Why We Fly
A Tribute to Heroes What might have happened, and I hope did not.
It's Not Face Mountain, It's the Slag Pile 12 Miles From Face Mountain
Or go to mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/01_31_01_releases/cydonia/ and download Photo M18-00606 and look at the Slag Pile. Look at the ground immediately to the east of the Slag Pile. We better find out what that is.
Almost no one is saying, "It's not worth it."
Not the families, not anyone.
When people have said it's not worth it, they refer to treasure, not blood. They would like to see the money spent elsewhere, or even kept by the taxpayers. Given how small the NASA budget is, compared to the military spending or to Social Security, health care, welfare, "War on Drugs", or education spending, there are many candidates for economy if tax relief is the desired goal. The most compelling argument is that unmanned missions are much less expensive, whether for hauling freight to orbit or for exploring the planets.
And yes, there is a great deal to learn with unmanned probes. Near Earth satellites make the modern communication and Internet systems work. They can be delivered with unmanned Titan, Ariane, Proton, and Energiya rockets for considerably less cost than by manned Shuttle.
But NASA has always understood, and the Congress and Presidents who have authorized it know, that without sending humans into Space, the people will ask: why do the science? Why should the public who pays the taxes and elects the Congress support space exploration without the humans?
You can argue that we all benefit from all of the inventions that result from the engineering and science expended in the Space Program. True enough, but the same could be said for military spending. Germans made use of Robert Goddard's rocket ideas to rain bombs carried by V-2's on England. From the V-2's, we and the Soviets developed solid and liquid fuel rockets that can rain nuclear fire on the whole of the Earth. Our Space Program is made possible by this aspect of the nuclear arms race. It was President Kennedy's ploy to get us to fund the rocket science needed to deploy the nuclear deterrent.
But most of these inventions would have happened anyway, without either the military or space research. Velcro, computers, and medical imaging technology would have been developed for the same reason Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer. Sometimes the world will buy a better mousetrap, and its inventor will become rich. Fahrenheit made his fortune selling those little thermometers. While he had military customers, military spending did not cause us to have the benefit of a means of measuring temperature and giving it a numerical value. It was profit motive that gave us that. Fahrenheit preferred wealth to poverty and figured how to get wealth the best way: provide something useful for which people will gladly pay.
Thus neither the science nor useful inventions provide us with any reason compelling enough to bother with a Space Program and with all its attendant risks.
So why do we fly? Why did it work for President Kennedy?
Because there is something amazingly romantic about a man or a woman walking on the Moon. By constructing a large Space Station, we create the possibility that we can use it as a platform from which to send a manned mission to Mars and to any other planet, moon, or asteroid within the Solar System. We send unmanned probes to Mars not because it is less expensive. We send the probes because so far, that is all that is possible. And yet many of those who participate in the sending of such unmanned probes display an unbelievable lack of appreciation for the romantic reasons the rest of us are willing to pay for their research.
I'll give you an obvious example by what I mean. A few years ago, we sent a little platform with solar energy cells to Mars, with an electric motor and wheels that used the solar energy to crawl around at less than an inch per second. This little device went over to a rock named Barnacle Bill, after a cartoon character. At least our NASA scientists have a sense for whimsy. Using tiny instruments, the solar powered Rover determined that Barnacle Bill is made of quartz.
Hundreds of millions of dollars to determine that some rocks on Mars are made of quartz!
This is all fine and dandy. But 2,000 miles away is the feature millions of Americans wish we spent as much money to research. Yet the scientists were annoyed by this desire. How can we consider using the rare resource of the Mars probes to look into that stupid butte! Taking this resource away from their important science!
Most likely Face Mountain is nothing more than a butte eroded by wind and sand. But those 1976 Viking photos fired the imagination of everyone who is not one of these annoyed scientists. It bespeaks a possibility so romantic that if we determine once and for all that it is nothing more than a wind eroded butte, we will be, like the woman and her boyfriend who find out she is not pregnant, disappointed.
Even so, we are willing to pay for men and women to walk around Face Mountain and wonder if it is only a natural feature, or is it, like Mount Rushmore and the Sphinx, carved.
We are willing to be the men and women who walk around Face Mountain, even if at the end of the trip we burn up during re-entry because of a mechanical failure.
That is why almost no one is saying it's not worth it.
It's Not Face Mountain, It's the Slag Pile 12 Miles From Face Mountain
Then again, maybe we better not spend too much time at Face Mountain. We better check out what is around and underneath the Slag Pile 12 miles away. Either we have fossils of giant Martian worms, or we are looking at the remains of an underground base exposed by wind erosion. It may not have been there that long, or it would have been completely exposed. See mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/01_31_01_releases/cydonia/ and download Photo M18-00606 for further details.