The dream of Mars exploration has long gone out of fashion. At the same time, it is absolutely unclear what a person wants to achieve there.
Astronauts wade through the rusty-red sand, euphoric from the historic moment and low gravity. Of course, they have a camera with them. It takes a quarter of an hour for the first video to land on Earth. And here it is, a message from a distance of 270 million kilometers - "Mars welcomes humanity."
Will it happen soon? Will people be on Mars in the near future? Such an impression may arise these days. Over the past week, NASA's completed experiment has sparked violent reactions. Six young researchers lived in isolation in the highlands of Hawaii for one year to simulate life on Mars. A few months ago, the head of Space X and Tesla, Elon Musk, said that in 2025 he plans to begin colonizing our neighboring planet.
Shimmering Ruby
Of course, you can dream 40 years after the robot first landed on the soft sand of Mars. But so far this is nothing more than a dream - a controlled landing on Mars. Overall, this dream should disappoint all its fans. Indeed, over the past decades, mankind has practically not come close to its implementation. And so far there is no reason to talk about changes in the near future.
From the side of the Earth, Mars looks promising - a shimmering ruby in the night sky, onto which dreamers and science fiction writers have long projected their craving for distant wanderings. A place that many would like to visit, without knowing exactly why.
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A guided landing on Mars is a disappointing dream
When viewed from a close distance, Mars loses its charm. It is an icy desert with an average temperature of minus 50 degrees, where sandstorms can rage for months. The surface of Mars is dotted with salts, it does not have both a magnetic field and an ozone layer that protected us living beings from radiation from space.
People would be able to survive here with the help of high technologies, in limited habitats, where climatic installations would convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars into oxygen. Colonists must survive for 500 days. Only then will Mars again approach the Earth at a distance sufficient for a return flight. This, at least, is what the researchers' concept looks like.
The tired pioneers of Mars
Another option that private initiatives such as Mars One offer is travel without a return flight. Thousands of people have applied online to go down in history as life-weary Mars pioneers. Experts agree that volunteers will never fly to Mars. The financial risks of private initiatives are too great.
NASA's plans look a lot more elaborate. Since the 90s, mission developments have been on the tables of researchers and are constantly updated. So, in the 2030s, for the first time, a small spacecraft with habitable modules, supplies and a mini-nuclear reactor can be sent to Mars. In two years, astronauts can follow them and, after their stay on the red planet, return back to Earth.
So far, however, NASA is moving around this plan in a roundabout way. A new SLS launch vehicle and Orion spacecraft are under development. Both vehicles are focused on the study of the Moon. In the 2020s, astronauts plan to aim an asteroid, which will be previously recorded by spacecraft and placed in the orbit of the moon. Whether this effectively prepares the Americans for a flight to Mars is a moot point.
Faster than NASA
Elon Musk plans to fly to Mars faster. Already in 2018, a space capsule Spase X weighing from eight to ten tons should land on the planet. Thus, it will be ten times heavier than the heaviest cargo that NASA has ever sent to Mars. In the end, Musk thus plans to establish regular deliveries of cargo to Mars - to create infrastructure for Humans, which can land on Mars in 2025.
NASA may confuse these plans. For the agency, landing on a desert planet is not an easy topic. On the one hand, NASA's plans to send a man to Mars make it popular. Mars is featured in the community service of NASA and other space agencies. On the other hand, too specific statements are fraught with danger. Each detailed plan comes with a price tag. And a budget that is too expensive can quickly lead to a project slipping in political debate. NASA faced this when George W. Bush announced plans to send a man to Mars by 2018 in 1989. This should have taken up to $ 540 billion, which was immediately criticized by opponents of the project.
To this day, the main reason for skepticism among the political leadership is the fact that a flight to Mars will not bring clearly identifiable benefits. This can be a problem for Musk too. Why do you need to send people for huge sums of money across space and risk their lives?
New continent
The supporters of the project have three arguments at the ready. First, landing on Mars will give impetus to the search for extraterrestrial life. The planet's neighbor to Earth, perhaps billions of years ago, was warm, abundant water, not like Earth. Perhaps life was born there, perhaps it continued in the form of microbes. Humans are better able to search for such organisms than robots.
Elon Musk, CEO of Space X and Tesla Motors
Photo: AP Photo, Jae C. Hong
The second reason is that Mars can ensure the survival of humanity. In the event of a comet fall, a nuclear war or a man-made disaster, the Earth will become uninhabitable - a desert planet can become an accessible refuge.
But the most favorite argument is associated with a person's craving for finds. Through the Mars landing, humankind will, to some extent, enter a new continent, the unexplored America of the 21st century. This, of course, is associated with hardship. But still, such undertakings are worth it, because they expand a person's horizon, supporters of the project believe.
The cost of space travel is skyrocketing when humans fly into space instead of robots
Work in the service of science, life insurance, colossal cultural finds - these reasons are unfortunately untenable. For example, many researchers have mixed feelings about the human landing project on Mars. The cost of space travel rises significantly when humans are sent into space instead of robots. This money may not be enough to build telescopes or new research satellites. And in fact, humans are not that needed to find microbes on Mars. As the next major project, NASA plans to use a special off-road vehicle to collect soil samples on the surface of Mars and send them back to Earth. People on Mars cannot do anything more significant.
In addition, too much of the research budget should not be directed to Mars. Perhaps it has never been such a cheerful planet as PR specialists of space organizations paint it. Perhaps it was just a planet covered with an ice crust, on which glaciers periodically melted due to volcanic eruptions and falling meteorites.
The last refuge
In this case, the main reason for the permanent population of Mars is the fear of a global catastrophe on Earth. Whether it will really be possible to save humanity with an external refuge on Mars is unclear. The chances of a colony surviving without a regular supply from Earth are very slim.
The crater of the Spirit of Saint Louis on Mars
Photo: JPL-Caltech / Cornell Univ. / Arizona State Univ. / NASA
But what cannot be questioned is the historical importance of the journey to the red planet. Photos of people throwing Martian dust into the air will remain in the memory of an entire generation. But is this enough to provide the necessary political will?
The Martian adventure will cost hundreds of billions of francs. And SpaceX's cheaper rocket launches won't cut those costs too much. Thus, funding is becoming a big test, even for the incredible coalition of the USA, EU, Russia and China today. Today, the annual budget of NASA, which sets the tone in astronautics, as before, is $ 18 billion. During its heyday during the implementation of the Apollo program in the 60s, it was twice as large.
To patch these holes, a new, powerful reason is needed to send a man to Mars. A business model that will attract public and private investors. Or another impulse besides collecting geological samples. As long as there is no such motive, landing on Mars remains what it was before - a dream with great potential for disappointment.