鈥淲E DO not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: human beings are headed into the cosmos.鈥� That鈥檚 the dream of President George W. Bush, who in January announced an ambitious venture that foresees an American once again planting footprints on the moon before heading on to Mars and maybe beyond.
Will it happen? Compared with reaching the Red Planet, the moon should be a piece of cake. The first manned flight would take place between 2015 and 2020, a plausible goal given that NASA鈥檚 Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes took men to the moon in just over a decade, using 1960s technology.
And as lunar exploration is undergoing a lively renaissance, NASA will probably find willing international partners. In November, China and India each confirmed that they intend to send a probe to the moon in 2007, while the European Space Agency鈥檚 first lunar craft, SMART-1, is already circling the moon and is due to start scientific observations in January 2005. ESA intends to establish a 鈥渧illage鈥� of cooperative robots on the moon by 2014, as a prelude to a possible manned base around 2024. It is already eyeing up potential sites for the base, including the Peak of Eternal Light near the lunar south pole.
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Mars is a different story. So far there is no timetable for getting there, and little is known about the physiological hazards of a crewed Mars mission. And then there is the cost, which would likely run into hundreds of billions of dollars and elbow out valuable unmanned US space missions designed to answer big questions about black holes, gravitational waves and dark energy. Until details like these start to be dealt with, Bush鈥檚 dream of pushing back the final frontier and kicking up some red dust will remain just that.
