- The Guardian Saturday 30 April 2022
(^4) News
Leave trips to the
moon and Mars
to the billionaires,
astronomer royal
tells space agencies
Ian Sample
Science editor
The world’s space agencies should
scrap plans to send astronauts to
the moon and Mars and leave them
to explorers and billionaires who can
privately fund and bear the risks of
such adventures, the astronomer
royal says.
Prof Lord Martin Rees said tech-
nical improvements and more
sophisticated artifi cial intelligence
meant robotic missions were becom-
ing ever more capable of exploration
and even construction in space, mak-
ing it unnecessary for space agencies
to front far-fl ung human missions.
“We should not have publicly
funded programmes to send people
to the moon, still less to Mars,” Rees
told the Guardian. “It’s hugely risky,
hugely expensive, and there’s no
practical or scientifi c benefi t to send-
ing humans. It’s a pretty bad bargain
for the taxpayer.”
His comments prompted a robust
defence from some experts who
stressed that government-backed
spacefaring remain ed a means for
projecting soft power and provided
huge inspiration, adding that the
private sector could turn space into
the “ wild west”.
But Rees argues we should encour-
age and cheer on explorers and
billionaire entrepreneurs who want
to leave the planet in search of adven-
ture in the spirit of Ernest Shackleton
and Robert Falcon Scott – both of
whom died on Antarctic expeditions.
The SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, has
long enthused about moving to Mars,
while noting “ there’s a good chance
of death ”.
While human genetic modifi cation
should be heavily regulated on Earth,
Rees said, Mars settlers would be free
to enhance their children to cope with
life on the red planet. Doing so could
drive the divergence of the species,
he added, raising the unsettling pros-
pect of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs
being the seed stock for a potentially
puny bunch of post-humans, given
the weak Martian gravity.
“They’ll have every incentive to
try and redesign themselves and
these changes are going to be rapid
compared with Darwinian evo-
lution,” Rees said. “If something
evolves that’s rather diff erent from
present day human beings, it’s likely
to evolve from them, not us.”
Astronauts last set foot on the
moon half a century ago. Since then,
humans have not ventured further
than a few hundred miles into space,
mostly to the International Space Sta-
tion. Major space agencies, including
the US, Europe, China and Russia,
are now on course for a return to the
moon. Mars is next in line.
The cost is considerable because
humans are fragile. President Biden
has requested $26bn (£21bn) for Nasa
in 2023, with $7.5bn earmarked for
the Artemis programme, which aims
to put the fi rst woman and the fi rst
person of colour on the moon as early
as 2025.
“I think many people support the
idea of science in space and assume
humans are an essential part of that.
In a way they are, because an astro-
naut knows more geology than a
US army gives birthday cake
to replace one it stole in 1945
Angela Giuff rida
Rome correspondent
Repentant US soldiers have presented
an Italian woman with a birthday
cake to make up for the one their pre-
decessors stole from her as it cooled
on a windowsill 77 years ago.
It was the eve of Meri Mion’s 13th
birthday when US troops arrived in
her village of San Pietro , near Vicenza
in northern Italy, to fi ght against
the US army garrison in Italy during a
ceremony at Giardini Salvi in Vicenza,
a city listed as a Unesco world herit-
age site, on Thursday.
She said she had not been expect-
ing the cake, but clearly remember ed
the moment the one baked for her
13th birthday “disappeared”.
“I was surprised,” she told the local
newspaper Il Giornale di Vicenza.
“But then I realised the American
soldiers had taken it and it made
me happy. It was a good end given
everything they had done.”
The large cream cake, with straw-
berries and garnished with a basket
of mini Easter eggs, was presented
by Sgt Peter Wallis and Col Matthew
Gomlak, the garrison’s commander,
during a ceremony attended by Ital-
ian and US soldiers, local offi cials and
residents.
Gomlak spoke of the fighting
between US and German forces in the
Vicenza area in 1945, during which 19
American soldiers were killed and the
city suff ered collateral damage, and
how local residents off ered the troops
bread and wine.
“That warm welcome by the
people of Vicenza continues to this
day,” he said.
Mion said she would share the cake
with her loved ones to mark her 90th
birthday. “I will eat the cake with my
entire family, remembering a won-
derful day that I will never forget ,”
she added.
German forces. During the battle,
her family spent the night in the attic,
emerging the next day after German
soldiers, who had fi red shots near her
home, retreated.
Mion’s mother then set about bak-
ing a birthday cake, leaving it to cool
by an open window, only for it to be
stolen by presumably hungry US
soldiers.
An emotional Mion, who turn ed
90 yesterday, was presented with a
replacement cake by soldiers from
▲ Sgt Peter Wallis gives Meri Mion a
cake on the eve of her 90th birthday
present-day robot,” said Rees. “But
the kinds of robots we’ll send in
20 years may be able to decide where
to dig on Mars as well as any actual
geologist could.”
Closer to Earth, Rees fears the
phrase “space tourism” underplays
the danger in the activity and wants
it rebranded as high-risk adventure
so inevitable tragedies do not become
national traumas, as happened when
Nasa lost space shuttles in 1986 and
- Even brief trips to the edge of
space, such as those planned by Vir-
gin Galactic, are risky. “There are
going to be crashes even on these
suborbital fl ights and they’ll be less
traumatic and seem less of a disaster
if they are viewed in the way of some-
one falling off Everest rather than a
civilian airliner crash,” he said.
The astronomer, who argues the
case in a new book, The End of Astro-
nauts, believes private spacefarers
will be as inspiring as space agency
astronauts. But others are sceptical.
Prof David Southwood , a former
chair of the UK Space Agency and a
senior research investigator at Impe-
rial College, said: “If you’ve ever been
in a room with [the UK astronaut]
Tim Peake and a couple of hundred
schoolchildren there’s a buzz and
enthusiasm because he’s done some-
thing very few people have done,
out on the fi nal frontier. They think:
‘ He’s like me.’ You don’t have to be a
billionaire.”
Didier Schmitt , the head of the
strategy and coordination group
for robotic and human exploration
at the European Space Agency, said
the trend for human spaceflight
being used as soft power was set to
continue.
He said: “The robotic versus
human spacefl ight rhetoric is an old
debate that has defi nitely been super-
seded by the US and Chinese new race
for the moon and Mars .”
Leaving human exploration to
the private sector risked “a wild
west approach in space”, he added,
stressing it was important to balance
private exploitation with public
exploration in space. “It is a duty
for governments, and not the free
market, to enthuse the younger
generation .”
‘ [Mars settlers] will
have every incentive
to try and redesign
themselves’Martin Rees
Astronomer royal Richard
Branson on a
Virgin Galactic
zero-gravity
fl ight last year.
Below, an
impression of
Mars, where the
SpaceX founderElon Musk has
said he wants to
move, despite
‘a good chance
of death’
PHOTOGRAPH: VIRGIN
GALACTIC/ZUMA/REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK; MARK
GARLICK/SCIENCE
PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY