After Earth, Mars is probably the most popular solar system planet in the mainstream.
For generations now, we’ve wondered over the secrets it could hold…
and, as such, it remains a major target area for scientific research right at the cutting edge.
However, when humankind successfully landed on the moon back in the late 1960s,
many thought that Mars would be our next port of call… and that’s never really materialized.
The question, then, is why? This is Unveiled and today we’re
taking a closer look at the reasons why NASA isn’t yet going to Mars.
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To understand why we haven’t been to Mars, perhaps we first need to consider why we did go to the
moon. Because despite the massive cultural significance and success of the Apollo manned
missions, it can be argued that there actually weren’t a huge number of reasons for them.
Of course, the lunar landings were a fantastic and unique research opportunity, but ultimately
it was the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States that drove us there.
So much of the motivation for the moon landings was linked to politics, diplomacy, and large-scale
one-upmanship. The Apollo missions were a display of technological superiority and advancement… to
the point where, if the Cold War hadn’t happened, getting to the moon may well not have happened
either. History shows that the Soviets, in fact, didn’t get there, opting out shortly after they’d
been beaten… and it’s not as though America has been hurrying back in the decades since Apollo.
On a practical level, spending billions to walk the moon just doesn’t make sense… and perhaps
that has dogged any proposed Mars mission, first and foremost. Whereas getting to the
moon had a clear reason why at the time (being the endpoint of the space race) getting to Mars,
until now, just… hasn’t really had the same. But what’s increasingly obvious is that interest
is building in the twenty-first century. And, today, NASA does have tentative plans in place
and is reportedly under official pressure from the White House to put humans on Mars by 2033.
But, also, there’s something of a new space race brewing. Both the China National Space
Administration (CNSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) want to send humans to Mars as well,
but with less concrete time frames. ESA simply has an undefined long term goal, for instance, and
it’s said that China wants to achieve it sometime between 2040 and 2060. Elsewhere, the Mars dream
has famously spread across private companies, too… and some are betting on those private companies
beating the space agencies to it. SpaceX, for example, is reportedly interested in not only
getting humans to Mars but also establishing a permanent settlement there. If plans go ahead,
it’ll be the first time that humanity has attempted to colonize another planet. The planned
missions have been delayed until now, however, with initial targets of a mid-2020s launch now
pushed back to the late 2020s or early 2030s. But still, with so many groups seemingly pushing
for the same thing, the question remains why it hasn’t happened already? With a “new space race”
powering imaginations, why hasn’t NASA itself reached a similar stage as it did with the moon in
the 1960s? Why aren’t we preparing for launch? Again, the political landscape could be key.
Arguably one of NASA’s greatest challenges is having to deal with the near-constant political
change in America. NASA, of course, answers to the government, it relies on funding from the
government, and to a certain degree its public image is driven by whatever administration is in
power at the time. It’s perhaps telling, then, that (as of 2022) NASA has experienced thirteen
different presidents since it was launched in 1958… and, apart from during the build-up to the
moon landings in the ‘60s, funding has rarely been stable, and in more recent years has often fallen.
America’s bipartisan backdrop has meant that the two sides of US government often don’t
share similar goals. With regard to NASA, it can mean that what one president orders, the next
cancels. For example, the goals set by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump,
across two decades between the years 2001 and 2021, have all varied. While Joe Biden again
changed stance upon his entering office. The chopping and changing has meant that
NASA has had to continually react to the new parameters it has to work within – including
at times having to recycle parts from past (but now shelved) missions to be used in new ones.
On the one hand, having a rotating source of new voices to drive the Agency forward can be
viewed as a major positive, ensuring that no one group has too much control… but, on the other,
perhaps it makes it difficult for NASA to ever get too deep into any one project. The funding
structure has been variously criticized to this end, as well. During the original space race
funding was through the roof, and NASA reached new heights relatively quickly by narrowing toward one
stable goal – getting to the moon. But just the moon (or just Mars) arguably isn’t enough anymore,
leaving NASA to divide up its constantly changing budget across multiple initiatives that history
shows might not even reach completion. According to Peter Diamandis, the CEO of space tourism
company Zero Gravity Operations, and speaking to “Business Insider” in 2018; “The agency is unable
to sustain consistent funding to do anything”. But, really, it’s not as though politics should
be seen as the only reason why we’re not on the Red Planet yet. There are a multitude of
technical challenges, too. Put simply, Mars is not an easy trip. First, there’s the sheer distance
between here and there. The moon is the farthest humans have ever been in space, but Mars is about
200 times further away. We’re talking months on board a ship in order to get there then,
plus waiting for optimum launch windows (where Mars and Earth are closest together) which
only come along roughly every twenty-six months. Fuel type is also a major issue at Earth-to-Mars
distances. Traditional fuel can be used, but it would take an incredible (and impractical) amount
to make the journey. Which is why, in the meantime, NASA (and others) are investing
in alternative technologies like nuclear fission engines… anything to make a spaceship faster and
lighter. We’re really only just breaking ground with all the on-Mars tech, too,
like spacesuits, habitats, and communications. All of which are essential for any proposed mission,
and may well have been optimized long ago had it been a priority… but, again, until recent
years when private companies entered the fray, there apparently hadn’t been as clear a need.
But, finally, care of astronauts is perhaps the chief concern for NASA, at this stage…
as the longer the distance to cover, the more time there is for something to go wrong. And, out
in the middle of space, even a tiny problem could prove fatal. The long-term physical effects on the
body of changing gravity need to be factored in; of radiation; of the loss of night and day. And
then, beyond the physical care of astronauts, NASA (and any Mars mission runner) has to account for
the unprecedented psychological toll, too. Until now, we’ve seen rare examples of individual humans
managing to stay in space for more than (or close to) a year, but those have always been on board
our relatively close-to-Earth space stations. By contrast, a round trip to Mars is a multi-year
ordeal, and for most of that you’re literally millions of miles away from home. While getting
to the moon was no mean feat for those few that made the trip for the Apollo program, getting to
Mars will require a whole new level of commitment. Once the rocket launches there’s no turning back,
and so the screening process for astronauts is lengthy, as well. So far, we’ve seen various
long-term isolation experiments take place, but still nothing to match a genuine journey to Mars.
And, in fact, managing the mental strain remains one of the greatest and most important aspects
for any vision of a Martian future. Scientists, technicians, engineers, psychologists,
and a whole host of others are having to navigate through a long, long list of unknowns with Mars.
These, in themselves, might then be considered enough of a reason as to why we’re still yet to
get off the ground. But, also, cast over all of that, there’s that constantly changing political
and social backdrop – which is particularly significant for NASA. As a public agency,
NASA’s targets can change year-to-year, government-to-government. Its budget
can rise and fall. And public opinion of NASA’s worth can change over time, as well.
It remains to be seen whether the emerging “new space race” will provide enough need
and enthusiasm to finally send us to a different planet; to finally turn us into an interplanetary
species. But, for now, that’s the real reason why NASA isn’t going to Mars yet.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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