Man must explore, and this is exploration at its greatest
After the hugely exciting landing of Perseverance on Mars I had some Twitter exchanges which questioned why we would spend ‘huge resources’ landing a rover on Mars. My response to this is that humans are explorers, exploration is baked into our DNA. If it wasn’t we would still be living in the trees. When standing on the moon in 1971, Dave Scott, the Commander of Apollo 15, the first of the science focused Apollo missions, said “man must explore and this is exploration at its greatest” and Perseverance is the latest in the journey. As to the huge resources spent, the cost to develop the rover and get to Mars was about $2.4 billion over nine years, about $300 million a year and it will cost the same to keep it operational on Mars. Compared to many other things that is tiny and well worth it. In 2019 Americans spent $96 billion on their pets. The entire 2021 NASA budget is $23.2 billion, and that covers everything, robotic exploration and human spaceflight. The entire world’s governmental space budget is c.$75 billion. For comparison, the Tokyo Olympics are set to cost $15 billion, Hinkley Point C is expected to cost more than £20 billion, and the UK’s ‘test and trace’ system appears to have cost a staggering, and really hard to justify, £22 billion in a year.
I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine
After the hugely exciting landing of Perseverance on Mars I had some Twitter exchanges which questioned why we would spend ‘huge resources’ landing a rover on Mars. My response to this is that humans are explorers, exploration is baked into our DNA. If it wasn’t we would still be living in the trees. When standing on the moon in 1971, Dave Scott, the Commander of Apollo 15, the first of the science focused Apollo missions, said “man must explore and this is exploration at its greatest” and Perseverance is the latest in the journey. As to the huge resources spent, the cost to develop the rover and get to Mars was about $2.4 billion over nine years, about $300 million a year and it will cost the same to keep it operational on Mars. Compared to many other things that is tiny and well worth it. In 2019 Americans spent $96 billion on their pets. The entire 2021 NASA budget is $23.2 billion, and that covers everything, robotic exploration and human spaceflight. The entire world’s governmental space budget is c.$75 billion. For comparison, the Tokyo Olympics are set to cost $15 billion, Hinkley Point C is expected to cost more than £20 billion, and the UK’s ‘test and trace’ system appears to have cost a staggering, and really hard to justify, £22 billion in a year.
