DECEMBER 20, 2021 – “Because it’s there.” That was the reason George Leigh Mallory gave for his ill-fated attempt to conquer Mt. Everest in 1924. The phrase is often attributed to New Zealander Sir Edmund Hilary, who, in 1953, with Tibetan Tenzing Norgay, reached where no one had gone before: the summit of earth’s highest peak. Neither Hilary nor Norgay would say who was first, but Hillary was most quotable: “We’ve knocked the bastard off.” Over 4,000 climbers have summited Everest since, transforming a “Pheidippidesian” accomplishment into a common achievement for hoi polloi.
Granted, I’m being a bit cavalier. I wouldn’t dream of climbing Everest—particularly in the absence of a large cash prize—any more than I’d want to “conquer” . . .
. . . Mars, simply because “It’s there.” Why leave God’s good green earth to eke out survival on a desert planet named after the Roman god of war? Besides, just getting there would test my sanity: a trip to Mars would be to a moon shot what rowing an open boat across the Atlantic would be to a 40-minute first-class plane ride. Once my fellow explorers and I landed on Mars, we’d be stuck there for months, maybe years, before facing the seven-month-long return trip.
All of which makes me wonder . . . Why would anyone want to go to Mars?
I can think of only one good (and dystopian) reason: prospects on “home base” having become unsustainable. Ahead of that point of no return, however, our efforts are better deployed trying to avert unsustainable prospects—whether by halting climate change, altering the direction of an incoming asteroid, or finding, capturing that legendary butterfly before it flaps its wings in the wrong direction, setting off a proverbial chain of events causing catastrophe on earth.
Yesterday, thanks to a portal on Facebook, I stumbled into further evidence that going to Mars is currently a bad idea. The source was Newsweek, and the focus of the story was a NASA-sponsored experiment called HI-SEAS IV, for “Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation.” The grand experiment involved six volunteer “astronauts” living in a simulated Martian environment on planet earth. Their quarters were a domed habitat on the inhospitable slope of Mt. Mauna Loa, the volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island.
The volunteers came from a half dozen scientific disciplines and were subjected to rigorous psychological testing for admission into the 12-month experiment beginning in August 2015. They didn’t fare well. As I read about their travails, I was surprised to learn that filmmaker Katherine Gorringe, daughter of friends and former neighbors ours, had produced a documentary, Red Heaven, about the simulation.
This revelation led down numerous rabbit (“worm”?) holes explored by the documentary: technology outdistances the human psyche. We aren’t well-equipped psychologically to withstand distant absences from earth—so distant that the “green planet” is but a speck of light upon cosmic velvet.
To regain my bearings, I looked out the window of my family’s house—to see humanity’s home, the easy victor over Mars.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
