Anthonares

Last night, PBS aired a two-part series on NOVA about the search for the Northwest Passage and two of the most famous Arctic explorers, John Franklin and Roald Amundsen. As I watched I realized something that helped to put much of the discussion about Martian exploration into perspective: Arctic and Antarctic explorers would spend up to several years at a time on any given expedition.

These weren’t years spent in the relative shirt-sleeves comfort of a pressurized, climate-controlled Mars base either. They were fitful, short summers bracketed by horrifically cold and dangerous winters. Supplies were often quite limited, and scurvy and tuberculosis were constant threats. There were no radios (though the final Shackleton expeditions did carry radios for part of the journey), and absolutely no communications with home. Support teams were non existent, resupply missions were impossible, rescue was unlikely, and the psychological conditions of the journey were simply brutal. In the words of Shackleton in an advertisement in the Times of London in 1901 (historically disputed, btw):

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

Why, then, did these men choose to go? I’m not talking about Franklin, Amundsen, Scott, or Shackleton. I mean the men whose names have not come down to us, the hundreds or even thousands of men upon whose backs the poles of this earth were explored. I think the answer to this question is the reason why space exploration is inevitable. These men were along in part for the money, and in part for the fame, but mostly because the urge to explore is embedded so deep in all of us that the dark specter of death was no deterrent. Let me make my point all the more clear.
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