New Mars

Stuart Atkinson comments on this week’s news of NASA’s new nuclear powered spacecraft project - Prometheus - with a healthy dose of realism, thoughts about cloning, and life on Mars and in the universe. It’s not science that will get the public to support a manned mission to Mars, argues Atkinson - it’s all about life.

If the recent breathless TV and radio reports are to be believed, next week’s State Of The Union speech by President Bush won’t just make the headlines for its inevitable anti-Iraq diatribes. It may be seen by future generations as as historic a speech for the space program as Kennedy’s legendary “We choose to go to the Moon..!” address in Texas in 1961. If today’s newspaper articles are accurate, then the Dream may be about to come true - President Bush may be just days away from handing NASA a cheque for a cool billion dollars, payment for the development of a revolutionary nuclear propulsion system, Prometheus, which would slash interplanetary travel times and allow the US to land a man on Mars by the year 2011.

I don’t know about you, but my first reaction was “Where the **** did that come from?”

Then, after taking a deep breath, a more worrying question formed in my mind.

“Why?”

Or rather, why now? Why this sudden interest in space exploration, especially at a time when the world is on the edge of a devastating Middle Eastern conflict? Why is President Bush suddenly so determined to gallop at full speed towards the High Frontier, and, Tom Cruise style, plant a Stars and Stripes land-claim flag in the martian dust in a space-age version of “Far and Away”?

Maybe he’s had an epiphany, a moment of blinding revelation. Maybe he has a genuine desire to advance our scientific knowledge, to boost research, development and education. Maybe he sincerely wants to seize the moment and expand Man’s horizons, opening-up a noble new frontier -

Sorry, I got a bit distracted there; a pig just flew past my window…

Let’s face it, this Prometheus story is either a complete myth or, at best, the result of an over-eager reporter misinterpreting NASA Administrator O’Keefe’s comments and adding 2 and 2 to get 100. But What If? What if there’s at least a grain of truth in the story… could this be the start of something big?

It’s tantalisingly possible. Despite the way he is portrayed in the popular media, Bush is a clever and astute politician, with his fingers on the pulse of his nation. Economically savvy, he knows - or at least, has been told and understood - that initiating a manned Mars program would boost the US’s ailing economy, particularly the post-9/11 struggling aerospace industry.

Then there’s the political angle. Just as Apollo did, a manned Mars program would undoubtedly boost the US’s world image, reminding everyone just how innovative and bold they can be. Ten years’ worth of TV coverage of sleek nuclear spaceships taking shape, astronauts training… well, that would show the world just how Super the last remaining Superpower is, wouldn’t it?

And let’s not forget that there’s a new kid on the spaceflight block who the US might think needs to be shown just who owns the schoolyard. China may be just a matter of months away from launching its first “taikonaut”, and if that mission is a success then who knows how fast and how far their space program will advance? Perhaps Bush senses the beginning of a new Space Race, and is determined to maintain the US’s lead - indeed, feels driven to forge ahead and make a dash for Mars, thus rendering any headline-grabbing Chinese (or Indian? I keep reading reports of their ambitious plans) manned lunar flights irrelevant.

All those scenarios are credible, and basically good news for the world at large. A newly-energised US would be good for everyone. But there’s another, equally credible scenario, which is rather less of a reason to cheer the Promethean rumours. Could this all be about the militarisation of space?

It’s no secret that the US military looks up on a clear night and sees not the star-strewn thing of beauty that I see as an amateur astronomer, but the ultimate High Ground from where they could watch, and if necessary attack, their enemies. Low Earth Orbit, and beyond that the Moon, are excellent hilltops, 21st century Fort Sumners from which to monitor and control battlefields. Could Prometheus be a subtle, backdoor way of developing nuclear propulsion technology for military purposes?

If all this sounds like kicking a gift horse in the mouth - after all, this could be great news! The announcement we’ve all been waiting for, right? - then I’m sorry. I’m as excited as anyone reading this about the potential consequences of a serious nuclear propulsion program being kick-started by a committed Administration… it’s just…

Well, I can’t help but think back to a certain other US President, I forget his name, standing up on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing and proudly announcing that America was going to conquer space. “First, for the coming decade - for the 1990s - Space Station Freedom - the critical next step in all our space endeavors. And next - for the new century - back to the Moon. Back to the future. And this time, back to stay. And then - a journey into tomorrow - a journey to another planet - a manned mission to Mars.” There was much celebration at the birth of the Space Exploration Initiative… but a decade later SEI is just a memory, and a bad one at that. The Space Station is over-budget and behind schedule. There are no firm plans to send more people to the Moon. And that “journey into tomorrow” is at best ten thousand tomorrows away. SEI was a grand vision, but less than a year after its birth the infant was being buried, smothered by inflated budgets and unrealistic dreams. The infamous “90 Day Study” was cast out of the airlock and sent tumbling into the insatiable financial black hole that is NASA’s budget, never to be seen again.

And I can’t help wondering if Prometheus is doomed to suffer the same fate.

But let’s be positive, and instead of kicking it let’s stroke that gift horse on the nose. Could this really be the Phase Change in the space program we’ve been waiting for so long and so patiently? Perhaps, just perhaps… If it takes us to Mars then it would be wonderful. But we can’t just go for the sake of it. We have to go for a Good Reason. The Right Reason. And in my mind, there is only one, which I came face to face with, literally, over the holidays.

One night over the New Year, before going to bed, I set my alarm for 5am. Nothing unusual about that; it is the time I get up usually anyway to start my day and head out to work. But this time I was getting up for a special, much more personal reason. According to my computer’s planetarium program, if the weather gods were kind - and they hadn’t been recently - then my reward from the Universe for dragging myself out from under my duvet would be a very special visual treat indeed…

I woke up with a start, and peering out the window saw clear sky, stars shining above the roof opposite. Phew… Wriggled into my clothes, pulled jacket and gloves on, opened the door quietly then stepped out into the cold pre-dawn, my breath forming silvery clouds in front of my face as I rubbed my hands together and raised my sleep-gritted eyes to the sky -

Well, I thought, smiling despite the aching cold, look at that…

The software had been right.

I turned a slow circle on the spot, greedily drinking in the view. Low in the west, a subtly gold-hued star was almost touching the bare treetops. But I knew it was no “star”, it was the famous ringed planet Saturn, shining at me from half-way across the solar system. A little to Saturn’s left, and slightly higher in the sky, a brighter, bluer star was shining - another planet, Jupiter this time, our solar system’s emperor, or at least its king. I turned my head more to the left, panning around until I was facing the south-east, and smiled as I found myself staring at a dazzlingly-bright blue-white lantern: Venus, , by far the brightest thing in the sky, looking more like a jewel than I’d ever seen it before -

- and there, a finger’s width to the right of the Morning Star, a fainter star the colour of amber, a tiny glowing ember against the coal-dark cloak of the night. Mars. And looking at it, I knew that if I had been stood on its ruddy surface at that very moment, instead of the surface of my own warmer, wetter home planet, I could have looked back and seen Earth shining close to Venus, the two planets forming a breathtaking pair of “Evening Stars” after the shrunken Sun had set.

Of course, as an amateur astronomer of some 30 years experience I’ve seen planetary line-ups countless times before, some much better than this one, and usually I’ve been content just to stand there enjoying the view and thanking those cruel weather gods for co-operating for once. But this time was different, because this time there was something else happening in the world that gave the scene even more meaning. If the news reports from the previous day had been correct, then as I was looking towards the stars from my backyard, somewhere else on Earth a very special baby was sleeping peacefully, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her tiny fingers clenched into a tiny, defiant fist, ready for the prejudices, troubles and battles she will inevitably face.

If she actually exists, then Eve, the first cloned human being - the first person effectively designed and built by scientists from a single cell and ladder of DNA - Changes Everything. Leaving aside the moral, religious and ethical implications for now, if she really was born on Boxing Day then Eve is a gurgling, yawning scientific marvel. If experts are right, then congenital defects may mean poor Eve’s life may be meteor-short. I hope not. But whatever happens, the blackboard of human reproductive biology was wiped clean with Eve’s first soiled nappy and is now blank again…

But I know what you’re thinking: what on Earth - or Mars - have a visually-attractive but scientifically-uninteresting planetary line-up, and the alleged birth of a cloned baby, got to do with the exploration of Mars by kick-ass nuclear-powered spaceships? Why would they be of interest to any reader of these pages?

Because what I saw up there, and around me, as I thought about the arrival of little Eve, made me realise just what we have to do - what angle we have to take, what fight we have to win - to first get public interest in, and eventually support for, a crewed expedition to Mars, regardless of how, and when, it happens. It wasn’t exactly a face-slapping epiphany, I don’t believe in those anyway; it was more of a deep, heartfelt internal sigh as an inescapable truth, suspected for some time, finally dawned upon me.

It’s all about Life.

As a species we are fascinated by Life. We are driven, with a ferocious, insatiable hunger, to learn all we can about its origins and fate, strengths and frailties, limitations and possibilities. Justifiably, we spend vast amounts of time, and money, trying to find ways of extending Life. Perversely, we spend even more time and money inventing, building and selling to others weapons to use to destroy Life.

And we look for Life with an obsessive passion. For centuries we have travelled the globe looking for new forms of Life in dense jungles, under the ocean and now beneath the ice. We are now, with ambition and optimism, starting to search for Life beyond Earth, and are fascinated by the possibility of its existence. That’s why I got up so early, to see Life in the sky - or at least to see an intriguing panorama of potential homes of Life Out There. When I looked at Saturn, shining just above those skeletal treetops, I knew that one of its moons, Titan, may have alien life on its cloud-covered surface, and that we’ll know in a few years time when the Huygens probe lands there and sends back pictures . When I looked at Jupiter, flickering and flashing above and to Saturn’s left, I felt a familiar tingle when I thought about all the places Life may be lurking there: perhaps underneath the icy crusts of its moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, perhaps even within the storm-wracked clouds of the mighty gas giant itself… If some optimistic exobiologists are right, then perhaps even the acid-saturated clouds of Twinned-With-Hell Venus, the gorgeous Morning Star which blazed above the mountains and fells, may harbour hardy alien microbes…

…and of course, looking at the ruddy spark of Mars, a pencil’s width away from Venus, set me thinking about all the places Life might be clinging-on there: dark, underground caverns, thermal vents in the shadowed depths of Marineris or Labyrinthus, maybe even within the rocks themselves… All I had to do was stand there, look up, and I could see half a dozen places in my own cosmic backyard where Life, however simple, might be waiting to be found…

And now, while some astronomers search for primitive Life on the surfaces of Earth’s sister planets with robots, others are designing telescopes which will one day take pictures of Earth-like worlds orbiting other stars. Within a decade we should have the first photo of a “New Terra”, and when it appears on websites, TV screens and the front pages of newspapers around the world that first image of a tiny blue-green world shining like a painted marble against the blackness of deep space will have the same impact as the first Apollo photo showing Earth as a whole disc. And of course, as you read this, SETI astronomers are aiming sensitive electronic ears at the sky, straining to detect whispers from advanced alien civilisations on planets orbiting distant, mysterious stars.

So, you see, in the end, it’s all about Life. Understanding, encouraging, creating Life - that’s what we, as a species, do. It may even be, in the grand scheme of things, why we’re Here in the first place. Maybe the scientists who dedicate their lives to solving the hallowed Drake Equation are wrong, and there are no other civilisations Out There. Someone has to be first, after all. If it’s us, Man, then it might be our role, our responsibility, to spread life across the stars, across the Galaxy, who’s to say otherwise?

Until recently that was a moot point. But now, if the reports are true, we may have found a way to side-step the established and popular natural method of human reproduction and can - I hesitate to use the word - manufacture human Life to order. And in bulk. Maybe it’s just the next natural step of Evolution, maybe it’s something we have to learn to do if we’re to fulfil our Universal Destiny, who knows?

Not me, that’s for sure. But I do know that standing there as the eastern sky brightened with the approach of dawn, I realised that it all comes down to one thing: Life. And it’s the quest for Life, and our desire to understand it, that will eventually take us to Mars.

Because as much as we like to tell ourselves otherwise, people, The Public, whatever you want to call them, are not excited by, or even interested in, the geology of Mars. Unlike the people who read New Mars, they are not excited to hear that the Global Surveyor has taken the highest resolution images yet of craters in the southern highlands. They don’t bat an eyelid at the latest news report describing the Odyssey probe’s latest hydrogen measurements. “So what?!” is the collective response to an announcement that new Themis data suggests Mars was once warmer and wetter than it is now…

We like to kid ourselves that this isn’t the case, that the Public are as excited by these things as we are, but come on, let’s face it. They’re not. And that’s the truth of it.

Ah, but even whisper a rumour that Life has been found on a meteorite from Mars, or drop even a hint that a spaceprobe photo shows something artificial on the Red Planet, and boy, do ears prick up!

Which is why, I truly, sincerely believe that there’s only one way we’re going to get people to support a manned mission to Mars - and that’s to dedicate such a mission to the search for Life there.

Thanks to decades of enjoyable but hopelessly over-optimistic science fiction, The Public have “aliens” in their hearts, minds and souls, and there is a fascination with the subject of extraterrestrial life that grows stronger and deeper every year. There are many different camps, of course. While many - most? - are happy to look up on a clear night and, considering the number of stars in and the size of the Universe, and the odds against Man being the only intelligent species in it, Believe, others believe that aliens buzz the Earth and its inhabitants every day, that the sky is full of cosmic joyriders swooping around in their hot-rod flying saucers with glorious disregard for the world’s air forces and air defence systems, only stopping now and again to either abduct some poor hapless (and, conveniently, always camera-less) truck-driving pig farmer from Idaho, or use the downdraught of their anti-gravity drives to cut breathtaking Mandelbrot set patterns in corn fields. Still others believe that even if the sky is devoid of aliens now, it certainly wasn’t in the past, and that on at least one occasion a UFO crashed, was recovered, and is even now being taken apart, “back-engineered” in the hope of revealing its secrets. You’ll have your own view on that one, I’m sure.

But why? Why is there this desperate fascination with the existence of aliens?

Simple. As a species we’re lonely. And we’re scared of the dark.

Why? Well, ever since we began to realise just how big the Universe is, and how small we are, we’ve had a growing feeling of insecurity and vulnerability. We look out on a clear night and with our naked eyes and can see thousands of stars. A humble pair of binoculars reveals entire other galaxies, vast pinwheels of billions and billions of more stars. Now the Hubble Telescope is taking images showing tens of thousands of galaxies in areas of sky no bigger than a marble held at arm’s length… That’s a lot of space, a lot of stars. It makes us tinier than tiny. If we allowed ourselves to believe that we were the only intelligent creatures in the immensity of the Universe it would drive us mad, so of course we feel lonely, and scared.

And so we yearn for the company of others.

We are a social species, Mankind; we want the company of others, it’s bred into us, we’ve evolved that way. Our ancestors didn’t live alone, they didn’t want to, they needed interaction and co-operation so they lived in groups, in families. That hasn’t changed. The building blocks of our civilisation are population centres - towns, cities, etc. And now we know that our “world” stretches out billions of light years in all directions we want there to others out there to talk to and interact with, we want there to be aliens, we want it so badly we can taste it. Ideally they’ll be humanoid, with only subtle differences to us - a wrinkled nose here, a pointed ear there - and they’ll speak perfect English (with a West Coast twang) or at least have a handy translator device, so we can talk freely with them and learn all about the secrets of the Universe from our new galactic neighbours. But even if they’re not that familiar, then fine, we still want them around. So what if they’re just transparent globs of gloop drifting aimlessly around in the icy waters beneath Europa’s crust, or mere flaking patches of lichen found underneath a martian rock, or even microscopic bacteria scooped up out of the swirling clouds of Jupiter, they’d be a start, right? Because if there’s gloop, lichen or bacteria here, then surely there must be more advanced life Out There, right?

And we seem to have a particular obsession with finding Life on Mars. Remember the furore back in ‘97, when news broke - prematurely, it turned-out - of the discovery of fossils in a martian meteorite? The world went crazy! The scientists, to be fair, had only been announcing initial results which suggested a possibility of martian life, but as usual the media added two and two to get twenty, and before we knew it every paper’s front page was declaring “We Are Not Alone!” and Bill Clinton really was standing on the White House Lawn - this time without Jodie Foster or James Wood at his side - beaming with pride at how Americans had made the “Greatest Discovery Of All Time”.

Now, it’s rather calmed down. No-one’s sure either way. But the legacy of that breathless day remains. Ask people on the street, in the bar or in the store if they think there’s life on Mars and it’s a fair bet that they’ll tell you all about the fossils contained within ALH84001 as if the case was proven there on Day 1. As far as they’re concerned, yep, sure there’s life there, it was in the paper after all.

Which is why, going back to my point, the only way we’re going to get people to support manned exploration of Mars - with or without Prometheus - is to focus on the Search For Life there. If we tell people their hard-earned dollars, pounds, Euros or Yen are going to be used to send people to Mars so we can learn more about its weather systems, rock formations or dried-up rivers then they’re not going to want to know. But if we tell them we’re going there to actively look for life, to find out once and for all if there really are “martians”, then they’ll sign up for the ride, I’m sure of it, I really am.

Even if Prometheus becomes a reality, and we learn how to build and fly its 75,000 mph nuclear rockets to Mars in just two months, it will almost certainly still be the middle of the next decade before the first crewed ship reaches the Red Planet. That means there’s a lot of old-fashioned chemically-propelled hardware to send there yet, years of planning and robot-reconnaissance to do first. So we have time to - and should, and I think must - begin to target our efforts towards looking for Life.

How?

I believe, whether Prometheus becomes a reality or not, that we have to make sure that every unmanned mission despatched there has a genuine “Life Quest” element. Rovers should only be sent to areas deemed promising for life, not just to safe areas where they’re not likely to tip over or be distracted by anything interesting, and actively sniff, test and look for life or its traces. Orbiters should image the crumbling rims of the craters with spy satellite resolution, seeing once and for all just what those mysterious gullies are, and see if there really are “wet and warm oases” on canyon floors as some exobiologists hope.

And we have to go back in time too. I am so, so tired of reading reports in science magazines and on websites debating whether or not Gil Levin’s Viking lander biology experiments did or did not reveal the existence of microbial life in the Martian dust. Can’t we have a determined effort to solve that riddle once and for all? Can’t we use our 21st century technology to go back and re-examine the tests, try and figure out just what the hell did cause those spikes on the graphs? I mean, for pity’s sake, we can dig up the bones of Neanderthals and tell what they had for their last breakfast, what colour their hair was, what their favourite TV program was, almost. Instead of wasting time, money and energy fighting rumours that Armstrong and co. never actually walked on the Moon, why can’t NASA go back to those intriguing results and see if they can learn anything new, and stop pretending they never happened? At the very least it would help techs design equipment and procedures for future missions.

But the chances are that Martian life won’t be discovered by a mobile laboratory or an eye in the sky and all our unmanned missions will just show us where Life isn’t to be found on Mars. Fine. Their failures will just tell us where we have to go and look in person.

It’s always been that way if we’re honest with ourselves. We just have to admit it, bite that bullet, and focus. Yes, the weather systems, geology and other aspects of Mars are all fascinating in their own right, and to the scientists who study those subjects, but now, today, they are not fascinating to the man or woman in the street.

So. Deep breath. Where do we go from here?

Like I said, we - and by “we” I mean NASA, politicians and space advocates such as ourselves - focus, and be honest, with ourselves, each other, and the people who we are asking to pay the bill for our dream. We rein-in all the noble speeches about it being our “destiny to explore” and put on mental hold, if only for a while, our lofty plans for colonisation and terraforming, because until the question of native Martian life is solved they’re Not Going To Happen Anyway. We make a case for going to Mars based on one simple thing that everyone can understand - we want an answer to the question that haunts us more than any other: Are We Alone?

In short, whether we go there in hi-tech Flash Gordon nuclear rockets, or less glamorous chemical clunkers, we have to put the adventure back into going to Mars. In all our years of talk about political constitutions, manufacturing, flag design and Mars/Earth economics we’ve lost that. We’ve lost the wonder.

Prometheus may be nothing more than a reporter’s over-enthusiastic misinterpretation of a leaked rumour. Or it could be something more. I guess we won’t know for sure until President Bush stands up and lets us in on the plan. But I do know that something is happening. I can feel it. Can’t you?

There’s an old Chinese proverb which would be both fitting and ironic in the circumstances: “May you live in interesting times.”

I have a feeling that times are about to get very interesting indeed.

Filed under: Articles on January 25th, 2003