Passage V

Visiting Mars on a Budget

With its distinctive red tint and its polar ice caps, the planet Mars has fascinated humans for thousands of years. There were ancient Babylonian astronomers who associated Mars with their war god Negral, to twentieth-century science fiction writers whose works become best-sellers, this planet has often been a symbol of ill will and danger.

The United States has competed with other countries to explore space. By 2003, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would of sent thirty spacecraft to the red planet, speculation has been prompted that a human voyage may no longer be the stuff of fiction. Few would deny that the idea of a human mission to Mars is exciting, who is ready to pay for such an expedition?

Recent reports suggest that the cost of a human voyage to Mars could run as high as 100 billion dollars. This is a startling number, especially in light of the fact that the International Space Station, the most ambitious NASA project yet, carried a projected price tag of “only” 17 billion dollars. In the end, NASA overspent on the International Space Station. (68) One can only imagine if the final price of a human voyage to Mars would be.

In contrast, the two Mars Rovers—robotic spacecraft launched in 2003—carried a combined price tag of less than one billion dollars. These Rovers are sophisticated pieces of technology, with the capacity and ability to examine soil and rocks. Their equipment may answer questions that have long been posed about the presence of water and life on Mars.

Sending machines unaccompanied by humans to Mars does drain some of the romance out of aging or older visions of space travel. In other words, we need to keep in mind that the right equipment can accomplish as much as any crew of scientists, if not more—such as a fraction of the cost. Before any astronaut boards a spacecraft for that distant planet, the staggering expense of such a mission should be carefully considered. (75)