Mission to Mars

This article in today's Guardian about NASA's continuing attempts to justify its existence is interesting.

If we posit that a manned mission to Mars will never happen, because (a) it will prove to be too risky, (b) too expensive, and (c) anyone who volunteers for it will be a nutcase, then NASA is just an extremely hi-tech job creation scheme for the socially inept.

Sooner or later, mark my words, some genius(es) will come up with one or all of the following technologies:

• Cold Fusion


• Anti-gravity


• A completely indestructible construction material

And when they do, all this spaceflight stuff based upon 1940s rocket technology will be completely redundant. And furthermore, these technologies, and maybe others, will come along just as the NASA sciencebots are reaching the finishing post.

I say all this because I am reading Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton. When they say in the review that this is "epic" they mean that it is long. If it were a city it would not so much be a high-rise metropolis as an urban sprawl. It takes about 300 pages to get into it, but once you are in it is most enjoyable, bar the knowledge that this is a "Part I" and you know you'll reach a cliff-hanging ending and have to wait a year or so for the sequel, if you remember.

The key scene in Pandor's Star happens in the prologue, as NASA astronauts are about to make history by stepping out onto the surface of Mars. Except they are greeted by a laid-back surfer-type university researcher, dressed in an adapted diving suit, tethered to his desk back in California through the wormhole through which he has just stepped.

Not sure I believe in wormholes, but I do believe that government money should not be directed at programmes which use technology that barely works. In the case of space exploration, it's long been time to tear it all up and start again. In the meantime, I'd like to see NASA dedicate themselves to perfecting the non-stick frying pan and Velcro.