Red Alert As Mars Mania Sweeps Alien Territory
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday October 20, 2001
Back in the 1930s, in a bad sci-fi flick called The Deadly Ray from Mars, Flash Gordon, helped by pointy-headed scientist Dr Hans Zarkov and pointy-chested siren Dale Arden, foiled a dastardly plot by Ming the Merciless to drain all the nitrogen from Earth's atmosphere.
Almost ever since, it seems, the red planet has been fighting a credibility problem.
``There's no question: people are sceptical," concedes Jason Hoogland, technical director of the Mars Society of Australia (MSA) and a man who passionately hopes humans will be boldly going there before 2020.
``If you listen to the NASA public relations machine you are left with the impression of a distant theme park to which we send robots."
But listen up, earthlings: perceptions could be about to change.
Over the next few months Australia will be under attack from the Martians in our midst.Jacqueline Hayes, 17, a student at Pymble Ladies College, is preparing to visit the Jet Propulsion Centre in Pasadena, California, as part of a Mars competition prize. Ms Hayes, of Turramurra, says she wants one day to ``work for NASA or on an Australian space program". The National Museum of Australia in Canberra is pulling together an exhibition, due to open in December, under the title To Mars and Beyond: the Search for the Secrets of Life.
A spokesman, Martin Portus, promises ideas ranging from those of modern astronomers to Aborigines, and exhibits ``from rockets to the stuffed body of the first dog in space", a Russian nicknamed Red Rover.Astronomers worldwide are poised to applaud the arrival at Mars of the latest, heavily instrumented NASA spacecraft, Odyssey. On Wednesday morning, Sydney time, it is to start a risky orbit-entry manoeuvre. A convoy of six four-wheel-drive vehicles containing Australian and international aerospace experts will leave Adelaide next week on a 12-day trip to scout out Mars-like locations in the Red Centre.
``It is an opportunity to do some serious science," says one of the adventurers, Professor Malcolm Walter, director of Macquarie University's Centre for Astrobiology.
No terrestrial site can come close to replicating conditions on Mars, which is covered with volcanos, craters and creeks raked by dust storms, and has temperatures ranging from -160C to 20C.
Humans could not survive outside a spacesuit.
``Your blood would boil and your lungs would blow up," Professor Walter says.
Nevertheless, appropriate test sites have already been created in the United States and in the Canadian Arctic. Mr Hoogland believes a complementary Australian site, to be called Mars-Oz, could become part of an expanded global network.
As several film-makers have found, visually it is a good match with Mars. According to the MSA's Jennifer Laing, Australian scientists, accustomed to the Red Centre, ``feel a close affinity with the Red Planet".
The Sturt Stony Desert, Henbury Craters near Alice Springs, Mt Toondina near Oodnadatta and Arkaroola, have already been identified as potential sites by Project Jarntimarra (the local Warlpiri Aborigine word for star) for testing the technology needed to support a human mission to Mars.
NASA is helping to fund work on a MSA-supported human operations prototype, or pressurised Mars rover vehicle called the Marsupial. A British aerospace company, Starchaser Industries (motto: ``The sky is not the limit"), has sponsored next week's expedition.
But Mr Hoogland says the society needs to raise more funds for the Mars-Oz habitat/lander facility it proposes for the Red Centre. That, of course, requires convincing big business.
Ms Hayes believes that perceptions are changing.
``Maybe it's a generational thing; younger people find space exploration more credible." The Martian events of the next few months should further raise awareness.
Mr Hoogland is also looking for a little help from a movie-maker, James ``Titanic"Cameron.
``Why the hell do you whackos want to go to Mars?" he once asked members of the Mars Society in the US.
He was only mimicking public sceptics. In fact, as Cameron went on to confess, he is ``one of those whackos, too". He is also determined to produce a film that will ``make humans-to-Mars real in the minds of the viewing public".
It may not be as melodramatic as The Deadly Ray from Mars, but Jason Hoogland believes it will be unmissable.
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
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