After Landing On The Moon, Should We Go To Mars?
(ANALYSIS) The Religion Guy’s Answer: The only humans yet to set foot on the Moon are American astronauts in the series of six Apollo landings that ended 53 years ago. But last January, President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address proclaimed a far more extraordinary goal:
“We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars. … Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls.”
NASA added to the excitement. It reported that a 2020 rock sample from the Red Planet, obtained by the Perseverance rover, contains “potential biosignatures” that suggest life could have existed eons ago, though further research is necessary to reach a yes-or-no conclusion.
Trump’s exhortation quicky drew enthusiasm from graduate theology student Dixon Rodriguez in a Web posting for Word on Fire, Bishop Robert Barron’s influential Catholic media ministry.
He likened Trump/s plan to President John F. Kennedy’s famed 1962 vow to land on the Moon, not because such exploits “are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
How Justified?
For Rodriguez, going to the Moon and Mars is good by definition, “justified by the activity itself” and “worthy of doing simply for the sake of doing it.” He cited medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas, who commended the “stretching forth of the mind to great things,” and other religious writers who believe exploring all aspects of nature is a way to contemplate its divine Creator. Indeed, Christianity has inspired the impulse to scientific exploration for centuries.
In the online chatter on the pros and cons about Mars, proponents agree this is the “next logical step” in humanity’s inherent imagination and quest for discovery despite all risks, with resulting scientific knowledge. Think Ferdinand Magellan, whose 1519-1522 expedition first circled the globe (though he himself was killed en route), Admiral Robert Peary at the North Pole (1909), Roald Amundsen at the South Pole (1911), Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay atop Mount Everest (1953) or, yes, Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin on the Moon (1969).
However, an opposite reaction was asserted in March by Father Thomas Reese, veteran Catholic columnist for Religion News Service. He notes that Trump shifted from his first-term emphasis on further Moon missions to Mars under the influence of (then) friend Elon Musk, a billionaire whose space business presents a potential conflict of interest.
Musk contends that humanity needs a backup home on Mars if Earth becomes uninhabitable. On that, Reese thinks Mars is “in worse shape” than Earth as a habitat and any colony there could only survive with “support from Earth.” Reese says OK go to Mars, but wait till the 22nd Century.”
For now, “it makes much more sense to spend money saving the Earth from climate change, ecological destruction and international conflicts.”
Martian pipe dream?
Reese also raises the host of problems that cause some science writers to dismiss a Martian colony as a pipe dream that wastes time and money. He sees Mars exploration as exorbitantly costly, impractical, and thus ethically unwise. For him, there’s plenty to learn minus colonization through unmanned space missions, including robots to Mars, and human visits to the Moon. Let’s look at some of these factors.
Trump has yet to address the Mars cost in a year when he had Musk, paradoxically, chainsaw federal spending. The current International Space Station (ISS), in Earth’s relative “backyard” compared with Mars, cost about (U.S.) $150 billion to put in place, not counting ongoing billions for operations.
Reese thinks it’s conceivable that getting humans to Mars and back could run upwards of $15 trillion. Others guess lower numbers. The deficit-ridden federal government as a whole will spend around $6 trillion in fiscal 2025, so it seems only unprecedented and prodigious multi-national cooperation could ever actually plant humans on Mars.
Researchers note the barren Mars-scape has radically low gravity and a very thin atmosphere that consists of 96% poisonous carbon dioxide, compared with Earth’s 20.9% oxygen. There’s no sign of surface water and underground pools are speculative, thus no vegetation.
The average temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit (in times and places hitting minus 195 degrees) while our planet’s average annual temperature has risen slightly this past century to 58 degrees. Earth’s record low, in 1983, was minus 128.6 degrees one day in Antarctica.
As the European Space Agency observes, “we would need to pack everything to survive the trip to our neighboring planet and back.” That means transporting substantial quantities of water, oxygen, food, and heating fuel in order to escape death. Supplies must also cover the eight or nine months as astronauts travel to Mars plus the same for their return trip.
Seven-minute delay
Or think of the two-second delay on TV newscasts when the questions and answers span foreign locations. Depending on the position of the two planets, we’re told, Earthlings’ conversations with explorers on Mars would mean gaps of seven to 24 minutes.
Even on the Moon, wind-strewn dust shards of silica cut like glass and radiation with its cancer danger is 200 times more intense than on Earth. The invaluable Britannica.com lists potential space threats of sterility, muscle degeneration, bone loss, heart disease, high blood pressure, metabolism, balance issues, and changes in brain structure.
Gerda Horneck, an “astrobiology” expert at Germany’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine, adds to such physical insults the psychological impact of long-term stress, confinement, and isolation, as with the Earth-bound Biosphere 2 experiment’s failure. Some space visionaries such as the late Carl Sagan have thought humans should leave Mars alone. For one thing, visitors would bring many microorganisms that could wreak havoc on Mars, and the same for Martian microbes infesting Earth.
Among other theological musings about Mars, Christianity Today’s Editor in Chief Russell Moore has said the vastness and beauty of God-given space “is meant to make us feel small, to stand in silenced awe,” even as the Bible simultaneously exalts the value of each human life. New York City Presbyterian pastor David Schuman thinks our quest into space echoes biblical Noah and the hope for a fresh start, yet alas sin would accompany humanity to Mars.
Then there’s “Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race” (2022) by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a religion professor at Wesleyan University. She warns that American plutocrats portray space exploration as virtually a religious calling and echo Europe’s centuries of “imperial Christianity,” colonial zeal and profiteering rather than caretaking of the cosmos. One proposed remedy is a revival of ancient pantheism so that instead of God creating the universe, believers think the universe itself is God.
This article was originally published by Patheos.
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.