A sweet mission

Rarely would we be so bold as to start this column with a quote from one of the most harrowing poems ever penned. Yet upon receiving our Editor’s brief this month, we found a certain line tumbling from our mouths.

“Theirs is not to reason why, Thiers is but to do or die”.

And to what did this rather pretentious use of Lord Tennyson’s notable line refer? Well, at that moment we had thought – erroneously as it turns out – our Editor had just asked us to look into the types of Mars Bars available.

“I want you tell me about White Mars.” He excitedly announced. Now, we like to think we can bring our light-hearted touch to bear on most science subjects – but confectionary?

Yet, sticking to the stanza of The Charge Of The Light Brigade, off we went to begin our research. Thankfully, a look of utter befuddlement as we returned from a ‘fact finding’ mission to the local shop was all it took to highlight our mistake.

He was of course talking about the White Mars Project – the first ever winter crossing of Antarctica – which began at the end of last month. It was conceived to provide insights into the challenge of sending a manned mission to Mars and ensuring its safe return. Basically the conditions on Mars are incredibly harsh, and the conditions in Antarctica during the winter are incredibly harsh – so learning how to deal with one will undoubtedly help with learning how to deal with the other. So harsh is the Antarctic Winter in fact that Sir Ranulph Fiennes was forced to pull out of the mission with suspected frost bite. And you know that if Sir Ranulph has to check out, then things are getting really tough.

Despite the hubris and heroics of the mission, there is of course some serious science to be done – with research aiming to study both the physical and psychological effects of the expedition's extreme nature. Yet, as ambitious as it is, this dry run of life on the red planet isn’t a new concept – in fact this very notion has its own society. The US based Mars Society claims its aim is “furthering the exploration and settlement of the red planet”. How does it do this? Well in the same way as the White Mars project intends to – it finds analogous harsh environments on Earth and makes a bee-line for them. Currently, for example, they are on their 12^th field mission at their Mars Dessert Research Station Based in the barren canyonlands of Utah. Whilst there the team will “launch a program of extensive long-duration geology and biology field exploration operations conducted in the same style and under many of the same constraints as they would on the red planet”.

Now – there is something about the Mars Society that strikes home immediately. They are delightfully amateur. And we mean this in every sense – firstly they are a group of volunteers, secondly – and more importantly – they embody the original French root of the word entirely… amateur: “lover of”.

It may seem at first glance when you see the pictures from the research stations, or read the day-by-day mission reports that it is just a group of pretenders gallivanting around playing spaceman – like so many school children in playgrounds across the world – but that is to miss the point. They are obviously in love with the idea of Martian colonisation and are doing everything in their powers to make it possible.

‘Amateurs’ have suffered severe stigmatisation in modern times, but from just a cursory look at the contributions to the world made by amateur scientists it is clear that the original French meaning is far more apt. Gregor Mendel, Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison – just a few of the amateur scientists who have shaped our world irrevocably, and we fully suspect that in time the teams that sweated – and froze – in order to build knowledge about surviving conditions on Mars will be considered in the same breath.

Oh, as for white chocolate covered Mars Bar confectionary – there is currently a petition to get Mars Incorporated to make this a reality. Never let it be said that we are anything but thorough…