The Mars race

The thrilling success of NASA’s Perseverance mission to Mars has captured well-deserved national attention. As occurs intermittently, the air is filled with bold predictions of a revived U.S. human spaceflight program, with Mars as its goal and the moon as its staging area.

I hope it happens. A national commission I co-chaired a few years ago concluded that, for reasons tangible (scientific discovery, economic spinoffs, national security) and intangible (inspiring of young talent to scientific pursuits, national morale and prestige, the elevation of human aspiration and imagination), a resumption of our attempts to reach beyond low Earth orbit was justified.

If and when humankind reaches that next frontier, though, there are reasons to doubt that it will be a U.S. government space project that leads us there. Ironically, the society that put a man on the moon may be the wrong one to succeed in this next great endeavor, at least through a grand national project like Apollo.

In launching what became Apollo, President John F. Kennedy said we should attempt it not because it was easy, but because it was hard. As dazzling as the Perseverance achievement is, it involves radiation-proof robots, not fragile humans, and a seven-foot metric-ton craft, not the 40-metric-ton two-story system that a human landing, life support and ascent vehicle would require.

It will be exponentially harder for humans to fly safely to Mars, establish a sustained presence and survive to return to the Earth.

Our system affords us, thank goodness, a chance to change national direction every two years, and presidential leadership quadrennially. That competitiveness and responsiveness enables the quick correction of mistakes and the flexibility to navigate changed circumstances. What it doesn’t excel at is sustaining long-term projects of distant or indirect benefit to the voting public. Each new national administration brings its own agenda. Presidents are always more interested in starting initiatives than in extending those they inherit. Fiscal, economic and other national policies can be altered frequently, and often should be.

Yet this pattern also applies to space policy, jerking NASA through a series of major strategic shifts, from Apollo to the space shuttle to the International Space Station to asteroid capture and finally to thinking about reaching Mars with a manned mission via the moon.

So if our system is ill-suited to the task, what kind of nation would be most likely to reach this next frontier? In theory, one with a patient, farsighted culture, accustomed by history to taking the very long view. A country with an authoritarian regime, capable of commandeering the massive resources necessary without making concessions to public opinion. Perhaps one with a “leader for life” intent on establishing his realm as dominant in both reputation and technological power. Just speaking hypothetically.

The superiority of free enterprise has given birth to nimble private companies, unencumbered by political realities, backed by private fortunes imbued with the explorer spirit and, in some cases, a dream of profits.

Either on their own or through increasingly harmonious partnerships with NASA, they give us the best chance that, despite our mismatched system of government, the first human on Mars, as on the moon, will be a free citizen of a free country.