The Wake

At the dawn of 2004, just as Britney Spears was marrying and annulling Jason Allen Alexander in Las Vegas, and nine US soldiers were killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Falluja, President George W. Bush, hot on the re-election trail, stepped up to a blue-gray podium at NASA headquarters in Washington DC.

With childlike wonder he outlined a series of ambitious space exploration projects. He compared our current thirst for discovery to that of the Lewis and Clark Expedition two centuries ago, nearly implying a modern Manifest Destiny for the United States and our eventual conquering of our Solar System.

“Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond,” Bush said.

His speech climaxed with a bold statement greeted with roaring applause:

“With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond,” he said, grinning as his eyes darted back and forth over the faces of the astronauts and politicians in the audience.

Shortly after his goals were outlined Bush proposed a $1 billion increase to NASA’s budget over the next five years. He also asked Congress to accept a $521 billion deficit.

His budget recommendations and exploration intentions arrived on the wings of the Mars Spirit rover’s success. On January 6, 2004, the rover sent the first color photograph ever taken on another planet back to Earth. Additionally, in March of that year, Spirit found a rock (dubbed Humphrey) that hinted that water had existed on Mars at one point in time. This discovery has been a major driving force in the desire to explore the Red Planet, because water is the key component to thriving terrestrial life.

Six months after the President’s funding request, to his chagrin, the House shot down the increased proposal, deciding instead to cut NASA’s budget by 7% in 2005, knocking $1.1 billion off of the $16.2 billion requested.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who happened to be in the audience at Bush’s NASA speech, thought the House’s decision was “unacceptable,” but could do nothing to change it. Besides, the proposal also included extra funding for a new space shuttle ($4.3 billion) and $691 million for unmanned mars projects, in addition to the normal budget.

In April 2005, Bush appointed Michael Griffin to the top administrator position at NASA. With his knowledge of space (Griffin was formerly the head of the space department at Johns Hopkins University) the House was instilled with a newfound confidence in the exploration projects. In July, a subcommittee passed the NASA Authorization Bill of 2005, formally recognizing and supporting an exploration-driven agenda. The budget for the year also included a $200 million increase.

The ball continued to roll throughout 2006. In August, NASA granted a $7.5 billion contract to Lockheed Martin to build about eight separate spacecrafts (known as Orion) to take us to the moon. In 1996 (the first time the government worked with Lockheed on an exploration project), NASA awarded a $912 million contract to the aerospace manufacturer to build a space plane, called X-32, which was never built due to technical difficulties.

The year’s accepted budget totaled just over $16 billion and received a lot of criticism. In pushing Bush’s exploration agenda many other aspects of NASA’s budget suffered. To be specific, research grant funding decreased causing dozens of NASA employees to lose their jobs. Astrobiology funding dropped nearly 50%.

On September 24, 2007, just as President Bush announced plans to seek $200 billion more for the war in Iraq, NASA administrator Mike Griffin stepped up to the podium at the 58th International Astronautical Conference in Hyderabad, India.

“We are looking at the moon and Mars to build a civilization for tomorrow and after that,” Griffin said. He then explained the overall goal to have a human on the Red Planet by 2037.

This statement flared an already existing debate in the scientific community: why send manned missions to Mars?

Numerous scientists, who have criticized Bush in the past for being a President that doesn’t nurture innovation, argue the worthlessness of manned missions stating that our technology has made such voyages obsolete.

“You will find few if any scientists in favor of manned missions –[they are] just way too expensive for the scientific payoff,” says University of Minnesota astrophysics professor Dr. Lawrence Rudnick.

Instead, some members of the scientific community feel that robotics have reached a level of technological maturity on par with what humans could do on Mars. Additionally, they argue that while manned trips can cost billions of dollars, robotic missions could be performed for a few hundred million.

One of the major pushes for manned trips is to test the viability of terraforming other worlds. Terraforming is the process of altering a planet’s (or moon’s) physical properties so that it can be made habitable for humans.

There are numerous proposed ways to transform Mars into a livable environment. But they all revolve around the same key elements. First, the planet needs to be heated up (its current temperature ranges from -87°C – -5°C). The next step would be to alter the atmosphere, which is 95% carbon dioxide, in comparison to Earth, which is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with only slight traces of carbon dioxide. The final task would be to replace the magnetosphere, which blocks solar radiation (which the Earth has, but Mars lost billions of years ago).

Dr. Vicki Hansen, a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is one of the foremost researchers of extraterrestrial geology in the state of Minnesota. Her argument towards terraforming is simple: why?

“What’s the point in going to Mars?” she asks. “If it’s about resources, it’s a very stupid place to go.”

Some proponents of exploring and eventually colonizing Mars, like The Mars Society, are interested in seven main things: knowledge of the Earth, knowledge of Mars, a challenge, to light a fire under the youth of the world, to begin anew, to bring life to Mars (and thus, Mars to life), and to expand civilization.

Dr. Hansen is an advocate of exploring our surrounding planets. Her main focus of research is Venus, and she is actually in agreement with The Mars Society’s first and second reasons for exploration. Hansen, however, feels that the best way to learn about other worlds is to take the long view. By seeing the entire panorama of Mars’ topography and atmospheric makeup, we can know our own planet’s history much more easily. In sending men to Mars, she argues, we’re only getting a small glimpse of the planet – the area in which we land. An example she gives is the fact that we knew very little about the Earth’s tectonic plates before we were able to take satellite photographs of our planet. In the same sense, the best way to learn about our solar system is to step back and see it from a distance.

Many in the scientific community believe that the impetus for Mars exploration is purely political. Meaning, instead of having a lot of academic and educational merit, it is a way to improve the United States’ global standing and promote nationalism.

“The way all of NASA’s projects start out is political,” Hansen says. “Science is used as the prostitute to sell it.”

As the future approaches the present, we get closer and closer to the exploration of new frontiers. Science fiction is becoming fact, regardless of the motives. We are at the genesis of a new space race, where the stakes and risks have been raised. Only time will tell who will break the Red finish line.