Should We Skip The Moon And Head For Mars?

Speaking at a Washington lecture over the weekend, Apollo 11 crewmembers Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins expressed concern about NASA focusing too much on past accomplishments. That is to say, they believe we should focus our efforts on Mars.

Critics believe that going back to the moon is, as Aldrin put it “a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago”—something that would waste time and money that we could be spending on a trip to Mars. NASA argues that going back to the moon and establishing a permanent base is an essential stepping stone to a successful Mars mission—a feat that would take at least 20 years to accomplish according to their estimates.

The issue here, it seems, is not that we should ever step foot on the moon again, it’s that NASA and the Obama administration should grow a set of balls by prioritising Mars and fully committing to a program right now. After all, we went from nearly zero to the moon in the sixties with primitive technology. What do you think? Should we skip the moon and head for Mars?


Should We Skip The Moon And Head For Mars?(poll)
[CNN and Yahoo/ Image via Starts With a Bang]

Discuss

(3 Comments)
  • [–]

    Lance Royce

    Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 10:47 AM

    I agree, but we should go to Pluto not Mars!

    Reply
  • [–]

    Selfish_Meme

    Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 10:51 AM

    I think skipping the moon to go to Mars would be akin to sailing a leaky bathtub from Australia to America bypassing New Zealand and all the islands in between.

    I think we should concentrate on cheap reliable delivery of components into orbit. Build a space exploration platform in Earth Orbit to build, supply and service a moon base.

    At the moon base we build a manufacturing, supply and deployment base for the rest of the solar system.

    Earths gravity well is too expensive to use for exploring the solar system. In the future the only thing we should ship up it is humans

    Reply
  • [–]

    Michael

    Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 12:31 AM

    I think we should weigh up the benefits of travelling to Mars versus the Moon. Realistically, if Mars is just a planet of red rock that we couldn’t learn any more about than we have already with unmanned missions. Then all we have to gain is the ego of actually being able to do it.

    Ask the American tax payer if they’d like to spend billions of dollars and only have canisters of red rock to show for it

    Reply

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