“If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we put a man on the moon?” goes the old joke. Fact is, we probably can put someone on the moon but without the threat of Russia getting there first (as was the case in the 1960s), the motivation just isn’t there anymore. Today, it’s increasingly hard to justify spending ever-increasing hundreds of billions of dollars to return to our nearby rock in space. Back then, the reward — to prove capitalism trumps communism — was apparently worth what were, in retrospect, huge risks.
Risks that the space agency is unwilling to take today. Those daring “right stuff” test pilots of the Cold War have been superseded by more regular folks. “Astronauts are not some separate species,” says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, quoted in a recent article in Scientific American. In 1967, when three astronauts died in the Apollo I fire, the program was barely affected, while today a single fatality could doom NASA’s current Artemis back-to-the-moon program, so shaky is its political support. (Actually, most of that support comes from neo-cons who are afraid, not of Russia, but of China. NASA Director Bill Nelson recently made no bones about it: “We don’t want China suddenly getting there and saying, ‘This is our exclusive territory.'”)
If you look for why we’re going back to the moon, other than the ridiculous Chinese “threat,” NASA offers several equally fatuous reasons, including “scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers … and [to] explore deep space for the benefit of all.” That last one is NASA-speak for going to Mars, the moon supposedly being the beta test for Mars. However, the challenges of going to and living on the moon, and doing so on Mars are orders of magnitude different, and there’s very little to be gained by returning to the moon if the real goal is the Red Planet. For instance:
Duration: The moon is three days away, with total length for NASA’s proposed Artemis mission about two weeks. Mars is nine months away using the most efficient trajectory. Total mission length: 34 months, during which time the health hazard of cosmic and solar radiation is just one of many critical problems to be overcome.
Landing: Then there are the different EDL (entry, descent, landing) requirements. To drop down to the airless moon from orbit, you just need a reliable retrorocket, as used in the six Apollo landings. With Mars, astronauts will be hitting the planet’s thin atmosphere at around Mach 2, enough to burn them up but not enough to slow them down sufficiently. Hence the various combinations of using atmospheric drag, retro rockets, parachutes, inflatable bags and “skyhooks” used to put Mars rovers safely on the surface.
Gravity: On the moon, it’s 18 percent of Earth’s. On Mars, double that percentage, so hardly analogous.
Communication: One-way transmissions from the moon take just over a second. From Mars, it’s between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on where the planet is in its orbit relative to Earth.
Dust: Moon dust — an under-appreciated hurdle, in my humble opinion — is jagged and corrosive. After three lunar excursions in 1972, Gene Cernan’s and Harrison Schmitt’s suits had been abraded to the point where a fourth excursion wouldn’t have been safe. Mars dust, while still a huge challenge, is more benign, having been eroded smooth by wind.
Water: While obtaining water on Mars (for drinking, irrigation and rocket fuel) will be hugely difficult, it’ll be a snap compared to the situation on the moon. Whatever water is on the moon is in the form of deep frozen ice (25 degrees Celsius above absolute zero) located in craters near the south pole that never see sunlight. Mining and liquefying it will be far from a trivial problem, with one physicist comparing it to retrieving water from concrete, only much harder.
Bottom line: It makes little sense to claim that NASA’s Artemis moon program will prepare us for Mars.
Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9yahoo.com) would like to see NASA focusing its manned space efforts on Mars.
This article appears in Flash Fiction 2024.