New Mars Forums

IceCrystal23

Banned

Registered: 2002-07-15

Posts: 1

Re: Reasons to send humans to Mars - help me

I found an article on BBC News about how Russia plans to send six men to Mars in 2015 here's the article
Well, I am a high school student taking a night English class in order to graduate early, and next week we have an arguement essay due.  This article inspired me to write about either why we should send people to Mars, or something like "Why the Public Should Want Men on Mars."
All of the arguements I've read here are very helpful, but I need a some credible sources as well (such as papers by Dr. Zubrin and such).  I was wondering if anyone here would be willing to send me some links or something to find such sources.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. in case you didn't catch this yet I am fully in support of a manned Mars mission, and enjoy reading the debates at this site

Shaun Barrett

Member

From: Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2001-12-28

Posts: 2,843

Re: Reasons to send humans to Mars - help me

Welcome aboard IceCrystal23 !
   We need all the humans-to-Mars enthusiasts we can get!
   I'm not sure how deep into this you may already be, but if you want to get a feel for Dr. Zubrin's point of view, try flicking through his book, "The Case For Mars". It's required reading for Mars advocates in my opinion!
   Hope this is helpful, and good luck with the essay!
                                         

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The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it Jumping Up and Down.   - Rita Rudner

Phobos

Member

Registered: 2002-01-02

Posts: 1,103

Re: Reasons to send humans to Mars - help me

Here are some brief ideas I can think of at the moment.  They might not be really applicable to a single manned mission but they might help.

--We need to create a two planet species so that if one planet is hit with an asteroid or suffers nuclear war and a large portion of the population dies off, there's people on another planet to continue the species' existence. 

--Mars is important as a new frontier.  The frontier theory basically states that without new frontiers humanity starts to stagnate and becomes inimical to individual freedom.  The last chapter of Zubrin's book is a pretty good "new frontier" essay. 

--Establishing a human presence on Mars will be an incentive for people to develop new forms technology that will ultimately make exploiting space for its resources economical and could ultimately mean we will no longer have to mine or destroy wilderness areas on Earth.  Space is very vast in material wealth and making that wealth available could help most of humanity. 

So of course, none of these benefits will ever be realized unless we start somewhere and begin developing the technology for manned missions to Mars.

Here's some more I just thought of that might be more of what your looking for:

--In the same way that the Apollo Mission introduced a lot of new and useful technology to the masses, A manned Mars mission will likely do the same.  For instance, there's a lot of work going into how to process sewage on a Mars mission.  There might be valuable spin-offs of that technology we could use on Earth to name a few. 

--Human explorers can do science and hunt for life a lot better than robotic probes can. 

--National pride.  Even though I don't particularly like arguments like this, you might be able to make the case that a manned Mars mission would be good for national pride the way the Apollo missions were.

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To achieve the impossible you must attempt the absurd

Auqakah

Member

From: England

Registered: 2002-07-13

Posts: 175

Re: Reasons to send humans to Mars - help me

One other reason thats worth a mention - bringing space exploration back to the forefront of the general public's mind, to ensure funding for future manned missions to other parts of the solar system, and other funding needed for space exploration. 

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Ex Astra, Scienta

nirgal

Banned

Registered: 2002-05-14

Posts: 157

Re: Reasons to send humans to Mars - help me

-A manned mission to Mars will inspire people, especially the youth, and it will get them interested in science and math, knowledge our technological civilization can't exist without.

-It will help people to see the big picture and for a (short) time people will forget about our earthly struggles and conflicts

Phobos

Member

Registered: 2002-01-02

Posts: 1,103

Re: Reasons to send humans to Mars - help me

A manned flight to Mars would be a worthy way for countries to peacefully come together and solve difficult problems.  You know this little exercise Icecrystal has thrown at us is proving how hard it is to come up with that killer app to sell a manned mission to Mars to a naysayer.  Personally, I think it comes down to vision.  People who can't see very far into the future are probably going to be against manned spaceflight regardless of what you tell them.  It's a little like trying to convince a European in 750 A.D. why someone should risk sailing off the edge of the Earth and why their "tax" money should be spent on it.

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To achieve the impossible you must attempt the absurd