Inventors Don’t Win ‘em All
America is a society of winners. Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach, summed up this attitude saying, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” At the same time, we are a nation of inventors and explorers. Our capacity to overcome a challenge as great as the exploration of the solar system demands that the inventor’s ability to deal with setbacks overcomes the thirst for “winning” every time.
The fact is, sending complex scientific probes across the vastness of space to a place like Mars is a very difficult thing to do. The Russian space program has suffered more than a dozen failures of its Mars probes. During the last two years, both Russia and Japan also launched Mars probes. Both failed to achieve their goals. The sad fact is, 1998 and 1999 were bad years for the human race’s effort to learn more about the Red Planet.
Rather than evaluate the Mars program as a series of isolated missions that provide “gee whiz” pictures for TV news every few years, we need to remember that the United States has embarked on a two-decade plan to explore Mars. We are engaged in this effort because Mars is the most hospitable extraterrestrial spot in the universe that we can reach. We hope to learn invaluable clues to the development of the solar system, including Earth, as well as potentially answer questions regarding the development of life outside of our planet.
The true success of the Mars missions is whether we learn from every mission. In that light, the 1993 “failure” of the Mars Observer, a billion-dollar mission, served an important purpose. It led to a reorganization of the Mars exploration program, abandoning a few high-cost missions for a series of less comprehensive, less costly efforts.
The JPL/NASA Mars team is now batting .500 under the new multi-mission format. While it is disappointing to consider that outstanding successes with the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Pathfinder have been followed by two losses, the mission goals and the team of scientists and engineers are as solid as ever. The key will be what lessons are learned from the “failures” and how those lessons are applied to future missions.
The same was true in the 1960s when the United States first tried to land robotic spacecraft on the Moon. There were a series of failed missions before we learned how to land safely. But learn we did, first with robotic spacecraft, followed by human missions. I believe that in the 21st century Americans will similarly set foot on Mars. And when we do, we will have in large measure these pathfinding unmanned missions to thank.
