Why We Should Not Go To Mars

Recently I've seen some press about how the US will eventually colonize Mars.  We've sent some unmanned probes to Mars and they continue to make their way around the planet and send back interesting data that is certainly helping us learn more about what's going on there and what may have happened in the past.  Landing a probe on Mars and collecting information is a very cool achievement, but what is our next step and is there really a next logical step for us?  We're thinking about sending some people up there to colonize the planet.  

After thinking about this for awhile, I think colonizing Mars is a big mistake.  Sure, it would be a monumental achievement in terms of technology and exploration and we would surely learn much from the process of doing it, but what would it really get us in the long run?   

You can get on Netflix and watch that movie with Matt Damon and see what he went through trying to live there for a number of months until someone could show up and rescue him.  Really, who wants to grow potatoes in freeze-dried human excrement and survive on it?  I don't.  I'm not super excited about potatoes in the first place, and the thought of growing them in freeze-dried human crap and then eating them to survive isn't all that appealing to me.  I’d rather stay on Earth and make a nice pepper steak or some lasagna.

Think about it for a minute.  Would you really want to get on some kind of space ship and travel 5-10 months just to live somewhere as inhospitable as Mars?  And even if we did it, hasn't anyone read "The Martian Chronicles?"  That's some crazy shit.  And even if that's totally wrong (and it probably is), it is a warning that life on Mars could be something totally different than what we were expecting.  It would really suck to spend many months in some space ship and then end up in some desolate place that looks like Oklahoma except without the 7-Elevens.

Another reason I don’t think we should go is the cost.  Sure, we’re all curious about what we’d find there and it would be cool to check it out, but is satisfying that curiosity really worth billions and billions of dollars?  The new administration taking power in about a month is talking about cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security because they’re too expensive.  They’re calling them “entitlements” and categorizing them as discretionary spending.  Personally, I think the Social Security and Medicare deductions from all my paychecks for the last 45 years didn’t feel very discretionary.  I'd like to get it back someday as promised.  It seems to me like the money they plan to spend on exploring Mars could be better used to to meet some of the government’s existing obligations.  People will have no faith in a government that lies to them.

So let’s say we come up with a good reason to colonize Mars.  Using our current space travel technology, it takes between 5 and 10 months to get to Mars.  The time varies based on planetary alignment.  If we decided to colonize mars we would need to send a bunch of people there, say 20 or 30 to start and then send more on a regular basis.  You can’t send 30 people to Mars and then expect them to immediately start pumping out enough babies to colonize the planet.  We don’t currently have a space vehicle with enough space inside for 20 to 30 people.  And if we built one then we would have to build some kind of huge rocket system to get it into space.  Americans are good at building big things, but this thing would probably be a little too big even for us.  A better option would be to build it in space by sending up prefabricated sections and then assembling them while the whole thing is orbiting the Earth.  If they go this route I hope they don’t let Ikea get involved or it will take forever and we’re sure to have a lot of parts left over.

So once this monster was assembled and tested, we would need to start sending people up in small groups to get all the seats filled.  We would also need to send up enough fuel to power this thing for 5 to 10 months.  And food and supplies for everyone.  In a best case scenario it would take several years to do this.  But in our country we can’t just get something done.  It has to be done by committee.  People would be arguing over every minute detail for years, maybe even a whole generation.  It would take so long to get all the bickering done that, while waiting for everything to be sorted out, some of the colonists would certainly die of old age, boredom, or frustration and have to be replaced.

The whole scenario is not very practical right now.  Colonizing a new planet sure sounds sexy, but there are other things that are more urgent right now:  Dealing with the constitutional challenges we’re likely to face over the next 4 years, global warming, feeding and sheltering the homeless, basic human rights, and just finding a way for humans to all live together on the same planet without killing each other.  all these things will take a lot of money.  Maybe we should get this planet’s problems sorted out before we start working on ruining another one.