A clear and audacious goal: Opposing view
NASA is necessarily risk-averse. The space agency carefully scripts the activities of astronauts, safely planning extravehicular activities and scientific investigations aboard the International Space Station. And that's perfectly appropriate for the times we live in.
These days the big picture — the longer-term benefit to humanity of taking risks to achieve something extraordinary such as Apollo — is rarely what motivates congressional appropriations. Instead, parochialism and near-term thinking determine what Congress authorizes NASA to do.
Settlement of Mars in our lifetime demands a different approach. Mars One sets a clear and audacious goal: a self-sustaining colony on Mars. It has already begun working with traditional aerospace contractors, including Lockheed Martin. However, unlike Apollo, Mars One will use market forces and the ingenuity of the settlers to make it happen.
The technical challenges are daunting. That has been true for each step into the cosmos we've taken — sending humans to orbit, exploring the moon and deploying robots to the outer planets and beyond.
Mars One has critics. A student project at MIT recently argued that growing food produces oxygen at a rate that would imbalance life-support systems. This problem and others like it simply need the attention of creative people committed to settling the solar system. Defeatism, cynicism and mindless conservatism didn't get us to the moon.
I am confident that we have the know-how and the ingenuity to plan a successful colony. However, there are risks. The people who choose to take this journey will face privation and danger to life and limb, but we have always been a species of explorers and problem-solvers.
Our ancestors left Africa, Asia and Europe and settled the globe. Those of us who care about the scientific, economic and cultural benefits of exploring space need to set a goal like Mars One and do what it takes to achieve it.
My parents' generation took us from Sputnik to footsteps on the moon in a decade. Now our generation needs to get on with this next giant leap.
Mason A. Peck, an associate professor of engineering at Cornell University, is an unpaid adviser to Mars One.