I have a big crush on Tripathi for writing this article about Bush’s whole “let’s go to mars!” thing. I’m posting the complete text here because I love it so much, but of course: original baro link.
While, I feel that I’m a visionary, and would like to see people in space again in my lifetime simply for the inspiration and a lot of other (I now realize) pretty silly reasons, I would rather be eaten alive by flesh-eating bacteria than have this project be initiated by an idiot like W. Bush.
No oil on Mars
by Sanjai Tripathi
It has been suspected for a long time, but now it’s official. President Bush is a big government liberal.
Today the president is expected to announce the long-term plan for new missions to the moon, with a permanent base and the eventual goal of putting a person on Mars.
These have to be delineated to be effectively analyzed. The moon and Mars are both technically “in space,” but they aren’t very close to each other.
The distance to the moon is about 240,000, while Mars, on a good day, is about 130 million miles away. The difference isn’t literally light-years, but it is light-minutes.
The first question we should ask is, of course, how much will this cost?
The first President Bush thought that putting a person on Mars could be a good “vision” issue. He asked for an estimate in 1989, NASA came up with $400 billion, and Congress just laughed.
The current estimates floating around the press are anywhere between $50 billion and $1 trillion. These, however, are just theoretical plans. When developing a new technology, there are often unanticipated costs and setbacks.
For example, when the idea for the International Space Station was tossed around, also as a “visionary” idea for unifying the world’s nations for the purpose of discovery, its cost was estimated at $8 billion.
Today, $100 billion has been spent on the project, which still isn’t finished. In fact, it recently started mysteriously leaking air. Ouch.
Then there is the space shuttle program. Two of the five orbiters have exploded, killing all aboard. And these vehicles don’t even really venture that far from Earth.
The track record with Mars missions is similarly not stellar. Two thirds of the probes humans have sent to Mars were lost. NASA was just able to successfully land the Spirit rover, which is basically a remote controlled car packed with sensors.
But before that the Japanese Nozomi, the European Beagle 2 and the American Mars Polar Lander all were somehow lost or crashed in their journey.
So we can only imagine the cost estimate for a Mars mission will be huge, and the actual costs far greater, with a significant probability of lost lives.
The next question, which will be asked and presumably answered today, is of course, why do we want to go there?
One possible reason, which is tossed around by astronomy “enthusiasts” everywhere, is that Mars could someday be colonized.
The theory is that Mars’ atmosphere could be made suitable for Earth-like life by introducing engineered microbes and increasing carbon dioxide levels. They call this terraforming.
Unfortunately, this isn’t possible. The planet is too cold for liquid water needed for life, and there isn’t enough water. There isn’t enough carbon dioxide to induce the greenhouse effect, and there is too much solar radiation to support life in any case.
So while it is unlikely, I really hope the President cites terraforming and colonization as mission goals. For the President, who doesn’t believe in evolution or global warming, to say that we can alter Mars’ environment with microbes and greenhouse gases would be a tragically beautiful irony.
Unfortunately, he will probably cite the same “inspiring” three reasons that made the original moon landing so popular.
The first is the simple boost to industry and technology that would result from the mission. This, of course, leads to “jobs,” that wonderful thing that all politicians must promise.
Although simply spending that much money on anything would create jobs, that simple fact doesn’t give every expenditure purpose. In the old days, just a few years ago, real conservatives would get really angry about the idea of big government spending tax money just to give people jobs. They called it Socialism.
The second reason that will be carefully alluded to is that we want to be the best. The implicit purpose of the moon landing in 1969 was that it was a race with the Soviets. We had to win the battle of space and technology to win the Cold War.
There was some truth to the idea then, but that war ended a long time ago. We really don’t need to keep fighting it.
The third and most politically powerful reason likely to be cited is that such an event would be inspiring, and the President wants to appear visionary.
The first moon landing was indeed a tremendous moment in history. But that was a different event in a different time.
Back in ‘69, most adults had grown up without televisions, and many without telephones. The idea of traveling to a celestial object, even the nearest one, was a technological marvel. Many people hadn’t even been to another country on an airplane, and those who had got dressed up in nice suits to do so.
Now, people wear pajamas to fly internationally and we can see flashing color digital images of anything imaginable at the push of a button. We know we could put a person on Mars, and that sort of takes away from the wonder of it all.
It would be a gee-whiz sort of moment, but that hardly justifies the expected cost. The nation doesn’t have that much extra money lying around to play with.
The federal debt is now about $7 trillion dollars. This number is difficult to comprehend. To illustrate: if you lined up that many one dollar bills, at 6 1/8 inches each, they could reach Mars, go around it, and come back.
To better illustrate: that much debt is over $23,000 for every person in the country, even counting children, the elderly and the otherwise unemployed. About 16 percent of every tax dollar goes just to pay interest on our nation’s past overspending, most of which occurred only in the last 20 years.
The current year’s budget is expected to show a deficit of another $500 billion dollars. They say it is because of the economic cycle, even though the recession technically occurred in 2001.
So, today we will hear about some grand visionary plan to create government jobs, keep winning the Cold War, and produce a consciousness-altering experience for the whole nation.
I have a better idea. The Bush administration can buy everyone in America a dose of LSD and we’ll all pick a day to do it together. That would truly be historical and unifying, and the President would have codified his transition to that which real conservatives hate most; a big budget, big government, crazy hippie liberal.
Sanjai Tripathi is a columnist for The Daily Barometer. The opinions expressed in his columns, which appear every Wednesday, do not necessarily represent those of The Barometer staff. Tripathi can be reached at sanjaitripathi@netscape.net
