On a
small island, athletes from around the world gathered to compete for the world’s
attention, not just medals and records, because on a large red rock, millions
of miles away, NASA was filming an autobot landing fit to rival anything
Michael Bay ever created in CGI. The Curiosity rover stole the show from an
event dating back more than a century in its modern variant: the Olympic Games.
Occupy
Mars: it’s a simple concept and one that took the Smithsonian Air & Space cover story this month. The
implementation, however, is more complex, and for no exceptionally well crafted
reasons beyond lack of legislative support. The powers that be simply don’t see
the viability of putting boots on the ground someplace new, someplace peaceful.
It
cost 2.5 billion dollars to put our most advanced robotic exploration vehicle,
to date, on Mars. It cost a sum insane to most individuals, but modest for a
government spending nearly four hundred times that on its military. Some people
see that 2.5 billion and think of the food, healthcare, or essentials it could
buy. 2.5 billion dollars is a pretty cheap gateway to the future when our
government spends tens and hundreds of billions on other programs with much
less of an impact on generations to come.
Curiosity
represents that moment in time where humanity stepped into a new era. Sure,
we’ve explored space for some time now, we landed men on the Moon many times
over, and put smaller rovers on Mars, but this is that moment where we, as one
human civilization, can choose to pull on the big-boy pants of a space-borne
race.
One
unique feature of Curiosity blows away all previous missions to Mars: limited
autonomy. With a delay just short of a half hour between communications and
commands, making the most of a rover’s power and viability can be tricky. With
its ability to make some decisions autonomously, Curiosity pushes the threshold
of AI and fully autonomous robotic systems.
Meanwhile,
we sit in our homes running our AC, and burning fossil fuels for power, amid
one of the hottest summers on record. Yet we complain about global warming,
like we aren’t contented to fester. Quite simply, there are too many people on
the one planet we inhabit, and we put an impossible burden on our home, our
natural resources dwindling.
Living
off planet is an obvious solution, but getting to that point on a large scale
can seem like a pipe dream; it doesn’t have to. Centuries ago, human flight
seemed like a pipe dream to nearly everyone but DaVinci, and today human
spaceflight has grown into a commercial enterprise. Nonhuman spaceflight makes
everything our industries do, on such massive scales, possible; it makes
reading this blog possible for almost anyone in the world.
Seven
billion is a lot of people, an understatement, any large percentage of which
would prove impossible to launch with current technology. Rocket propulsion is
not a feasible way to relieve our planet of human overcrowding while pushing
humans onto the threshold of a type one civilization. As Michio Kaku notes in
his Physics
of the Impossible, space elevators, made of carbon nanotubes tethered
at sea, could significantly reduce the resources required to launch humans and
mechanical components into orbit. Space elevators are decades away, but robots
aren’t; Curiosity is proving that, right now and everyday for the next two-plus
years.
Right
now, satellites, exploratory mission craft, robots, and machinery can be
launched into space with far less resources than a human of even similar mass
because they do not require the added weight of life support and other
consumables. With that advantage, robotic missions to establish human colonies
in space becomes much less of a pipe dream than a real possibility. Nuclear and
solar powered robotic platforms, working around the clock, could mine and harvest
resources from asteroids and enable us to build colonies around our solar
system.
The
asteroid belt is filled with raw materials, like ores and water, which could be
harvested to build centrifuge habitats with radiation shielding, life support,
and artificial gravity. Robotic systems can endure the slow journey of an
energy efficient, low acceleration ion drive which can power a completed
habitat’s return trip. In the many decades it could take to complete a
significant number of these habitats, we should also be able to complete viable
space elevators.
Positioned
in orbit around Mars, these habitats could provide a stepping stone to a full
human planetary occupation. Positioned in orbit around Earth, these habitats
could provide a means to a greener planet used increasingly as a farm.
Martian
exploration and space exploration alike may seem like a waste of dwindling
resources in these increasingly sparse times, but every new exploratory effort
pushes the limits of what we know. Every mission gives something back to our
world. True, pure, science is never without merit.