dizzying rotation speed to have an area of 1g acceleration for the sake of Earth-type life forms would be better.
For materials, the moon’s regolith is worth mining, but if we’re going to spend the bucks to do that, we’re better off using mass drivers (solar powered!) to shoot batches of the stuff to refineries/factories (the initial purpose of the colonies, along with science) at those Lagrange points.
Once we’ve gone as far as the moon, the Earth’s and the Sun’s gravity gradients are such that a significant fraction of the added effort to get to Mars is bound up in just grunting through the time to get there (and associated needs to cart along consumables like food and O2 and protection from solar radiation bursts). Mars’ regolith is worth mining, too, and so are its moons’.
Mars’ moons, too, have enough mass to solve some early structural engineering problems in building shelters and factories without having so much mass it takes significant energy to leave those surfaces.
Mars has other attractions: I can enjoy the view from Mons Olympus, and with a suitably large wing, hang glide off it. There’s also a potful of life science/origin of Earth-type life science to be done on Mars that can’t be done on the Moon. Mars appears to have liquid water and does have an abundance of dry ice. Mars has weather that, studied up close, should broaden our understanding of how weather happens.
He3’s primary use is in fusion power plants. Neither the Moon’s nor Earth’s supply of He3 does us any good for that, though, until we figure out how to do the fusion power plant part.
Eric Hines
I recall one scientist saying that the moon’s dust will jam all our machinery.
Are L4 and L5 the Trojan points?
Isn’t the moon moving further from the earth by 1 foot per year and will eventually leave Earth’s gravitational field?
Yes. Sort of. Trojans also are the bodies already present at a system’s L4 and L5 points.
Eric Hines
I rather like the idea of doing it with space stations. You can move them around and just go get what you want from worlds.
If we don’t go to Mars, we will never discover the secret of the Martian moons.
You meant Barsoom, didn’t you?
I can’t fault John’s logic about the relative resources of the Moon and Mars; hell, it’s tough enough disputing John’s logic about anything. But I’d like to put in a good word for the Moon. The obvious: it’s only three days away. We aren’t yet accustomed to long term stays on the “ground” anywhere, however defined. It might not be a crazy idea to try out equipment and techniques before we put nine months of distance between a crew and Earth.
I’ve never believed in the Arthur C. Clarke moonbase; I’d go for the Russian conception of a well stocked, fully outfitted station in lunar orbit, from which astronauts would take landing “jeeps” down to the surface for extended stays. Those surface outposts near Clavius or Harpalus would be spartan; the showers, fresh food, and big screen TV would be waiting in orbit at the end of each lunar shift of a month or two.
Then, sure, Mars is where it’s at, the only remotely conceivable alternative home for humans in the foreseeable future.
Because NASA is (arguably) about spectacle, not practicality.
If there are practical reasons to do something, it will be done by the private sector (barring overregulation).
You only “need” government to step in when the goal is impractical.
The US government has been to the moon. There’s no PR value to going there again. Heck, the PR value had already evaporated after Apollo 14.
Homo Sapiens Sapiens has been around for somewhere around 200 millenia (give or take).
How “foreseeably” into the future does one see a genuine need for extra-terrestrial migration?
Misthi, you have a point, and as usual it’s of diamond hardness. But the reason the Moon lost its PR value was essentially political: after the awe of Apollo 11 settled into the suspense of Apollo 13, the public was inundated with press-driven snark and skepticism from the heights of the culture about the value of Apollo. That’s how the public polled, you’re correct, but it was a low and dishonest time. Only a few years later, people wondered “did we create all this just to throw it away?”
Many of the things that inspire patriotism are spectacle, not practicality. The purpose of NASA was not to crowd out private industry; it was to make space valuable enough for private industry to take over a lot of it, and they have.
Megan McArdle had a good article in Bloomberg recently. She says a frequent, if not constant flaw of the Left is underestimating the motivational power of money as compared to mere intangibles like pride and prestige. But the reciprocal flaw of the Right is underestimating the real value of pride and prestige. Someone once asked me if I wouldn’t have been just as proud of the Moon landings if they’d been sponsored and branded by Citibank or General Motors (that’s how long ago it was).
My answer: No.
How about the flag raising at Iwo? Would it have been so iconic if the flag had been for Boeing or Westinghouse?
Westinghouse didn’t have enough divisions. They might have also been short boat thingies. The Left didn’t know that which was all to the positive.
Who knows? And not knowing means we don’t know. Which puts a premium on getting started.
There are two other reasons, too: because it’s there.
And
What joy to see, what joy to win
So fair a land for his kith and kin,
Of streams unstained and woods unhewn!
“Elbow room!” laughed Daniel Boone.
Eric Hines
With joy doused and hope distended,
All prospect of air long since expended,
With breath unsated and real water but a dream,
“What an impetuous death this must seem!”
“The Ballad of Los Alamos”, written before the Trinity atomic test, and here dedicated to anonymous:
“From this crude lab that fired the dud,
Their necks to Truman’s axe uncurled,
Here the embattled savants stood
And fired the flop heard round the world”.
Dan Quayle answered this question a quarter of a century ago:
The science is settled.
The engineering is not.
Why go all the way to Mars? Obama has alerted us to the existence of 57 states. We still have seven more states to discover right here at home. We’ve got a lot on our plate.
“But I just read Kim Strassel in the WSJ. She says there’s no market potential down there!”
“Shut the hell up. Holding steady. 10000 meters and descending”.
“Cash flow in the outyears will distort tax planning for major estates!”
“Holding. 6000 meters”.
“The federal reserve ratio is tanking. We need to alter the discount rate at once!”
“We have laser acquisition of the landing zone. Switch FC to LZ yellow”.
“The engines of capitalist prosperity are damaged by cheap Martian imports”.
“100 meters. Target red. We have acquisition. Fifty meters. Dust. Twenty meters.
Ten.”
One of the joys of Ricochet is the ability to get really educated people to tolerantly read ones’ mistakes and get them corrected. Okay, sometimes it’s a rough process. you can’t make omelets without breaking heads.
We have already claimed the moon for our Imperial units of measure. Now the race is on for Mars!
I think we need to do quite a lot of work before we start talking permanent residency anywhere. Primarily everyone just assumes that if we can get fuel we will be fine, but humans can’t live off of rocket fuel, and trust me when I say this as a biologist, getting things to grow on minimal and defined media is not an easy task. Our food represents a very complicated system of chemistry and energy conversion. It takes more than just some H2O and sunlight to give you your daily calories. And until we really have some efficient way of growing food in reduced gravity, light, and nutrient content we aren’t staying anywhere for long.
I don’t buy that at all as NASA’s “purpose”. My cynical heart says its real purpose was to put a human face on ICBM technology, and to rub the Russians’ face in American awesomeness. I do not believe “preparing the road for the private sector” was ever more than a glimmer of half a thought of NASA’s purpose.
A people must believe they are great in order to do great things. You cannot manage your way to greatness — you must lead. Apollo was indeed a human face on ICBMs. Kennedy and his guys were smart enough to use one to accomplish the other.
Old joke:
There are two kinds of countries: those that have put a man on the moon, and those that use the metric system.
I looked up the International Space Station, and saw that there is (or was) a one-year mission. Did they ever solve the problem of muscle and bone loss from long periods of zero g? Can people even make it to Mars and still be able to function?
All too true. The panic was all about ICBMs. That’s what motivated us. We pretended we were upset about the Soviets beating us in the technology game but the Soviets occupying the high ground was the one thing we couldn’t allow. The peace of the world depended on us.
Some say we should attempt a manned mission to Venus first!