I am retired from more than 40 years in the aerospace engineering profession, and have maintained a high interest in all programs that involve advancing useful technologies to improve human life in the environment existing on Earth. I expand that interest to include the placement and maintenance of unmanned satellites in Earth’s orbit to improve communications and navigation, weather and climate surveillance, and monitoring of drought-stricken agricultural regions of our home planet.
However, I question of what practical use it is for NASA or private space-age companies to risk sending humans far beyond the Moon to explore other planets and asteroids. Robots - yes. Humans - no. Little wonder that NASA never reveals the true danger and total cost for establishing and logistically supporting a colony of humans on Mars.
The Star recently identified a privately-funded project named Inspiration Mars, with its plan to launch a married couple on a trip to Mars. The couple would not land on Mars but come within 100 miles, and require they be in a confined space capsule for about 16 months during the round trip.
Lengthy exposures to life-threatening radiation in outer space, the known adverse effects on human bone density of long periods in a weightless state, drinking their recycled urine, and the requirement that all electronic, mechanical and environmental conditioning systems in the capsule must function flawlessly for 16 months is tantamount to sending the couple on a suicidal fly-by of Mars. Why?
If manned missions to Mars are only to prove they can be done and are not practical or affordable for human needs, why not send some of the persons on death row voluntarily on deep-space missions? If the convictnauts were to survive the mission, they should be granted pardons for their contribution to science and returned into our society. Or is that excessively cruel and inhumane punishment?
- Herbert A. Hutchinson,