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Speaking at Kennedy Space Center last month, President Obama tried to reassure critics that the administration's new, scaled-back plans for NASA won't constitute a deathblow for manned space exploration. "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth," Obama said. "And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."
Critics such as Dr. Robert Zubrin identify a marked difference in tone between this speech and President John F. Kennedy's 1962 "We choose to go to the moon" speech. Zubrin is the founder of the Mars Society, an international association committed to furthering the goal of exploration and settlement of Mars.
"I have to say that I was very disappointed with President Obama's speech, which claimed a nominal goal of sending humans to Mars but put it so far in the future that he doesn't have to do anything real toward achieving it," Zubrin says. "Mars is the right goal, but it needs to be a goal, not a dream."
Why should Mars be a goal? And how can humans benefit from exploring it?For Dr. Adrian Brown, a SETI planetary scientist searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, the most obvious benefit of Mars exploration is the advancement of science.
"In trying to reach out to the next frontier, we always have to reach out to the limits of our technology," Brown says. "Just consider the Age of Discovery. We wouldn't have invented such precise timekeeping and navigational technology if we didn't need to in order to cross huge expanses of ocean to reach frontiers in Asia, Africa and the New World."
In other words, to satisfy our human thirst for exploration, we'll have to push technology even further. In the same way that the 20th century space race gave us such innovations as long-distance telecommunications and water filters, the technologies we develop for Mars will affect life on Earth.
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