Mars: 51st state
Let’s boldly go where no man has gone before . . . alone
In an interesting and surprising op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, astronautical legend Buzz Aldrin complains that the current U.S. space mission cannot assure America’s space dominance for the future. A space program focused on returning to the moon, he says, “will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies.”
Instead, he proposes a new, two-tiered space vision: the moon for all, Mars for us alone.
Writes Aldrin:
Now, I am not suggesting that America abandon the moon entirely, only that it forgo a moon-focused race. As the moon should be for all mankind, we should return there as part of an internationally led coalition. Using the landers and heavy-lift boosters developed by our partners, we could test on the moon the tools and equipment that we will need for our ultimate destination: homesteading Mars by way of its moons.
Let the lunar surface be the ultimate global commons while we focus on more distant and sustainable goals to revitalize our space program. Our next generation must think boldly in terms of a goal for the space program: Mars for America’s future. I am not suggesting a few visits to plant flags and do photo ops but a journey to make the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world.
The implications of what Aldrin calls the “Unified Space Vision” are as profound as they are enchanting and even amusing.
He lists several principal benefits to an American colony on Mars: establish a planetary laboratory to study climate change; improve space exploration while inspiring a new generation of students; spark the space technology industry.
The costs would also be immense. Not just the hundreds of billions it would take to launch the mission, and perhaps additional trillions to build and sustain an interplanetary colony. There would also be the human cost of lives lost to the treacherous conditions likely to greet our martian colonizers.
To me, however, the most intriguing question is what right we have to freely colonize the martian surface and transport people and materials through space. What happens when China launches a competing colony? Will we see “star wars” to conquer the choicest bits of the martian surface?
Finally, what will our obligations as citizens of the United States be to those who live (and are born?) on Mars? Upkeep costs will be astronomical (no put intended). To modify a popular political refrain, “should middle class Americans pay to support indigent martians?
The ethical quandaries that plague international relations will only be more ambiguous in space. Aldrin may have a powerful vision for how Mars can help America lead in the 21st century. But if we’re working with others to develop the lunar surface, would American extraterrestrial exceptionalism with regard to Mars spark conflicts in space? And would the aggressors be justified?
–Sam
Photo by Flickr user Kevin under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Related posts:
- Personal responsibility and the nanny state
- Space, the expensive frontier
- State skepticism
- Space: the final frontier of ethics
- Wild on: state secrets
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