Seeking Life on Mars: Is It Worth It?
I was just reading an article on the latest Mars landing. Another space lander was sent there to study and see if life has ever existed outside the realm of Earth.
The mission this time is called the Phoenix Mission. The Phoenix Mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and led by the University of Arizona. The Phoenix lander was sent to study the history of water and habitability potential in the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil.
There are four goals of the mission:
- Determine whether Life ever arose on Mars
- Characterize the Climate of Mars
- Characterize the Geology of Mars
- Prepare for Human Exploration (Anyone want to volunteer for this mission? I imagine by the time you arrive on the planet, you’ll either have died along the way from some disease or aged a few years! It would be a cool ride though, if you were allowed to stay awake the entire time and didn’t go crazy! I hear the view from outer space is amazing!)
The Phoenix was named for the bird the Phoenix which dies and is reborn from its own ashes - just like in Harry Potter - because of two previous missions that failed, The Mars Polar Lander and The Mars Surveyor Lander. I guess the scientists from the two previous missions, or the money lenders, decided to do one more and hope that this one didn’t come back void of information.
At the cost of $457 million dollars, and the fact that two previous missions failed and cost over $400 million, $120 million for the Polar Mission and over $283 million for the Surveyor Mission, that would be almost a Billion Dollars of Space Junk if this mission fails.
Can you imagine where that money could have been spent if this mission fails to return any information of use? Come to think of it. If they get good news that life has existed on Mars, how are they going to make it so a human can survive on the planet?
I find it hard to believe anyone could actually survive on Mars when it’s so hard to survive in Africa, a place that has a lot more vegetation, water and probably much richer soil. Besides that, there are no guarantees that the person aboard any spacecraft to Mars would even be alive once it reaches its destination. On top of that, if they went the route and decided it was impossible to send anyone at this point in history, but sent a ship to mine some of the soil for it’s newfound minerals, how much could they bring back? Not much, is my guess. And whatever they did bring back, even if it were some alternative fuel, would it be any cheaper than the cost of oil right now where 1 barrel of oil is just over $120? I doubt it. In order for the fuel aboard whatever sized spacecraft they sent there to mine, they’d have to bring something back with the power of the Sun in order to cover the over costs of technology, mining and delivery.
So far, though, the Phoenix Mission has worked according to its managers and technicians. There are many photos being transmitted back to Earth at the speed of light which takes 15 minutes to reach Earth from Mars. The photos are pretty cool. Nice shots of dirt and rocks all around the spacecraft. I wonder if they are using a Pentax, Nikon or Minolta camera aboard the ship? My Pentax ist seems to take just as good photos! I wonder how much that camera cost.
Do I sound negative in this article? Sorry! I seriously hope this expedition on Mars returns some good information and helps discover something beneficial to life on Earth, other than the fact that life exists elsewhere. I love to explore and research stuff. And I would love to know more about the scientists doing the research and spending all this money to see if life has ever existed outside our planet. Are they atheists? Do they believe in God? Were they born during the Vietnam War when so many people did way too many drugs?
If this mission fails, I’d like to see the next NASA mission explore something a little closer to home here on Earth to see if there isn’t some new way to extend the use of the resources we have here or turn something we have that is so common like the pollution we create into some kind of fuel! I bet it would cost less than a billion to do that and the data could be accessed a lot quicker instead of having to wait a few years for the craft to land!
I hope you find this article interesting and helpful. If you have time, please leave me a comment. I enjoy feedback. Thanks!
Tags: Africa, alternative fuel, ice exploration, mars exploration, mars lander, mars polar, mars surveyor, phoenix lander, phoenix mission
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