The Martian

I finally watched The Martian last night and it was everything I hoped it would be.  I really liked how they incorporated Mark Watney's sarcasm into the movie even though they weren't able to allow us to hear him thinking (at least, not all the time).  The only downside was that they had to cut parts of the book out, like the accident he had while driving to the Area IV MAV site.  But that's okay, what they left in was awesome.

But both the book and the movie raise an interesting question.  Should we go to that much trouble and expense to save only one person?  They would have spent billions of dollars to rescue one guy from Mars.  Billions of dollars that could have been spent on more important things on Earth.

I guess the same could be said about missions to Mars -- is it worth the money to explore another planet when we have so much pain and suffering on our own planet.  The way I would justify that is the fact that a planned mission to Mars would be used productively, to experiment and learn about a large number of things that could eventually be used back on Earth to improve our lives.

On the other hand, a rescue mission to Mars would only result in one thing, the rescue of one person. In the case of The Martian I'm sure NASA could use the opportunity to learn about things from both Mark's stay on Mars and the extra time spent in space by the rest of the crew.  But unlike a planned mission to Mars, there's no guarantee of any productive outcome.

Thinking back through the history of NASA, they've never had to actually rescue anyone.  And in fact they've made it policy that there is no such thing as rescue in space.  I'm pretty sure all astronauts are aware and accept this.  And even though NASA did a lot to help save the astronauts on Apollo 13, they didn't actually perform a rescue mission, they simply helped the crew figure out a way to get home.  If they hadn't been able to get the Apollo 13 crew home, they'd still be floating around somewhere in space -- they wouldn't have been able to send anyone to get them.

I guess the problem is that while the astronauts may accept the risks, the public does not.  And public opinion can have a greater impact on the outcome of crisis than logic and sense.  It's why U.S. special forces were sent in to Iraq to rescue a blonde female soldier who ended up hurt and the video of the rescue is released to the media.  It made no sense to do what they did, but public pressure required that they do it or they'd lose support for the war.

Along the same lines I can see public support for NASA being severely damaged if they left an astronaut to die on Mars.  I can see the government cancelling future Mars missions because they left an astronaut to die on Mars.  It's one of the reasons I can understand it when governments choose not to share things with the public -- because the public, in general, can be unreasonable and illogical.

But this still doesn't answer the question as to whether it's worth it to spend billions of dollars to rescue one person.  Is there an answer?  Does every single situation require its own analysis?  If a general rule was made that rescue missions wouldn't happen, would that rule be followed if it actually happened?  Is there a maximum number that should be spent, or should it be an all or nothing thing?

I honestly think that if I were stranded some place like Mars, and it was a complete accident, and I knew what I was getting myself into, I would ask them not to waste the time and money to come get me.  Instead I would do what I could while I was alive and then probably do something to make my passing less agonizing.  I don't think of it as being noble, just reasonable.  If I wasn't prepared for that to happen, I have no business being on Mars (or where ever else it may be).

I'm pretty sure this is a topic that could be debated till the end of time and not everyone would agree.  There will likely always be a division of opinions on what's right and what's wrong -- because there is no right and wrong answer.