By James Hollinghead and Bo Maxwell

I remember being transfixed by the first lander image to show the horizon of Mars. This was not an alien world, I thought. I knew places like it in Colorado and Arizona and Nevada. There were rocks and a distant eminence, as natural and unselfconscious as any landscape on Earth. Mars was a place.

- Carl Sagan describing his thoughts on seeing the first Viking images

Mars. Fourth planet from the Sun, and the only planet in the Solar System whose surface we can see. A planet of beauty, mystery and intrigue. The beckoning finger that has drawn us irresistibly into space. A world our children might reasonably call home.

The Mars Society believes that we should start the human exploration of Mars now. We believe this because it can be done with the technology available to us today, because it can be done cheaply, and because the potential benefits are enormous. To explore and settle Mars is to show that the human race has achieved a degree of maturity, that we are capable of stepping beyond our cradle of Earth and safeguard our future. As we move into a new millennium, Mars is a shining beacon of all we can become; all we can achieve. And there is no better time for us to reach for it.

Can We Do It?

Yes. Human exploration and even settlement of Mars is technically achievable today. Mars is many times more accessible now than the Moon was in the 1960s. Plans have already evolved that show a permanent human presence on Mars can be achieved in 12 years, and at a cost comparable to those needed to run the international space station.

For too long people have laboured under the misunderstanding that to reach Mars we need wonderful new technologies, gigantic interplanetary spaceships and budgets reaching some US $450 - $500 BILLION. Through the simple expedient of ignoring the potential of technologies yet-to-be, by using those techniques of space flight we have had some 40 years to perfect, and by using the resources all too readily available to us on Mars already, we can reduce the bill for a human presence on Mars a hundred fold; but....

Why Should We?

There are many reasons as to why we should go to Mars. Some of the key arguments are:

Scientific Research

Mars carries many of the marks that suggest it may once have been - indeed, may still - a life-bearing planet. Despite the sophistication of our robot probes, the one way we'll ever know if life developed there is to send human explorers with all of their skills and intuitive abilities.

Mars can answer important questions about how the solar system formed, and therefore increase our understanding and knowledge about the one world we can currently call "home": Earth.

Finally, Mars is a fascinating place in its own right, containing everything from volcanoes three times bigger than Mount Everest to canyons bigger than the Grand Canyon, and everything in between, ripe for exploration and discovery.

Technical Returns

Mounting a mission to Mars - even using the technologies available to us now - is going to require innovation, inventiveness and skill. In the 1960s, America's GNP was boosted by some 4% by the Apollo programme to reach the Moon, and there is every reason to expect that the spin-offs from Martian exploration missions would boost the economies of participating nations in similar ways today.

A New Frontier

Perhaps most importantly of all though, a Martian colony will give mankind somewhere to expand into. This doesn't mean a way of solving population problems, but the existence of somewhere which is relatively empty, that is not weighed down by bureaucracy or petty regulations, and where it is the people with good ideas who can make the most of it.

Obviously this is further in the future, but it is very possible that Mars could serve the same role in the 21st century that America did in the 18th. Without anywhere to expand into there is a danger that society will stagnate. Almost all progress is driven by need, and the exploration and development of space can easily trigger enough progress to pay back any investment in it.

Low-cost Access to Space

The need to transport people to and from a base on Mars will bring down the costs of space travel, and a large settlement can be established there. The resources in space are practically limitless, and creating a solid human foundation in space would be a very good thing. This is far in the future, but we can take the first steps today, and there is no reason to wait.

Some say - and will continue to say - that the "time is not right" for us to go to Mars, or that "we don't have the technology", or that it is "too expensive". None of these arguments can truly be held up as a reason for <i>not</i> embarking on the road to Mars. The technology is available to us <i>now</i> - we do not need to wait for the development of exotic new propulsion technologies; all we need to do is factor them in to our journeys to and from Mars as they become available - just as steamships gradually replaced sailing ships as we travelled the world's oceans.

Nor do we need to use the Moon as a stepping stone - the energy required to get humans to Mars is almost <i>precisely</i> what is required to get to the Moon - so why waste the energy in going there first - especially as there is very little on the Moon that can help us in directly reaching Mars? And as Mars Direct has shown, it <i>is</i> possible to reach Mars at a cost of not hundredss of billions of dollars, but <i>tens</i> of billions - certainly far less than will have to be expended in establishing the kind of large-scale human presence on the Moon some claim is "vital" for any endeavour to reach Mars - and then keep such a presence supplied from Earth...

Of course, there are challenges to be overcome: deep space radiation - both cosmic and solar - <i>does</i> present risks; solar radiation particularly - but negating the risks as far as possible is not an insurmountable problem itself requiring the advent of some new technology. In developing a mission to Mars we can build-in safeguards we know will work to protect our crew as far is is humanly possible. The same goes for overcoming the effects of zero gravity, which again is held up as a reason for delaying any attempt to reach Mars. But who said we <i>must</i> send our crews to Mars in zero gravity? As the Mars Society has already suggested - and is in the process of demostrating through our TEMPO3 project - it is possible to send crews to Mars in a low-gravity environment....

The case for going to Mars is clear. The only real question that remains is, when are we all going to accept it, and start constructively working towards the greatest feat of human exploration we are likely to undertake in the next 100 years?

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