| Explore This |
| 02/04/2004 |
The Last Word
| David Hains |
| “You may leave here, for four days in space, But when you return, it’s the same old place.” |
When singer songwriter Barry McGuire penned those words in the forlorn 1960’s tune, “Eve of Destruction,” the
idea of space travel was relatively new and four days was a long time. Especially when you consider that a space
capsule was about as roomy as a college freshman’s VW Bug, crammed full of tie-dyed t-shirts, a large stereo with
turntable, and plenty of junk food.
Times have changed and intra-galactic travelers now use the much larger space Shuttle. Although, I can tell you
from having stepped inside a Shuttle trainer, that things are only marginally more spacious for the occupants. Crew
quarters in a Shuttle offer roughly the same amount of room as a mini-van. When you realize that as many as seven
people live and work in a Shuttle, the desire to loose the bonds of earth diminishes significantly as you comprehend
how little legroom you are going to have.
A cramped crew quarter aside, time is the real problem when it comes to space travel. We may not be alone in
this solar system or even in the larger universe, but given the hard reality of how long it takes to get anywhere in
space, we might as well be. At President Bush’s urging, we are about to waste several billion dollars learning that,
when it comes to Mars, you can’t really get there from here.
Why? It takes six months to make the trip from Earth to Mars. That means it also takes six months to make the
return trip. If you stay for a reasonable period of time, say two months, you will need to pack food, oxygen, water
and maybe an iPod for 14 months. Food can be freeze-dried, but it can’t be un-dried without water.
Let’s do some math. One astronaut drinking one gallon of water per day would need 425 gallons for a 14-month
journey. One gallon is pretty stingy and assumes this astronaut would not shower or, thanks to zero gravity, flush a
toilet. At 8.3 pounds per gallon, that equals 3,527 pounds of water for a 14-month ride to Mars and back. A ton
and two thirds of water for one person! Add a few other astronauts and all of a sudden you are designing a
spacecraft whose chief function is to carry water for very smelly people.
Can we build a faster space ship to get there quicker and diminish the need for so much water? Maybe a little
faster, but forget about Warp speed and other literary descriptions of the speed of light. When Einstein told us that E
=mc2, he was also saying that we can’t travel at the speed of light.
Perhaps we could build refueling stations along the way, sort of a Harris-Teeter in the sky. That sounds more
practical, but how much effort and money do we want to chip in so one guy, or gal, can bring us home a bag full of
rocks? And if you think about it, what are you really experiencing if you stand on Mars, cocooned in an earthling-
made suit?
In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy was thinking of Kansas when she clicked the heels of her ruby slippers and repeated,
“There’s no place like home,” but the truth about space travel for earthlings is, there is no place BUT home. Space
exploration is a valid quest, but our engineering skills and tax dollars would be better spent designing machines to
gather and ship those rocks to a place where we can see and touch them perhaps while sipping from a bottle of
Aquafina.
David Hains is a media consultant and writer who lives in Huntersville. E-mail: David@TVDave.com.