Gwynne Dyer: India's race to Mars
The Curse of Mars also applies to Asian countries.
About two-thirds of the attempted missions to Mars have failed, many of them even before leaving Earth orbit, and most of the rest when they tried to land. Japan’s only Mars mission failed in 1998, China’s first try failed when the Russian rocket carrying its Mars orbiter into space fell back to Earth in 2011— and so India seized the opportunity to be the first Asian country to go to Mars.
Fifteen months after the decision was announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an Independence Day speech from the Red Fort in Delhi, India’s half-tonne Mangalyaan vehicle is ready to be sent off to the red planet. Unless the Mars Curse gets it, by the time you read this it will be in orbit, boosted there by an Indian rocket, and within two weeks it will set course for Mars.
There is something faintly ridiculous about India and China “racing” to be the first Asian country to reach Mars, but it’s no more ridiculous than the Russian-American space race of the 1960s. Besides, to be fair to the Indian Space Research Organisation, the launch window for making a relatively low-energy transition to a Mars orbit will close before the end of this month, and it won’t open again for more than two years.
Once Mangalyaan gets there, if it does, it will go into orbit around Mars and carry out various scientific experiments, notably a search for methane (an indicator of the presence of life) in the Martian atmosphere. At this point, various arrogant and/or sanctimonious people will point out that the American Mars rover Curiosity has already reported finding no methane on Mars, and that India is too poor to be indulging in such foolishness anyway.
The Indians will reply that NASA, the American space agency, also said that there was no evidence of water on the Moon— until the Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 reported the presence of water molecules in the lunar soil in 2008. They might also mention that if the United States waited until there were no more poor Americans before sending people to the Moon, the first U.S. mission might leave 50 years from now. Or maybe not even then.
The Indian space program operates on an amazingly small budget (about $1 billion a year), but it has put dozens of satellites in orbit that provide practical benefits for earthbound Indians: remote sensing, flood management, cyclone alerts, fishery and forest management, et cetera. But that’s all in near space; the question is really whether long-range space exploration is a rational proposition.
Nationalism is part of the motivation behind every country’s space program, and while it has its comical side, it does at least persuade the political authorities to provide the large sums needed. China is planning to land a rover on the Moon next month, and is talking about a manned landing there by 2024. That will certainly speed up India’s manned space program.
Like the old Russo-American space race, the Chinese-Indian one will accelerate the development of new technologies and techniques. It will fill some of the gap left by the loss of momentum in the older space powers, and some useful science will get done. But the biggest reason for welcoming the entry of major new players in space exploration is the one that everybody is too embarrassed to mention: the future of the human race.
Well, almost everybody. Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, the private company that aims to dominate the delivery-to-orbit service once provided by NASA, actually wants to create a human colony on Mars in his own lifetime—and he’s 41 now.
He is a serious player, whose large fortune (derived from his creation and subsequent sale of PayPal) is now devoted to manufacturing electric cars and building space transportation systems. Both projects are prospering, and he sees them as providing the financial and technological basis for pursuing his real goal: spreading human beings beyond this single planetary habitat while the launch window for that is still open.
Musk was quite frank about that in an interview with Rory Carroll in the Guardian newspaper last July. “The lessons of history suggest that civilisations move in cycles,” he said. “You can track that back quite far— the Babylonians, the Sumerians. We’re in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it might not.
“There could be some series of events that cause that technology level to decline. Given that this is the first time in 4.5 billion years where it’s been possible for humanity to extend life beyond Earth, it seems like we’d be wise to act while the window was open and not count on the fact that it will be open a long time.”
I’ll let you in on a little secret. That is a big part of the motivation (though a rarely admitted part) for half the people who work in any of the national space program, including India’s. They value the science, and they may even revel in the glory from time to time, but that’s what it’s really about.
Comments
14 Comments
Dennis Ryan
Nov 4, 2013 at 1:30pm
I have been an amateur astronomer and a space enthusiast for years. While the "space race" has had some benefits, we need a new moral mindset to venture into space. It must be cooperation, not confrontation, like has happened with the space station. Do we need to embarrass ourselves to the cosmos with our animosities or show ourselves for what we really are, the human race. If we haven't experienced "first contact" yet, it because we still emphasize the former over the more morally important latter. That's how we must venture into space: united. It's not idealism, but actually very practical in every way.
Bruce
Nov 4, 2013 at 1:35pm
There's no way we'll set up colonies at current funding levels. If you funded manned space launches at 100x the current level, comparable to the military, it might be possible, but that's not going to happen.
But an off-site data backup might not be such a bad idea. Every book and movie every made is probably already digitized, and the cost of scanning the DNA of tens of thousands of species is reasonable now. The cost to scatter a few copies around in salt mines or dark, cold lunar craters would be relatively low.
Lee L
Nov 4, 2013 at 11:38pm
The cost of contraception is far lower and far more necessary.
John Can
Nov 5, 2013 at 7:05am
Another benefit for space is that it can be the methadone for militarism. That Mars colony sounds great, but it'll never happen until we start spending on space like we spend on defence. Yet it could happen. The same constituencies receive the money - big high tech industrial contractors and their friendly politicians. They won't mind so long as it keeps coming, and they can crow about world peace and stuff.
wtf
Nov 5, 2013 at 7:09am
@Lee lets start the contraception with you :)
Bruce
Nov 5, 2013 at 10:38am
John: That's exactly what the international space station's expanded role for Russia was rumoured to be really about, a way to keep the former USSR's ICBM engineers busy and their families fed, and keep them off the black market.
Howard Trottier
Nov 5, 2013 at 1:04pm
I almost always find Dyer's analysis and insight to be original and persuasive. But on the notion that the future of humanity depends on the colonization of other planets he largely repeats the bromides that are all too common in the popular press. Far from "everyone being too embarrassed to mention" the future of the human race as a "rational proposition" for long-term space exploration, there is far too much loose talk, some of it by people who should (and probably do) know better. A more typical Dyer-like scrutiny is very much in need.
What are the chances for permanent colonization of another planet, on the time-scale of the looming climate change crisis? What is the rationale for investing enormous resources (trillions of dollars and many of the best scientists, engineers, and industrialists) in such a tenuous project, instead of in an all-out effort to save all of humanity? What is the morality of attempting to propagate the human race on another planet while billions die a lingering death on Earth? If governments are too paralyzed by short-term political calculus to confront climate change, what is Elon Musk’s calculus for trying to colonize Mars instead of leading by example in an all-out assault on climate change?
Then there are claims that litter the popular press that we should colonize other planets as a hedge against the next extinction-level asteroid/comet impact. What is the risk-benefit analysis for investing trillions and talent to address a threat that is on the time scale of millions of years, while numerous terrestrial threats that are *far* more immediate are neglected? Not one person was killed in the much-hyped Chelyabinsk asteroid impact last year, while 250,000 died in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, and more than 15,000 in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan (with environmental consequences that will last decades).
Finally, Dyer contends that for "half the people who work" in the space program, human colonization is "what it's really about". Space scientists and engineers do talk about human exploration as a long term goal (and make no secret about it, despite Dyer's suggestion otherwise), but that’s motherhood and apple pie. These people work like dogs because they are driven first-and-foremost by the science (which, far from lagging as often claimed, is in a great golden age of discovery).
McRocket
Nov 5, 2013 at 3:26pm
So, humanity should spend trillions of dollars to have a few dozen/hundred humans permanently on Moon/Mars?
If it is ALL privately raised money - I am for it (though I think it's still rather silly - though very interesting). If it is all or mostly publicly funded - I am totally against it.
Millions of children dying of preventable illnesses/conditions - and a bunch of blowhard politicians want to take tax payer monies (that most governments do not even have since they are running such massive deficits) so as to stick a few dozen people on the Moon/Mars? Asinine.
And the notion of doing all this just to preserve humanity? That is even stupider PLUS monumentally arrogant.
In this scenario, humanity is so pathetically useless that it destroys itself - yet some/many people actually think it's so important to preserve as much of this loser species for the ages. Why? To show the universe how not to run a planet?
Umm, I think they can figure it out when they land here and realize the people on here wiped themselves out.
And what do you care if the universe knows about us when we are gone - you won't know one way or the other. It's that age old fear of the masses of immortality. If they cannot have it in life - they want to pretend to have a little of it in death.
DR-Montreal
Nov 5, 2013 at 6:19pm
I see Trottier made most of the points I was about to so I won't repeat it.
I would note one basic fact though--humans need oxygen to breathe and without it in the atmosphere you are obliged to basically live in a tank or operate outside in some sort of scuba gear or spacesuit.
As for "terra-forming" Mars to get an earth-like atmosphere, current estimates (made by those seriously considering this wildly unlikely outcome), are that humans could walk around without supplemental oxygen within 1,000 years after the terra-forming project got fully going.
We cannot even contemplate completely exploring the deep ocean beds on earth it is so inhospitable, and so the obvious conclusion is that we should repair the damage we have done to Terra itself before we dream of seeking out some new planet to be likewise "blessed" with our presence.
UrbanSurvivor
Nov 9, 2013 at 8:07pm
I see this article manages to pull out all the hateful misanthropic joy-less Chicken Littles.
Well, Trottier, haven't you heard? Even the BBC is saying Global War..I MEAN "Climate Change" (chortle) isnt happening. We ALL know it's a scam to further crush the Western middle class.
And McRocket? Just because your tiny life isnt worthy of note, the collective (pardon the use) greatness of mankind is certainly worth preserving.
Time to give up the Kool-Aid and make our way to the stars. You dont do good by constantly berating the "bad".
You do good by doing good.