EDITORIAL: Mars is calling

OPINION:

If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind. Like the hare that snoozed during his race with the tortoise, America is conceding leadership in human achievement in space. American astronauts conquered space decades ago, but now its astronauts must hitch rides aloft with the Russians. China boasts that it’s heading to the moon, where the red, white and blue, planted by the “greatest generation,” gathers moon dust. Somewhere out there in the dark Mars is calling.

Earlier this month NASA disclosed a plan to reach the red planet some time in the 2030s. President Obama, who prefers leading from behind, canceled the space agency’s Constellation manned spaceflight project, which had Mars as its destination, five years ago, blaming “underperformance” and cost overruns. NASA went back to the drawing board and developed a new strategy. In a report titled “NASA’s Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration,” the agency outlines a blueprint for landing spacefarers on Mars and bringing them home safely.

First, NASA would continue research on the effects of lengthy stays on humans in space aboard the International Space Station, while developing its Space Launch System, a superheavy rocket for propelling a ship across the 141 million-mile void between Earth and Mars. The astronauts would practice various tasks in lunar orbit, such as sending a robot to an asteroid and retrieving a boulder for study. NASA then envisions a manned mission to orbit Mars and land on one of its moons. From there, astronauts would descend to the surface of the planet that has intrigued man since ancient Egyptian astronomers found it 35 centuries ago.

Blindly buying a product or program is not the way of a wise consumer, and there’s no visible price tag on NASA’s mission to Mars. When canceled, the cost of the Constellation was pegged at $150 billion. If NASA’s new proposal is less expensive than the original, cutting wasteful federal spending could cover the price of a ticket to the fourth rock from the sun. There’s waste to cut. The United States paid out $124 billion in erroneous payments in 2014 alone.

A nonprofit organization called Mars One, based in the Netherlands, has a plan, paid for by crowd-funding (an updated form of “passing the hat),” to beat NASA to the red planet by 2027. Competition always brings out the best in human ingenuity.

Movie fans are flocking to “The Martian” to watch Matt Damon as a space traveler left for dead on the red planet who must survive on wiles and wits. Coincidently or not, NASA recently disclosed evidence that there’s water flowing on the surface of Mars from time to time, suggesting that the planet could support extraterrestrial life.

Humanity may need another extraterrestrial home someday, and Mars offers the most likely alternative to human habitat in our corner of God’s universe. The solar system in its vastness isn’t exactly crowded, but there is enough debris floating about to make collisions inevitable. The moon’s crater-pocked surface is ample evidence of that. Earth has been a comfortable birthplace, but the human race can’t cower in the cradle forever. The heavens beckon — it’s not in the American DNA to get there after everybody else.