Martian Expectations

A monstrously huge symbol of our long-standing cultural expectations has been in the news recently with the successful first test mission of the Orion space contraption over this past weekend.  As far as expectations of this kind, this one may be primo, and almost without rival given the magnitude of the questions we hope to answer.  Not only that, it represents the spirit of exploration and adventure in a very basic way:  We get an idea to go somewhere no one has ever been before; it is intrinsically  dangerous as outer space is the least forgiving environment of all; and, though the mechanisms involved in traveling deeper into space are amazingly intricate and complex, the underlying story is simple in that it is a journey.  Of course, the cherry on top is the possible resolution to question of whether life exists outside of our modest little sphere, and there seems to be a reasonable expectation that it happened at some point on Mars. 

For anyone involved in the mission it can only be the realization of the ultimate personal dream and the most exciting thing they could possibly be doing.  For them, the question of it's value is moot.  To question it is to simply not understand its grand significance.  To doubt it's feasibility is to doubt the entire human spirit to overcome tribulation and achieve ever greater things. The scientists and engineers on the Orion team are some of the brightest bulbs out there and their achievements are also humanity's, bringing us all into the narrative.  A trip to Mars represents the culmination of an active centuries-old mythos of human expansion. 

That humanity has, in fact, ever expanded over the centuries, or millennia, doesn't preclude calling it a myth.  Myth in this sense is used the way an anthropologist would use it, in the same way I use "narrative".  Whether it's true or not cannot be proven, but has rather a plausibility based on enough evidence to make it seem true.  By definition, though, it cannot be "true" for the fact that it plays into our historical sense and on our expectations of the future, which cannot be proven "true" at all.  So, based on the stories of the past telling us of a trajectory towards the future doesn't prove that this or that will happen.  We just expect that it will.

Going to Mars is probably technically feasible.  I think the world's top scientists and engineers can figure how to do it.  Two questions, at least, that are not asked about it that come to my mind are:  Is it scientifically necessary to send humans and what do we get out of it materially?  On the first question, the cost-benefit of sending people or robots definitely favors robots for the simple reason robots don't have mothers.  Someday, maybe, but not today.  I suspect at least some part of the motivation for necessitating a return trip is so that the people who go there can bring things back with them.  If there is some fossilized life form contained within some Martian rock then scientists would have a Rosetta Stone of Martian natural history.

The second question is the more important in terms of the mission's ultimate justification.  What do we get from it as a means to further ever greater expansion?  One way to approach this comes from an insight by John Michael Greer thinking about the same thing.  He said, and I paraphrase:  "Death is not the opposite of life.  Space is the opposite of life.  Death is the natural end of life and that which has lived must die.  Space is what has never been alive and so is the opposite of life."  Space can't support life.  That we still wonder about life on other planets, meaning we have no proof of it, says something about the absolute necessity and primacy of Earth.  This is not just hippy talk.  It is first order logic given the incomprehensibly vast anti-life zones of Space. 

No trip to Mars and no settlement on Mars could ever sustain itself.  All the systems of life support could only be manufactured on Earth at a net loss to Earth and it's materiel.  What possible economic return could ever be had from a colony on Mars?  Apart from perhaps a few souvenirs which could be auctioned off at Sotheby's, I think there is exactly zero.  The whole point hitherto of Earth-based colonization has been to build self-sustaining, economically viable colonies to expand the mother country's trade network, resource base, and population.  In other words, they were investments expecting a return.  Mars would provide no such return.  It would be a one way money and material flow towards an economic wasteland.  In the deepest meaning of the word, it would be investing in a "dream".

With the trend lines here on Earth heading where they are, it might behoove us to re-examine our impulses to further expansion.  Not out of a sentimental, cuddly feeling for the home turf, but waking up to the zero-sum condition of the cost of human expansion and who bears the cost.  With the absolute number of vertebrates living on Earth cut in half since 1970, and with the climate poised to set more record high temperatures, the cost of our own success has been pushed onto nature.  In the final accounting, however, there is no difference between ourselves and nature.