Dear friend of Wonderfest,

Would you like to make that salutation, above, a little more meaningful?  Just capitalize the F in “friend”!  Please become a formal Friend of Wonderfest.  No blood oath is required, and “Friendship” costs nothing.  Becoming a Friend just indicates that you support the cause of informal, provocative science education, and that you might want to get involved in helping to produce Wonderfest events.  Please do consider making this small commitment to America’s oldest science festival.

Introducing! The WonderOutpost Science Forum

Should the U.S. send astronauts on a one-way mission to Mars?! The savings in time and expense would be dramatic.  It might be tantamount to a death sentence, but there’d be no shortage of qualified volunteers.  And if the U.S. doesn’t do it, won’t the Russians or the Chinese?  Discuss this fascinating topic in the brand new WonderOutpost Science Forum at wonderfest.org.

Priestley Medal winner Dick Zare

Huzzah! Wonderfest advisor Richard Zare has been honored with the very highest award of the American Chemical Society.  Professor Zare, who chairs the Stanford Chemistry Department, will receive the 2010 Priestley Medal for his distinguished service to the entire field of chemistry.  Congratulations, Dick!

Speaking of Wonderfest Advisors, Board president Dan Werthimer is waxing scientific about the search for ET at an upcoming meeting of the Bay Area Skeptics.  Dan is chief scientist for SETI@home at UC Berkeley.  Join him for good talk about little green men at La Peña’s Café Valparaíso in Berkeley on July 15 at 7:00 PM.

Reminder: If you believe that the world is better off when people are engaged with science, then please formalize your relationship with Wonderfest: Become a Friend of Wonderfest today.

Wondrously,
Tucker Hiatt, director

P.S.  Each year’s festival is quite expensive to produce.  If you know of a public-spirited company or foundation that values top-notch informal science education, kindly drop me a line: tucker@wonderfest.org

Welcome to the very first edition of the WonderOutpost Science Forum.  WonderOutpost brings controversial  science discussions to the blogisphere and invites everyone to participate.  Here is our very first topic:

“Sometime before the end of this century, there will be a human colony on Mars.  It will happen when people finally wake up to the fact that two-way trips to the red planet are unnecessary.”

So begins Arizona State physicist Paul Davies in an essay entitled “A One-Way Ticket to Mars.”  Davies does not envision a suicide mission.  Rather, he makes the following claim:

“Adequate supplies, including a nuclear power source, can be sent on ahead, and every two years more supplies, and more astronauts, will be dispatched to the new colony.”

Davies may be right.  But a truly adventurous nation will forgo the suicide proscription.  If a brave, aging astronaut wants to end his/her days on the Red Planet making unparalleled contributions to geology and, perhaps, biology, are we to say “no”?  I’ll bet that SOME spacefaring nation will say “yes,” and will do so before 2025.

We invite you to weigh in on this subject as well as any of the following questions.  Please leave your comments below.

• How much easier/cheaper is a mission that involves no return to Earth?
• How long could astronauts survive on Mars?
• What qualifications/motivations would qualify an astronaut for such a mission?
• Are we ethically willing to “send astronauts to their death” on Mars?
• Who is the “we” in the previous question?  Americans?  (What if the Russians or the Chinese are willing to do it?)
• Is it better to send robots in the first place?!

For further study:

• This NASA pdf provides excellent background on the inhospitable Martian environment: http://imaginemars.jpl.nasa.gov/info/DiscoverInfo.pdf
• Most of all, human martians may miss the radiation shielding that Earth’s atmosphere provides, protecting us from solar flares and cosmic rays. To appreciate the harsh radiation environment on Mars, see http://klabs.org/richcontent/Tutorial/radiation/space_rad_health/spaceflight_radiation_health_program.htm
• Michael Cole’s 1999 book “Living on Mars: Mission To The Red Planet” [Enslow Publishers, Springfield, NJ] describes the landing of Sojourner on Mars, summarizes the history of information gathering missions, and speculates about future plans for explorations of the Red Planet.