Perhaps not now but soon, we will be on our way to Mars
It was one small hiccup for man but when it eventually takes off, the Artemis I mission will signal the start of mankind’s attempt to return to the moon.
It will also fire the starting gun on the beginning of another space race, albeit one very different from the one which powered the rival rockets of the American and Soviet space programme in the 1960s.
Documentary maker Stephen Walker was among the millions around the world holding his breath last night before the launch of the Space Launch System rocket and its Orion astronaut capsule was called off. His bestselling book, Beyond, is an account of the 1961 mission to put the first man in space. Walker believes the journey back to the lunar surface may contain more surprises like the one the world experienced more than 60 years ago when Yuri Gagarin achieved the stunning feat.
“The excitement is building, but for different reasons from the ’60s,” said Walker. “But the reality is two years ago the Chang’e project sent a probe to the Moon to recover a sample and return it to Earth so the Chinese are already there. And they are talking about setting up what is basically a laboratory on the moon sometime in the 2030s. China is playing a long hand.
“Gagarin’s launch was a total secret, with no TV cameras present. It’s the same story, we’re hearing a lot about Artemis and we’ll get to watch it on our television screens. Whereas with regimes which want to cover up their failures and only trumpet their successes.”
China’s Space Agency will likely be Nasa’s main competitor but other countries, such as India and South Korea, are keen to launch their own manned space missions.
And private players like tycoon Sir Richard Branson, Tesla magnate Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also harbour ambitions. Musk has said Mars must be colonised, because the Earth can’t sustain humanity in the long term and Walker mostly agrees with the position.
“For all of his faults Musk is probably right,” said Walker. “But I think it’s also more than that. What animates humans in their exploration of space, and it started in those heroic days of Yuri Gagarin – those early, rubberband Wallace and Gromit-style contraptions blasting into space – is trying to find out if there’s anything like us out there.
“Really what all this is about is the signature cry of an essentially lonely species that wants to know who else is out there.”