Recently, the Planetary Society called for major changes in US space-exploration plans. Specifically, it recommended bypassing the Moon in favour of Mars. Harrison Schmitt (the only scientist to have walked on the Moon) resigned from the society in protest (read the Planetary Society's response here).
This actually harks back to the Planetary Society's beginnings. In its early years, the only form of manned space exploration it favoured was an (international) Mars expedition. All other ideas that involved humans in space were counterproductive and undesirable, to hear the Planetary Society tell it.
This obsession with Mars was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. However, some of the reasons advanced against it strike me as poor - sufficiently poor that they weaken attempts to argue for a more systematic and balanced space effort.
An exclusive focus on Mars does have one thing going for it. If you believe that any resumption of manned space exploration will inevitably end the way Apollo did, with follow-on programmes cancelled and flight-ready hardware consigned to museums as soon as the programme's first objective is met, then choosing the most interesting single destination makes sense.
However . . . haven't we learned anything from doing that once? To me, it makes far more sense to try to build a programme that won't crash and burn as soon as it scores its first goal. That means systematically building capabilities and infrastructure, and doing first things first even if they aren't the most exciting parts.
Whether going to the Moon, in itself, builds capabilities that will be directly needed for Mars is more debatable, however. The two environments are too different; too much of the hardware will have to be different too.
Capabilities for in-orbit assembly of large expeditions would be helpful, but current US ideas for the return to the Moon explicitly avoid orbital assembly. The reasons for this seem to me to be weak and mistaken. Supplying fuel for a Mars expedition from the lunar surface is often suggested, but it's hard to make it pay off - Moon bases are expensive, and just buying more rockets to launch fuel from Earth is relatively cheap.
Some argue that although the hardware and infrastructure won't transfer directly, the experience will. Maybe, somewhat. But lunar experience won't deal with many of the most important issues for a Mars expedition.
For example, NASA's Mission Control bureaucracy will face a painful culture change for Mars, because Mission Control will have to become Mission Support. The communications delays between Earth and Mars can be half an hour or more, so the people on the ground can't participate minute by minute in Mars surface activities. The crew on the surface will have to make their own decisions and deal with their own crises. Even much of the equipment monitoring now done from the ground will have to be done on Mars instead.
Could we rehearse this on the Moon? Certainly we could. But will we? The communications delay for the Moon is only a few seconds, and so the temptation for Mission Control to continue its micro-managing ways will probably prove irresistible.
By far the most important reason to go back to the Moon first is simply that we've barely started exploring it! The Moon may not be quite as appealing as Mars, but it's still a complex and poorly understood world, with many questions still unanswered. The more closely we look, the more strangeness we find. (Indeed, one area where lunar experience might be useful later is for getting some idea of what's needed to thoroughly understand a new world. It's likely to take more time and effort than we now expect.)
In the same way that the Moon was the logical first step, setting up shop there permanently is the logical next step. If our goal is systematic exploration and development of the solar system, rather than Cold-War-style "space spectaculars", there is no reason to postpone it, and every reason to do it before venturing farther afield.
Finally, in a similar vein, going back to the Moon will also establish a useful pattern of patient effort towards long-term goals. If nothing else, claiming that Apollo was enough attention to the Moon amounts to claiming that six brief visits are sufficient to explore a whole world - surely not the sort of precedent the Mars enthusiasts want to set!
Henry Spencer, computer programmer, spacecraft engineer and amateur space historian (Illustration: NASA)
I could not agree more. Mars is a gem of a planet, not much going on, close... but technologically speaking ... DIFFICULT to land on, send gear to and also difficult to orbit. (our planets record of visiting that planet isn't to great, we tend to blow stuff up on it and or bounce off it)
The Moon, is logical in pushing man's footprint out to the stars. it's closer and therefore easier to attain.
The worlds leading nations are in a space race, it's quite evident. China, India, Japan, Russia, and the USA have or are going to be doing something lunar oriented in the near future.
The ISS is a great example of the way that any government expidition should be handled. Major nations do the major lifting and construction, while other nations provide parts and tech and people power.
Either way you look at human development, our destination is the stars, so we might as well start doign it. It's not like the Earth is going to be able to support the populations of the 100 to 200 year outlook. (tripple what we have now) it makes logical sense to go outward and the first step in that venture is to the moon.
Mars is next.