Mars Beckons: The Mysteries, the Challenges and the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure in Space.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg

Mars Beckons

George Bush wants the United States to go to Mars: he's recently given several speeches on the subject. Dan Quayle, whose position as director of the National Space Council is one of his few real responsibilities, is very big on the Mars thing. Even Richard Darman, in a recent speech during which he ridiculed everybody else in Washington for refusing to get tough on federal spending, nevertheless endorsed a blank check for a Mars expedition, declaring it would be "romantic." Depending on who you're locked in the capsule with, perhaps.

Why this sudden red planet chic? Travel to Mars makes an incredibly zoomy topic for nonbinding speeches, so it's attractive to administration officials looking to sound high-tech, or desiring an oratorical diversion from intractable terranean problems. Any suggestion of a major new space push delights the big aerospace contractors, who constitute a prime Republican constituency. A Mars flight also engages the enthusiasm of a small but significant segment of the voting public. If only it weren't such a silly notion.

Expeditions to Mars are going to occur someday; I am reasonably optimistic that one will occur during my lifetime. But then, according to mortality tables, I should live till the year 2029. In the decade or two to come, sending people to Mars will be romantic but ridiculously impractical.

In his new book* John Noble Wilford, an accomplished science writer for The New York Times, does an excellent job of spelling out the alluring aspects to a potential red-planet mission: the scientific enticements of the objective, the likely drama of the transit, Mars's place as a beacon for human aspirations. As a sales pitch, it's a fine book. Intellectually, however, Mars Beckons is shallow and slothful. Wilford basically skips one of the central questions of Mars exploration proposals--why people should go when robot spacecraft could accomplish all immediate scientific objectives for a fraction of the expense or risk. And on the key reality-check issue, money, Mars Beckons is silent. This 194-page volume has but a single paragraph on the question of cost.

Consider that the basic price tag for the space station has grown from $8 billion to $32 billion in the past five years, even though the size of the facility has shrunk. What does this suggest about what the true cost of Mars exploration might be?

Thirty-two billion dollars for the space station will buy a few modules strung together just 250 miles from their launch paid: with no main engines, no landing or ascent craft, and no crossing of new technological frontiers such as closed-cycle life support, since supply ships will arrive regularly. A Mars mission would require ships equal to dozens of space-station modules: self-propelled and self-sustaining, able to travel not 250 miles but 48 million miles and back over a period of two to three years.

Mars-bound ships will require much more radiation shielding than do spacecraft in Earth orbit, and probably simulated gravity, as so far there are no known palliatives for the muscle loss, bone resorption and extreme...