A few
days ago this blog had a post called Mars
Peril, a science
fiction story that dramatized the danger of cosmic rays in a manned
mission to Mars. But there may be an even greater danger to a Mars
mission: the danger that it simply won't be very viable
entertainment.
Some
purists will immediately ask: what difference does it make how
entertaining a Mars mission is? But entertainment has always been a
very large part of the purpose of manned space exploration, although
not a very commonly acknowledged purpose. Realistically, one of the
top three reasons we do space exploration is because of its
entertainment value. Other top reasons include national prestige and
satisfying the funding desires of an entrenched bureaucracy, so that
its employees don't have to get other jobs. Science is basically a
distant fourth in manned space exploration.
It
seems that space travel had the highest entertainment “bang for the
buck” in the early days of the Mercury program. When the first
astronauts were sent into space, space travel was pretty much “the
greatest show on Earth.” Part of the reason was that it didn't have
much competition. There were no personal computers or internet, and the
television shows of the early 1960's were something of a vast
wasteland. So when the first men were launched into space in the
earlier 1960's, it seemed every American was gripped by the
spectacle. It was the perfect recipe for mass entertainment: extreme
danger (no one knew whether the first manned rockets would blow up on
the launching pad) ; short missions lasting less than a day (too
short a time for watchers to get bored); and opportunities for photos
that no one had ever seen before.
There
was also great excitement during Apollo 11, the first mission in
which astronauts walked on the moon. But then a strange thing
happened. People began to get very bored with the Apollo missions.
With the exception of Apollo 13 (which never landed on the moon,
facing an explosion that nearly killed its astronauts), the rest of
the moon missions seemed rather boring to the average American. The
TV ratings plummeted. Very soon Americans were screaming at their TV
screens: dammit, not another moonwalker on my TV, I wanted to
match my soap operas and quiz shows today.
What
can we expect regarding the entertainment value of a Mars mission?
Based on what happened during the Apollo missions, and other factors
I will explain, I think that the average person may not watch
television coverage of a manned Mars mission for more than about 2%
of the days that it operates.
Surely
the TV ratings will be very high when the astronauts first blast off
into space. But then the astronauts will go on a long, dull trip to
Mars that may take between 3 months and 9 months. Almost no one will
tune in to see the astronauts during this time, just as almost no one
watches the astronauts in the International Space Station.
The
TV ratings will rise again when the astronauts go into orbit around
Mars, and land on the planet. The first exploration of the Mars
surface will no doubt be watched by hundreds of millions. But I
predict that the TV ratings will then plunge. People will quickly
grow bored by watching astronauts walk around on the surface of Mars,
just as quickly as they grew bored by the sight of astronauts walking
around on the surface of the moon. One of the reasons is quite
obvious: the surface of Mars simply isn't very interesting, as it
lacks any visible form of life.
As
for the long return mission to Earth, that will be an even worse TV
ratings disaster than the trip from Earth to Mars. There will be a
spike in the TV ratings when the astronauts finally return to Earth.
So let us imagine a 6-month trip to Mars, with two months of
exploration, and a 6-month return. That would be 425 days. The
average American would probably only pay close attention on five of
these days: when the astronauts leave Earth, when they first enter
into orbit around Mars, when they land on Mars, when they first walk
around on the surface, and when they return to Earth. Even if you
allow three additional days for watching astronauts walk around on the
surface, it would only amount to 8 watching days out of 425, or only
2% of the total mission.
Part
of the problem will be competition. Ask yourself: why do you not go
to the NASA web site, and watch live web cams of the astronauts in
the International Space Station? Part of the reason is: when you have
free time, there are 500 other things you can do, some of which are a
lot more entertaining. You have a choice between watching hundreds of
cable TV channels, or viewing thousands of fascinating web sites. Or
you can play any of thousands of exciting interactive games on your
gaming console. It's so much different from the days of the first
manned space missions. Back then the average person only got three TV
channels, and the three TV networks took over the airwaves during the
space missions. So during a space mission in the early 1960's, your
choices for entertainment were something like (1) read a book; (2)
play a board game; (3) listen to a phonograph record; or (4) watch
the space mission on TV. But now if you follow a space mission on TV
or on the web, you are choosing only one of thousands of exciting
entertainment choices. Given this competition, the entertainment
value of a manned space mission dwindles.
By
the time a manned space mission to Mars takes off, the entertainment
competition will be even greater. Just to give you a taste of coming
attractions, according to this New Yorker story, game developers are
working on a title called No Man's Sky which will supposedly
let virtual travelers “explore eighteen quintillion full-featured
planets.” By the time a manned Mars mission launches, there will
probably be a first-class virtual reality system used by millions
of people. Even 99% of space enthusiasts may prefer to “walk
around” virtual life-bearing planets using virtual reality
headsets, rather than just watching astronauts walk around a planet
with no visible signs of life.
It
may be argued that a certain percentage will always prefer to observe
reality rather than virtual reality. But even in the “real
science” department, a manned mission to Mars will face stiff
competition. By the time such a mission launches, the James Webb
Telescope will be in business, offering breathtaking new images of deep
space every day. There will also be countless other exciting
scientific breakthroughs, if anything remotely close to the
“singularity” occurs. Such breakthroughs may include finding life
on planets revolving around other stars. We can imagine a science
enthusiast checking the science news while astronauts are exploring
Mars. Such a person might give merely a glance to the Mars results,
and spend 95% of his science reading time looking at scientific
discoveries far more interesting than the exploration of a planet
with no visible life.
Some
might argue that people will be fascinated by the exploration
elements of a Mars mission, by the “finding what's over the next
hill” element of it. But the exploration of a particular area of
Mars is unlikely to have many visual surprises. The surface of Mars
has already been thoroughly radar-mapped and photo-mapped. You can
download “terrain files” that allow you to virtually fly over any
part of the surface of Mars. So we pretty much know what astronauts
are going to find when they explore some particular area. We can
imagine people saying they don't even want to watch the live TV
coverage of a Mars mission because they have already “been there,
done that” using their virtual reality system.
In
short, a manned Mars mission may be a “bust” in terms of
entertainment value. So we must probably look for some other
rationale that might justify such a mission. Future unmanned
exploration might provide such a rationale, if some exciting new
discovery were to be found on the Mars surface. But if we don't find
anything terribly interesting in the next ten or 15 years, then the
overall human reaction to a manned Mars mission may be something like
a giant yawn. Such a problem might be reduced if some innovative
approach was taken to spice up a Mars mission, to increase the human
interest element. There's got to be a more interesting agenda for a
Mars mission than just “look around and pick up rocks.”
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