Why Mars?

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

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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?

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. 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 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.

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