Rockets are shit.
Inefficient. Dangerous. Heavy. A major proportion of the thrust generated in the first half of a rocket firing goes toward lifting the fuel. Come on.
There’s a lot of debate about the value of human spaceflight. The best argument I’ve heard in favor of it so far says that, even if it is wasteful, it’s the human spaceflight portion of space exploration that inspires the kiddies. Astronauts are heroes.
I get that. You’re right. I agree. Even if those kids never get to be astronauts (and almost none of them will), many of them will at least redirect their inspiration into other space related sciences. We need that, so let’s keep launching astronauts into space. It’s expensive, but the long term payoffs are worth it.
I do not, however, agree with sending astronauts to Mars. Hell, I barely think we should bother sending them to the Moon. These are inspiring goals, make no mistake, but they are expensive and wasteful, and apart from creating high-dreaming youngsters, the gains are not enough to justify the cost at this time.
But what about in the future? We are still a decidedly primitive civilization. The fastest mode of transportation we possess is still little more than a controlled explosion fastened to the hope that we locked down the gaskets right.
Transporting humans to deep space is profoundly difficult right now, but will it be like that in fifty years, when new methods of propulsion will (one hopes) exist? If so, why not wait until then? We can still perform manned heroics closer to home in the mean time if we absolutely must do it, but going to Mars?
Personally, if I had my way, we’d forget about visiting other planets while we’re still pre-FTL. There is so much science to be done in the area around Earth, both by humans and especially by robots. I’m all for going to the Moon and doing the other things because they are hard, but going to Mars is more than just hard, it’s damn near prohibitive while we still rely on rockets to get anywhere.
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