The Mars Exodus

The following was my contribution to an article titled 'The Mars Attraction' by Ms. Geeta Padmanabhan.

In light of the ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), the article looks at the relevance of the efforts by ISRO and NASA towards exploring Mars, the red planet. Though the immediate consequences of mars (or planetary) exploration aren't obvious, it is not an exaggeration to say that repurcussions will be felt in science, finance & industry and overall quality of human life down the line. Many-a-innovation poineered at NASA are currently house hold items or are part of our daily routine and only time will tell how we benifit from ISRO's MOM.

The article was published in the Metroplus section of The Hindu newspaper, available online here

Here's the first draft. Well, ofcourse alien drawings and mars tracks werent mentioned in the article, given their peculiar nature well, for one, we had to take revenge for the drawings aliens made on earth - the crop circles in south england, south america and so on. And we finally did take revenge last summer when the mars rover, Spirit, accidentally drew a penis on mars, here and hereand what reasons will nasa give to offer jobs like this one and this one. Search for "nasa couch potato job" and you'll be amused and amazed at the results! Projects like mars one get mixed reactions, some think it's absurd, some think it will not amount to anything significant.

And finally, to quote Elon Musk, the owner of spaceX, "it would be pretty cool to die on mars, just not on impact". Many more quotes like "The pale blue dot" by Carl Sagan will pop up once man lands on the mars!

On a more serious note, I feel that the humans should land on the mars in the next 15-20 years because this generation, my generation hasn't had a moment like the ones people had in the 1960's. The space race, although it's roots based in bitter rivalry between the us and ussr, bore unexpected fruit like satellites, the space shuttles and what not. And we humans keep looking for reasons to be motivated, to work, to innovate and to do awesome things! this could be a reason for my generation or maybe the next!

Our journey to the moon has given us satellite TV, 3G, the internet, extreme heat resistant ceramic compounds (used on space shuttles), GPS and a gazillion other things. and I can't but wonder what the spill off technologies will be when we try going to mars :)