I spoke to a University of Houston undergraduate communications class this afternoon (taught by Dwight Silverman), and toward the end I asked if anyone was excited about human spaceflight.
In a class of 15 to 20 kids, not one raised his or her hand. They were excited about things like medical research and artificial intelligence.
Recently I wrote that NASA needs to take some risks if it’s going to make great leaps in exploration, and I also believe the “great leap” within our grasp is putting humans on Mars.
In a budget-constrained world, given the challenges posed by radiation and launching with enough propellant to blast back off Mars once we get there, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that if we’re going to go to Mars in the next half-century, it probably will be a one-way mission.
So far the space agency has shown very little interest in the idea.
I recently had a conversation with five-time astronaut Scott Parazynski, and asked him whether the risk of going to Mars without the likelihood of return would scare off qualified candidates.
“Qualified people would line up as far as the eye can see,” he said. Send 50-year-olds, and tell them it may be just a one-way trip. Say “Hey, we’re going to try and come get you, but we’re going to send you enough stuff to try and build a colony there.”
So that’s today’s question: Should NASA give up planning for a round-trip mission to Mars that may never come, and replace it with a more feasible one-way trip?