Bob Park Explains: Why People Aren't Going to Mars. (December 2, 2011)

CURIOSITY ROVER: WHY PEOPLE AREN'T GOING TO MARS: You may have noticed that Martian landscapes photographed by Rovers are pretty drab compared to Earth landscapes taken by Ansell Adams. The problem is not the cameras or the lighting. Rocks, even red ones, simply do not Yellowstone Park make. The Mars lobby insists we should be touring the red planet with humans rather than soulless machines. But even if we could find astronauts with the artistic instincts of Ansell Adams, the Mars quest is for life to which we are not related. Astronauts would be compelled to spend perhaps nine months waiting for the appropriate conjunction of Earth and Mars. Unless a way could be found to suspend their diurnal rhythms during those months, the risk of contaminating Mars with Earth life seems unacceptably high. The difficulty of mounting a human mission to Mars is probably sufficient to keep us from doing something foolish. Meanwhile, the evolution of our Rovers with every  generation is a wonder to behold. Humans, by contrast, have not noticeably  improved in 200,000 years. A huge advance in Rover technology in Curiosity is the use of RTG technology to provide power.

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Bob Park is professor of physics and former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland. In 1983 he was recruited to open a Washington Office of the American Physical Society. He initiated a weekly report of happenings in Washington that were important to science, and with the development of the internet, the weekly report evolved into the news/editorial column What's New. For the next twenty years he divided his time between the University and the Washington Office. In 2003 he returned to the University full time, but he continues to write the occasionally controversial What's New.