Burning Your Spaceship

So, I'm distracted another day from the bare necessities of education because I read an editorial in the New York Times yesterday that really threw me for a loop: One-Way Ticket to Mars. The notion, proposed by this article, is that we could develop human spaceflight to get to Mars (and the moon, too, incidentally, though they don't mention it) if we didn't have to worry about bringing the crewmembers back.

Yeah, that was my reaction. Now, he mentioned giving it some thought before going with the gut reaction and I've done that (my gut reaction wasn't complimentary). He is also correct when he says a one way trip is drastically easier and less challenging than a round trip. That saves consumables for round trip and two different "landing" vehicles ( you only need one), plus all the propulsion to come back and leave the surface of Mars. And you and I both know that getting volunteers would be no problem - people would still be lined up around the block (especially scientists) to go even if we cheerfully told them they only had so much time before they'd asphyxiate when they got there. Oh, yes, it would be way easier.

But, no, I think this is an abysmally bad idea.

What really surprised me is that I talked to my boss and others and they were kind of shrugging. My boss pointed out that Cortez scuttled the ships when he hit the shores of Mexico (and sent me a religious website that extolled the virtue of committing, come heck or high water, to something with the implication that the devil is the one that incites one to plan an escape route which, I suppose puts Cortez on the side of God. Um, hard for me to see him as the protagonist, but I digress.). My boss also noted that the scruples that would undoubtedly make such an option ugly to us might not bother the Russians or the Chinese - which would give them an opportunity to leapfrog past us.

So, why, besides my innate safety-first mentality, makes me think this is a bad idea?

Well, first, as much as I'd like to admire the foresight of Cortez, he was an asshole who was putting his men in a position where they had to defeat and conquer the Aztecs or die trying. That was pure unadulterated greed and the quest for glory that came with a pretty big price tag for the natives. He wasn't starting a colony - he was conquering a nation.

But the rationale isn't comparable anyway. There is food, water, air in Mexico. You just have to work with the natural resources. Nowhere in the solar system can we say that except for the surface of our own planet. Historically, an escape hatch, a path of retreat has been the difference between survival and failure many times - with the usual result of failure to have an escape route being fatal. In other words, having no retreat is stupid. Going somewhere where you can't even survive outside without one goes a step beyond stupid.

Secondly, although I understand people would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the opportunity to explore other planets, suicide missions are the sort of thing one does as a last resort. If we were facing a cataclysm, taking a one way trip makes sense - a chance to get something when catastrophe is your only other alternative. But we're not.

And, here's the next question - what are we hoping to accomplish? If we are really to conquer the stars, we're going to need to figure out how to go where we want and come back. When we went to the moon, we walked and brought back, not just astronauts, but all they saw and heard and felt and learned about wandering about another planet. We brought back pieces of our other planet. We learned lessons about landing and taking off that we would never have learned if we'd just sent them one way. We had to do it right to do it at all.

And that's it. I'm not interested in climbing Mount Everest 'cause it's there. I want to go out into space with a plan. I want to go out there for good, not as a publicity stunt or to gather a few data points before biting down on my cyanide pill. I want to be there so I can use what I learned to go further, faster, smarter next time, to find a new horizon because I really beat this one.

We've already proved we know how to send things to Mars. Going with men means getting them back because that's the real achievement.

In my opinion.