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The Martian Federation Society
Copyright 2017 by Raul E, Lopez, MD
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Why NASA Won't Go to Mars
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Recent NASA decisions show us that government lacks the leadership to go to Mars.
NASA answers to two groups of people, congressmen and lobbyists. – Lobbyists represent the large aero-space corporations, who, ultimately, are the principle constituents of NASA, rather than the citizens of our country. The more expensive and complex is a project, the more money these companies make. These companies are not necessarily evil, they simply have no motivation to present cheap plans to NASA since they would make less money on these projects. Furthermore, making a product cheaper and more efficient means spending money on research. Therefore, not only would such projects make less money, they cost more company resources, are more complex, and have higher risk. Congressmen also like large expensive projects because they create lots of "pork-barrel" jobs for their constituents. For the same amount of money, research creates jobs for less people because researchers are more expensive to hire. Since votes are rightfully apportioned by head (one per person), not by intelligence, congressmen naturally favor projects which create the most jobs for the money. These two forces biases NASA towards complex, expensive, but inefficient and uncreative projects. Two examples illustrate this point.
The space shuttle is unnecessarily expensive and complex. – The space shuttle is a hybrid vehicle. Unlike biology, one frequent characteristic of hybrid human designs is that they are not as good as either one of the products they combine. They are usually not viable until the two things they combine become very cheap by themselves. Examples of such products which for many years failed are the car-plane, the video-phone, and the many hybrid products shown on late night TV. The car plane, or the flying car is still in the future even though some interesting prototypes have been produced. The idea of the video phone existed for many years but did no become viable until cell phones and flat screen TV's became a cheap commodity. Even so, skyping still works best with a laptop and most people use their phone in exclusively in voice mode when making phone calls. Even though the day of the space plane will probably arrive, the recently retired space shuttle was neither a good rocket nor a good airplane. The structural components which allowed its descent to be controlled (such as wings, rudder, and landing gear) added to its weight and limited the amount of payload which it could lift into orbit. The complexity of its shape made construction and maintenance unnecessarily expensive. For example, every single heat tile on the shuttle has a unique design, which means that each tile is custom made, making impossible the savings afforded by mass production.
The International Space Station (ISS) also serves no useful purpose. – There are no resources in orbit except sunlight, a great view, hard vacuum, and weightlessness. Since there are no material resources in low Earth orbit all food and supplies must be lifted from Earth at an enormous cost. The purpose of ISS is not to produce electricity or to take pictures of the Earth, these tasks can be performed much more cheaply and effectively by an unmanned satellite. The purpose of ISS is to commercialize the benefits of weightlessness and to study its effects on the human body. However, we already know the effects of several months of weightlessness on the human body, and it is unlikely that any manned trips in the next few decades will last more than several months. Any trips of longer duration will probably use artificial gravity produced by rotating the space ship. The commercial benefits of weightlessness appear to be somewhat limited, consisting mainly of the growing of specialized crystals and the manufacture of ultra-pure materials. However, vibrations created by the movement of humans can disrupt these processes. Therefore, these processes can be best exploited using robotic orbiting labs which may be controlled from earth. Furthermore, such labs would be much cheaper than manned orbiting labs.
The most valuable resources of space lie in the planets of the solar system, their moons, and the asteroids and comets. The resources used to build and operate the space shuttle and the international space station could have gotten us a long way towards establishing a partially self-supporting colony on Mars, its moons, or an asteroid.
The history modern exploration shows us that government lacks the kind of leadership necessary to go to Mars.
Much of the expansion of the European peoples and culture which occurred during the last 500 years was spearheaded by the effort of individuals or small enterprises. Christopher Columbus was a single man with a dream. He was hugely more successful than the Portuguese king Henry the Navigator whose voyages around Africa preceded those of Columbus. The Spanish conquistadores, for better or for worse, were individuals on a quest. These early conquests were sanctioned by the Spanish kings, but the design and drive behind these ventures were the dreams of individual entrepreneurs.
Many of the original British colonies in North America started as commercial ventures of small associations of merchant adventurers, which were the stock issuing corporations of the day. The British influence in India began with the presence of the British East India company, a commercial venture. The armies followed the traders. Even Hawaii was taken over by a small group of businessmen and plantation owners.
Of course, where humans go evil goes mixed with the good. We do not endorse all the methods used in the expansion of the European people. However, we now face an opportunity to colonize and exploit uninhabited and unclaimed lands full of unmeasurable wealth. We will attempt to do it a justly and equitably as possible. However, both ancient and recent history suggest that governments such as the United States or the United Nations will not be the driving force behind the colonization of space, our new frontier.
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