Success of the mission to Mars reverberates on earth

By Arthur I. Cyr

On May 25, the United States landed on Mars, after a journey of 10 months and 422 million miles. Since the very gentle arrival, with a speed of 12,000 miles per hour slowed to 5,000, the Phoenix Mars Lander has been functioning perfectly. Some earlier Mars missions were failures; this one now qualifies as an undeniable — and highly impressive — technical success.

Those involved from the University of Arizona, the Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA should feel tremendous triumph. Americans in general should take pride in an accomplishment with important global implications.

Meanwhile, the little land rovers Opportunity and Spirit, landed on Mars in 2004, just keep chugging along. Several years ago Opportunity temporarily stalled, wheels buried in a sand dune. But engineers on Earth, 100 million miles away, were able to maneuver the vehicle out of the mire.

National priority

With relatively little publicity, President Bush has made distant space flight a much higher national priority again, to include a manned mission to Mars. Bush has not yet made a highly dramatic public announcement, along the lines of President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 enunciation of a manned mission to the Moon. NASA, however, has been directed to plan for Mars.

Space flight generates far less public excitement than in JFK’s time, in part because we are collectively much more cautious. That attitude is well represented by the now-constant concern over safety of the shuttle flights. Also, the media generally devotes much more attention to space problems than successes.

Yet space flight is inherently unpredictable as well as risky. A shuttle flight stays relatively close to earth, but two crews have been lost. The only casualties of the Moon program were one brave crew incinerated in their capsule while still on Earth.

There are two very good reasons for pursuing the emphasis on Mars after the end of the current Bush administration. First, while the initial space program was fueled by the fixations and fears of the Cold War, this one could be defined by global cooperation. Precedents include the 2005 use of a Russian rocket in Kazakhstan to launch an American satellite.

Science has always held an olive branch. During the height of the Cold War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower fostered exchanges between scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain, notably through the Pugwash program. In the late 1950s, science cooperation during the International Geophysical Year was leveraged by Ike into demilitarization of Antarctica, the first significant arms agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Consumer, industrial goods

Second, space exploration has driven technological advance, spawning consumer and industrial goods along with research tools. The personal computer is one of the most important by-products. The small inexpensive computer permits the pervasive information flows that we now take for granted. You can use the Internet to check out the Mars mission at http://phoenix.lpl.Arizona.edu.

X Arthur I. Cyr is a professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin and the author of “After the Cold War” (NYU Press).