Most, once they are told of the various reasons offered for the eventual expansion of humanity into space, and particularly to Mars as a potential first destination, agree that they are good ones. The issue does not lie as much with the “why” as with the “why now”, and the vast majority of detractors of a humans to Mars effort do not disagree with the benefits of establishing a branch of humanity on Mars at some point in the future, but are against starting on such a project now. In one form or another, the reason against is that money and efforts would be better spent elsewhere at this time, either because there is greater need elsewhere, or because Mars exploration would be technologically much easier in the future. There is a problem however with an often unstated assumption made by these detractors: That humanity will somehow survive and progress as long as we avoid obvious catastrophes today (such as the threat of nuclear annihilation during the cold war days), so that choices for the far future can be indefinitely postponed. The problem is that this assumption cannot be considered as a given; it may actually be false. There may be choices made today that place us on an insidious course to self-annihilation, one from which it may be hard to recover at a later time once the threat is more obvious. I will first present reasons to support that belief. Then, given the possibility that some of our actions today may impact the far future in ways that are hard to predict at the moment, I argue that starting the process of human colonization of the solar system as soon as technically possible (which it already is), with Mars as reasonable first destination, is one way to considerably reduce the risk of such entrapment. Not doing so would in fact be quite irresponsible given how relatively cheap and risk free such an undertaking would be.

Humanity's future is not assured

The human race, when compared to all other living things that we know, is extraordinary. We have developed technology, and seem to be progressing in that direction at an incredible pace, with no stop in sight. We express ourselves through art of a beauty (and sometimes ugliness) that only us can understand, and there seems to be no end to the variations of our artistic expression. We are also continually improving our understanding of the universe and our place within it through science, philosophy, and theology. Our social structures have also evolved significantly, and mostly for the better on average.

Given that rate and breath of development, it is tempting to think that we will continue to evolve on all those fronts with certainty as long as we prevent obvious catastrophes, like the global nuclear annihilation that we faced during the Cold War. Although this is not impossible, there is little evidence to strongly support that belief. There is in fact no proof that we are even on the right path to social sustainability. Given how young the human race is compared to other living organisms on Earth, we may have surmounted some obstacles, but we have far from proven our resiliency, not only to cope with natural events, but also to cope with the changes that we ourselves set in motion in our physical and social environment. Although they are to be seriously feared, I personally am less concerned with such obvious catastrophes as asteroid impacts or even pandemics than I am with slow and insidious ones such as cornering ourselves into an evolutionary dead-end. In the first case at least the danger would be immediately recognizable and what needs to be done would be clear and of a technological nature (and we are clearly better at technological developments than we are at social ones). In the second case, even after recognizing that there is a problem, the course towards a solution may be very hard to determine.

Globalization as a species test

The current globalization process is an example of the survivability tests that we must face as a species. Although many seem to think that globalization is pursued by governments by choice, many experts consider the trend itself as unavoidable, probably more so than global warming. Brooks (2002) calls it a “fact of life”. Burress (2002) provides a fair compendium of the dangers of globalization to humanity, such as ecological collapse, concentration of irresponsible power, international inequality, and cultural and ethical impoverishment, many of those possibly leading to increased warfare and terrorism, among other negative consequences. Since globalization is not an option, then stagnation of our social systems is not an option either, because we must actively adapt to the changes.

Mars as room for social experimentation

What does any of the above have to do with humans to Mars? This quote from Burress states part of my reasons for seeing a relation: “How reform can be accomplished is partly an experimental question: we have no examples of successful alternative systems to draw on. Unfortunately, corporate political power will fiercely resist all such experiments.” Burress goes on to propose how reforms could nonetheless be introduced on Earth to solve the problems, but such an in-place process of reform would be a rare event in human history. So far, the process of social evolution of our species has mostly followed a pattern where new systems and ideals are tried in younger societies, with the changes introduced into the older more established and rigid societies at a later time1.

The above model of social evolution cannot be used anymore because thanks to globalization itself, there is no room left on Earth for young societies to experiment with such reforms. Even if physical room was available (such as on or under the oceans) the speed of communications and travel and the global economic system would make it hard to retain the required independence. Another possible reason for the increased difficulty to evolve our social systems on Earth is summarized by Schulte (2000) from a mathematical model by Stuart Kauffman. Schulte argues that in our global society the interconnectedness is approaching the limit of Kauffman's mathematical model and that “the complexity of the interactions ensures a catastrophic loss of the potential to improve beyond mediocrity.”

Human colonies outside of Earth's direct influence (which excludes the Moon in my opinion) would allow to continue our social evolution in the same manner that has proved successful for our species in the past: By trying new systems in young societies in relative isolation and then adopting those parts that appear to be successful in older and therefore harder to change societies. That human expansion into space has that potential has already been stated by many, but many also state it as some sort of manifest destiny, something that will eventually happen whether it is undertaken by this generation or a future one. I personally believe that there is no such manifest destiny. The survival and prosperity of the human species depends on the choices made by its members (consciously or not). In the past, bad choices or failure to adapt to changing conditions by a leading society made room for a younger society somewhere else to take over the ideological leadership. In our current state as a soon-to-be global society confined to the Earth, we may now have to survive as one or fall as one, and so the situation may be fundamentally more dangerous to the species as a whole than it has been in our past history.

Space exploration versus other solutions

Hoping to have at least planted the seed of a suspicion that our future is far from guaranteed and is dependent on decisions taken now, I consider three possible solutions to current or future problems: One, finding room to create new societies on Earth, two, accepting the possibility of a global survival crisis and hoping that we can recover after the fact, and three, creating new societies away from Earth's influence as new experimental grounds. The last of these three is by far the most promising in the long term and the least risky. I address the other two first. The first one is easily discarded: Although one could argue that there is still a lot of physical room on Earth and its Lunar annex, the speed of communications and transport would make it very hard for a new society to experiment with a truly novel system (especially an economic one) without having to convince the rest of the world to change concurrently. The second solution, as Burress puts it, hoping for “a catastrophe of just the right size: big enough to delegitimate the status quo, small enough to be surmounted.”, could very well allow our species to shed some of the old baggage and try new ideas, but the risk is to miss the mark and end up with an insurmountable catastrophe rather than a surmountable one.

The third solution, to create new societies away from the socio-economical influence of Earth, is problematic only because it may take a long time to collect any dividends. As the closest such experimental ground, Mars could certainly be reached by humans within about a decade, but a century or more may be required before societies exist that are independent enough from mother Earth to teach her something (however, the endeavor itself would hopefully be a boost to the moral of Earth's inhabitants from the very start). This is why starting now, without waiting for an impending obvious reason or better technology, is very important. The clear advantage of this possible solution to current or future problems on Earth is how low risk and cheap it is compared to the other two. There is no question that we must continue to try to solve our Earthly problems on Earth, and therefore we must continue to spend large sums of money to fix or mitigate immediate problems such as terrorism, as well as experimenting with political and economic reforms in-place, at the risk of destabilizing the current systems. Compared to those costs and risks, spending a couple tens of billion a year2 to sustain a program of Mars exploration is an insignificant cost. In the best case, we will eventually reap incredible benefits in ideological and technical innovations. In an in-between scenario, even if Mars societies are formed but do not contribute new ideas to Earth's systems, we will at least have a branch of humanity elsewhere to preserve the species if a life-ending catastrophe occurs on Earth. In the worst case, Mars societies will not survive, but this would have mostly a neutral impact on the Earth. The single highest risk of sending humans to Mars would be the risk of contamination of Earth from Mars organisms early in the process, but this is a risk we can easily mitigate by technological means, one that will exist anyway with robotic sample return missions, and although the risk does exist, it is a very small one, as documented by the National Research council (1997).

Conclusion – The general public must make the right choice now and continue to make it in the future

There is currently mounting momentum for the US to send humans to Mars as a goal for NASA following the soul searching caused by the Columbia disaster, and I am fairly confident that we will eventually send humans to Mars, maybe even soon. I am less confident that politicians and the public understand enough what is at stake to support a sustained program over decades. The Apollo program demonstrated that a set of successful missions by itself does not ensure a sustained program. Although politicians and NASA management were partly to blame for the end of the human exploration program in the Apollo days, the public was also to blame for having become blasé about Apollo so quickly. The first few human Mars missions will probably be easier to support by politicians because the public at large will be very excited and supportive. As a routine of exploration sets in, a public that only cares about immediate excitement and novelty will likely doom the program to the same fate as Apollo3. The public itself must find excitement in the future prospects of current missions for their children, grandchildren, and humanity as a whole, for there to be eventually self-sustaining colonies on the planet. The interest of the general public will be required for a long time because the costs of Mars exploration and settlement will likely remain high enough, compared to short-term economic returns, to require government involvement for a long time, as Hickman (1999), argues. That is not to say that private endeavors cannot start early in the process, helped by the facilitation of government funded infrastructure programs, as Hickman also argues. Private involvement early on would hopefully help to generate more interest within the public, but the public will have to remain interested on its own for many years to make it clear to politicians that human Mars exploration is a goal that is relevant to their political success.

Although this essay was cast in the somewhat negative context of avoiding some dire consequences for our species, colonizing Mars would not be some boring risk-mitigating measure, but an exciting adventure with many aspects, such as scientific discovery, that were not covered here. These exciting aspects would guarantee the generations and individuals who participate in it a place in the history books. Let us be among those generations and individuals!

References

Brooks, Chris W., 2002. “Globalization – A Political Perspective”, in Proceedings of Globalization: What issues are at Stake for Universities? University Laval. ( http://www.ulaval.ca/BI/Globalisation-Universities/pages/actes/Chris-W-Brooks.pdf)

Burress, David, 2002. Modeling Catastrophic Globalization. Draft, with permission from the author. (http://www.people.ukans.edu/~dburress/globalmodel.pdf)

Hickman, John, 1999. “The Political Economy of Very large Space Projects”, in Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 4. World Transhumanist Association (http://www.transhumanist.com/volume4/space.htm)

National Research Council, 1997. Mars Sample Return. Issues and Recommendations. National Academy Press (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5563.html)

Schulte, Erik A., 2000. “Presidential Politics: Constrained by Complexity?”, in Science Magazine, Vol. 290, p. 933. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5493/933b)

Zubrin, Robert, with Wagner, Richard, 1996. The Case for Mars. The Free Press