Abstract
A critical unknown is how life originated on Earth. Was it seeded from elsewhere, or did it generate spontaneously from indigenous nutrients? The current vogue is the belief system that life will evolve on a planet with water, carbon dioxide, and warmth, given a few hundred million years. Scientists of that persuasion developed the basis for exploration by NASA. Since early Mars apparently met that criterion, the Mars Exploration Program was formulated as a search for early life on Mars. All of the orbiters and robotic landers on Mars were designed with a principal goal of finding evidence of early life on Mars. So far, no evidence has been found, and there are good reasons to think that it is extremely unlikely that evidence of early life on Mars will ever be detected. Enthusiasts have invented a wide variety of justifications for why we should send humans to Mars. In reality, it seems that the real reason to send humans to Mars is that it is the next logical step beyond the Moon, and you have to send humans somewhere. Nevertheless, a human mission to Mars would be a great engineering achievement, and it would be the ultimate culmination of 60+ years of rocketry and space exploitation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
NASA Announces Plans To Send Astronauts To Mars In Mid-2030s, http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-astronauts-will-head-mars-mid-2030s.
- 2.
Mars Polar Lander website, http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/why.html.
- 3.
News and Views: “Key Science Questions from the Second Conference on Early Mars: Geologic, Hydrologic, and Climatic Evolution and the Implications for Life,” Astrobiology 5, Number 6, 2005.
- 4.
Mars Polar Lander website, http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/why.html.
- 5.
Cosmic Vision: Space Science for Europe 2015–2025, ESA Report BR-247, October 2005.
- 6.
P. Spudis, “Why We’re Going Back to the Moon,” Washington Post, December 27, 2005.
- 7.
Erik Carlstrom (1999) “Society and Government: How can we Avoid the Same Mistakes on Mars?” http://chapters.marssociety.org/or/msoec1.html.
- 8.
“The Humans to Mars Summit 2015” http://h2m.exploremars.org/about-us/.
- 9.
Mars One Human Settlement on Mars, http://www.mars-one.com/.
- 10.
Miriam Kramer (2014) “Manned Mission to Mars By 2030s Is Really Possible, Experts Say” http://www.space.com/24268-manned-mars-mission-nasa-feasibility.html.
- 11.
Ledyard King (2014) “NASA: Human landing on Mars is on track for 2030s” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/09/mission-to-mars-still-on-track/7519019/.
- 12.
“NASA Exploration Forum Details Human Path to Mars” (2014) http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-exploration-forum-details-human-path-to-mars/#.VGJR59ZvObU.
- 13.
The Mars Society http://www.marssociety.org/.
- 14.
Joel Achenbach (2014) “NASA strategy can’t get humans to Mars, says National Research Council spaceflight report” http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nrc-human-spaceflight-report-says-nasa-strategy-cant-get-humans-to-mars/2014/06/04/e6e6060c-ebd6-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html.
References
De La Mater, B.W. 2005. A surface scratched. http://www.berkshireeagle.com/fastsearch/ci_3289264.
Griffin, Michael. 2010. Goodnight moon: Michael griffin on the future of NASA. http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/04/01/goodnight-moon-michael-griffin-on-the-future-of-nasa/.
Hoffman, Stephen J. and David I. Kaplan ed. 1997. Human exploration of mars: The reference mission of the NASA mars exploration study team. Washington: NASA Spcial Publication 6107.
Hoyle, Fred. 1983. The intelligent universe. London: Michael Joseph Limited, ISBN 0 7181 22984.
Korthof, Gert. 2014. A memorable misunderstanding. http://wasdarwinwrong.com/kortho46a.htm.
McCleese, Dan ed. 2005. Mars exploration strategy 2009–2020, Mars science program synthesis group, JPL.
Meyer, Stephen C. 2007. DNA and the origin of life: Information, specification, and explanation. http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1026.
Ricardo, Alonso and Jack W. Szostak. 2013. Life on earth. https://www.mcb.ucdavis.edu/faculty-labs/scholey/journal%20papers/ricardo-szostak-sa2009.pdf.
Rycroft, Michael J. 2006. Space exploration goals for the 21st century. Space Policy 22: 158–161.
Shapiro, Robert. 1987. Origins: A skeptic’s guide to the creation of life on earth. New York: Bantam New Age Press.
Stueken, E.E., et al. 2013. Did life originate from a global chemical reactor? Geobiology 11: 101–126.
Wolchover, Natalie. 2014. A new physics theory of life. http://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/.
Zubrin, Robert. 2005. Getting space exploration right. The New Atlantis. Spring 15–48.
Zubrin, Robert. 2014. Why NASA is stagnant. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/383100/why-nasa-stagnant-robert-zubrin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rapp, D. (2016). Why Explore Mars?. In: Human Missions to Mars. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22249-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22249-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22248-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22249-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)