Can We Reach Another Planet?

Several weeks ago, my family attended the NCAA College Basketball Tournament Final Four in Houston. But that is not what this article is about. This article relates to the other thing I did in Houston. This activity was visiting Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, the home of Mission Control and the Astronaut Training Facility. This trip brought up a question: could we actually reach another planet in the near future? Can we even reach our own Moon in the next couple of years?

There are a couple of things we need to consider. Firstly, do we have the technology capable of this travel? Are we close to creating it? Second, will the government consider it safe enough to send astronauts to other celestial bodies? And finally, would there be enough interest in one of these missions? You may think we must have the technology to get to the moon, because we reached it six times 30-40 years ago. But the technology to get to the moon went away along with the Saturn V rockets of the Apollo missions. We have not been able to create a rocket capable of carrying a payload as heavy as a lunar module. The answer seems obvious, though. Why not build more Saturn V’s? Well, if NASA had not lost the blueprints used to build Saturn V’s (yes, NASA lost the plans to the most powerful rocket in history) no one would allow another Saturn V to launch humans into space. This is because Apollo-era spacecrafts have been compared to the aircrafts of the barnstorming era. Which is the perfect segway into the next topic: is it safe enough for interplanetary travel to be achieved? For now, no. Not only are our spacecrafts not safe enough, but there is the trouble of Van Allen Belts.

Van Allen Belts are belts that contain extreme amounts of radiation. No one would dare send anyone through one of these belts, because the health effects would likely prove fatal. The crew could even die before leaving the belt. And for all of you that believe the Moon landings were faked, the reason we could pass through them is that the astronauts of the Apollo crews were only in them for a brief time. So, in theory, we could send people through the belts. The only problem is that now we have discovered them, so no one will be sent through one of these belts until we can prevent the possibly lethal doses of radiation emitted. This means no Moon, no Mars, nor will we be able to visit any other celestial body.

Finally, will there be enough support for space missions? The answer is most likely yes. Not only have goals similar to JFK’s promise to reach the moon in the 60’s, including NASA’s goal to reach the Moon by 2020 using the Constellation program, and President Obama’s goal to reach Mars by 2030. But sadly, the public demand for humans to return to the Moon is low. In fact, only 50% of Americans can name Neil Armstrong as the first man on the Moon. Mars, on the other hand, is a different story. Not only are there many organizations trying to reach Mars, but 100,000 people, and 40,000 Americans have applied to be part of the first colony on Mars. I for one am in favor of us returning to the Moon, and making our claim as the first nation on Mars, but, we will just have to wait and see what happens.