On Going to Mars — Or, How NASA Is About Steal Another Generation’s Childhood

Adam Mann at Wired has outlined seven plans that have been circulated over the years to get man to Mars:

As every space enthusiast knows, we will land people on Mars within 20 years.

Of course, we’ve been 20 years away from Mars for the last half-century. Between 1950 and 2000, NASA and various independent groups have come up with more than 1,000 detailed studies for manned Mars missions. Yet not a single one has come very close to fruition. At least on paper, Mars remains an eventual NASA goal, with their latest Curiosity rover seen in some ways as a precursor to human missions.

[…]

Despite this, Mars is not really on the agency’s radar. After their Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) probe, set to launch in 2013, NASA has no concrete plans for the Red Planet.

(Wired has more coverage here.)

Oh no.

My parents were born in the late 1950s. By the time NASA put a man on the moon on July 20, 1969, my dad was 13. When I asked him about watching the news coverage, he simply said its something he’ll never forget.

I was born the day that the Challenger exploded, which to this day people still talk about. It shook America to its core. One reason is that the shuttle program had become routine. Boring. (Maybe even at NASA, according to the reports that came out of the investigation.) The world had taken manned space flight (if you can all a low-orbit mission that) for granted.

Earlier this week, we all stayed up way to late to watch NASA’s Curiosity rover land on Mars. Its two-year mission will surely give us more clues about the Red Planet and its history. As advanced as the rover is, we still won’t have samples of Mars here on Earth — the mission is a one-way trip, like those before it.

The problems I have with NASA run deep, but if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it’d be this:

The agency has lost its balls.[1]

Growing up in the early 1990s, there wasn’t much going on with NASA that was exciting to me, as a kid. While the beginning of the Shuttle program was something to behold, by the time I was old enough to pick a meme for my childhood, the space program wasn’t a cool option.

Looking forward, the same is true for my kids. My (almost) four year-old son is really in to cars, and I’d love to see him get in to space stuff,[^fn2] but NASA isn’t exciting. Yes, the new Mars rover is badass, but what we need is a set of heroes, flying equipment right up to the edge — and back.