False Hopes
In the first editorial of New Mars, Adrian Hon looks at the false hopes that the public have been presented on a manned mission to Mars, and considers the need of space exploration agencies and advocates to regain the public’s confidence.
While shopping in the nearby supermarket last week, a couple of friends drew my attention to the somewhat astonishing headline on the London Times Higher Educational Supplement that proclaimed, ‘Europe set to put the first man on Mars.’
Perhaps it’s simply that I’ve made the transition to world-weary cynic several decades earlier than normal, but my astonishment was quickly replaced by scepticism as I examined the article a little closer. As it turned out, THES was merely referring to the new European Space Agency Project Aurora, which maps out the policy for ESA’s next thirty years of space exploration. Project Aurora has the exploration of Mars as one of its primary goals and does not rule out a future human mission to Mars.
Of course, readers will be well aware that there is a significant difference between planning a human mission to Mars - as NASA has been doing, on and off, for the last 35 years - and actually finding the money to do so. Even so, ESA is taking a bold step by announcing its intentions to - someday - put a man on Mars. If only the media didn’t create false expectations by hyping it up so much…
In recent years, it seems that most space-related news that makes the headlines is usually of the sort I described earlier, such as the dubious, ‘Life found on Mars!” or, ‘New Mir station to be launched,” and laughable, “Russia to land man on Mars by 2020.’ There’s no doubt that they make for eye-catching material, but I do wonder exactly how much faith people still have in space agencies to actually deliver on these promises.
In contrast, the true successes of space agencies are all too often sadly and inexplicably overlooked by the media. Aside from the photogenic Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner, the heroics of the NASA teams responsible for the Deep Space 1, NEAR Shoemaker and Galileo spacecraft generally receive little more than a few column inches buried within the science sections of broadsheet newspapers, even though they would provide the most engrossing reading (after all, they’ve got human interest!). As a result, if you asked the average person about their opinion of the space programme, they would most likely reel off a few jokes about the failed Mars probes and mumble something about the International Space Station, completely unaware of the existence of the success stories.
However, this magazine is about Mars first and foremost, not deep space exploration probes. In order for space agencies and the space exploration movement in general to recapture the attention and confidence of the public, it’s essential that not only the failures but also the successes of space exploration should be highlighted. Furthermore, while publicity (usually) never hurts, space exploration advocates should be wary of making claims that might be misinterpreted by the media; we don’t want to be told for the tenth time that ‘[insert country name] will land the first man on Mars in 2020,’ knowing full well that such a mission has no political backing or funding.
Instead, agencies should aim to produce an ambitious yet achievable timeline of future missions that will be adhered to. NASA in particular has some expertise at fulfilling the first part of this, but notoriously unreliable at the second part. Many space exploration advocates, myself included, believe that widespread public backing is a necessary prerequisite for a manned mission to Mars - that public backing won’t be created through false promises, it will only appear once the public has regained its confidence and pride in its space programmes.
Filed under: Editorials on October 12th, 2001
This article echoes my thoughts on many of the ‘proposed projects’ outlined by several space agencies. I’ve got very sceptical about such releases which are usually accompanied by ‘artist’s impressions’, which then invariably never come to pass. It seems to me that many of the components for a ‘mars mission,’ if not in existence now, could be assembled in a relatively short time, and I for one would rather see more practical efforts towards a manned mars mission, however small, than yet more extravagent pronouncements about missions to be performed in several decades time.
I would have to be at least as enthusiastic about manned Mars exploration as anyone (… all right, Bob Zubrin is a hard act to follow!) But I’m probably a little more cynical about “the public” than Adrian is, although I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
It seems to me that waiting for “widespread public backing” before attempting to put humans on Mars is a forlorn hope indeed. The vast majority of people I’ve met have almost zero understanding of even the basics of our solar system. Anything higher than the cruising altitude of a 747 is science fiction to these people. Many think the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere is what keeps us stuck to the surface, which is why in orbit you’re “weightless”!
You see, most people are “flatlanders” whose universe is pretty much the neighbourhood they live in. They are blinkered by ignorance and have no conception of the mind-numbing grandeur and boundless potential of the world which begins just a hundred kilometres above their heads.
What if Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain had waited for “widespread public backing” before sending Columbus westward across the Atlantic? We’d still be waiting!
No, those among us who can feel in our marrow the need to explore space will probably have to fight this battle without widespread support. We can win it by appealing to the wealthy, the powerful, and the influential people; the public-opinion makers and the movers-and-shakers of this world. John F. Kennedy didn’t ask Americans whether to go to the moon or not; he as good as told them they were going! I admit the cold war helped but it was sheer charisma that pulled it off and the pride of being involved in a monumental and history-making work that kept it going.
Forget about waiting for the masses. They’re too wound up in the workaday world to look up at the stars. It’s the pioneers and the visionaries who will once more steer the world to a better destiny, and the masses will follow. History teaches us that this is how it’s always been.