By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education
[Note: This is part of Harry’s series on Mars, which began with “Mars One: Exciting Adventure or Hoax?” (4/8/13). As of 12/8/13, the discussion is still very active and has grown to 585 responses. Many of the comments are of article length, and the breadth and depth of information and participation make the discussion just as if not more valuable than the original article. The article has been tweeted 38 times and mentioned in 284 Facebook posts, and these figures are growing by the day -Editor.]
Mars is in the news again.1 And again. It seems that everyone is going crazy over Mars. The problems of getting to Mars are many and difficult, but that’s not stopping plenty of people from making plans and issuing press releases.
When I think back to my youth, I recall reading my first science fiction novel in a small local library after school in 1953. It was E. E. (Doc) Smith’s story of space travel, one of the Skylark series. At that time, no one had even put a tiny object into orbit.
A mere four years later, Sputnik I was launched, and the world entered the space age for real. Rockets to space were no longer science fiction. The next year, 1958, the United States put Explorer 1 in orbit. It weighed about 31 pounds. Dwight Eisenhower was president then. We were in the middle of the Cold War, and Nikita Kruschev was in charge of the Soviet Union. Both his picture and that of Sputnik I were on the cover of Time magazine the previous year. Indeed, if memory serves, he was the “Man of the Year.”
No one knew how much payload could be put into space. No one knew the effects of prolonged weightlessness on people. The Van Allen radiation belts were discovered and verified by Explorer 1 and Explorer 3 in 1958, raising the issue of radiation in space.
Despite the lack of experience in putting satellites in orbit and the great uncertainties in putting a human in space, the United States not only put men into space but even put them on the Moon just eleven years later. ELEVEN YEARS! Starting from a tiny satellite in orbit, a lunar landing module weighing over 1,000 times as much and holding two people landed on the Moon in that short time.
Those who say that we can’t put people on Mars in 10-15 years don’t remember the magic decade of the 1960s. You have to watch out when you use that word, “can’t.” The Mars Direct program was proposed in the 1970s and was to have people on Mars by 2000. That didn’t happen, and technology has advanced enormously since then. It’s more possible today, and it’s still a very tall undertaking. Continue reading
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