Men on Mars by 2030: NASA Speaks to Sydney

By Rupert Parry

Earlier this April, among the ageing sandstone arches of the University of Sydney's main hall, there was a curious change. Amongst the bleary-eyed wandering students, stood small groups of men in black suits with dark sunglasses and little curly wires connecting to their earpieces. A car with unbelievably tinted windows and a golden crown for a numberplate waited out the front of the large wooden doors.

Inside, standing at a lectern, NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden introduced himself and greeted his packed audience. He was there as part of a rare NASA publicity campaign in the wake of the controversial decision to ground the space shuttle, the United States Government's only reliable way of ferrying astronauts to and from space. It seemed that Bolden had come to let us all know that according to the States, everything was going to plan in their race for the stars, and the quest for space exploration wasn't being abandoned despite appearances. But was he right?

Bolden spoke liberally on the topic of NASA's future in space exploration and its retirement of the space shuttle program. Since early 2011, the space shuttle has not been used to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), with the US instead turning to Russia to do the work for them. "That said," Bolden pronounced, "that's not the way we want to do it forever. We want the US to have the ability to ferry our astronauts to space ... and we will do it." The way they will do it, though, is a different approach to that taken in the past.

Instead of the government-owned NASA doing the ferrying, private companies will be docking with the ISS. "Everything we do from here on out will be an international cooperation," Bolden stated. "It's going to be a collaboration between private companies and our government ... They're going to make it, they're going to own it, and we're going to utilise it."

However, with private companies playing such an important role in the future of space travel, it's hard to see where exactly NASA will be required to play a role. Will we need a government-owned and publicly funded space agency, or will rich private organisations such as Virgin Galactic be sufficient for the future of space travel? Bolden's answer to such a question is convincing: "The exploration of space is something that only governments can do right now, because only governments can handle the risk. You're going to lose people with space exploration."

Indeed, with two major disasters claiming a total of fourteen lives, and various other training deaths, the risk of endeavours such as a manned Mars mission may be too much for the private sector for some time in the future.

A definitive date was announced for the long-delayed manned mission for Mars: "NASA will have a manned Mars mission by the year 2030," Bolden announced with conviction. An unmanned voyage is planned for 2013 to demonstrate the safety of such an ambitious project beforehand. The set date for a manned mission may be suspicious for those familiar with the agency's past history with Mars: the proposed launch day has been put off many times before.

The difficulty, said Bolden, was that it has been so long since the last actual landing on an extraterrestrial body. Space agencies (like humans) forget how to do things: "It's a perishable skill, and once you step away from it, you've got to learn it all over again." Many of the physicists and astronauts who forged the knowledge during the moon landings in 1969 are no longer around to pass on what they learned.

The administrator also set his sights on future collaborations with Australian physicists and astronomers, citing the increase in science research and space interest of recent years. The fact that he had taken the time to speak on the other side of the world served as an affirmation of this, and a hope that we may some day too join the space race.

One thing is for sure though: "NASA has no vision of establishing a colony on the moon."

Zip up your jumpsuits, then – it's fair game.

What should be next in humanity's quest for the stars?

Bolden, 66, worked as a pilot in the US Navy before being accepted as an astronaut in the 80s. Since then, he has logged a total of twenty eight days in space, piloting both the Columbia and Discovery space shuttles, and launching the Hubble Space telescope in 1990. In 2009, he was appointed by Barack Obama to the position of the administrator of NASA: essentially, the big boss, and the agency's public face.