Mars: you can't put a price on discovering the new in our world – or others

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/11/mars-price-new-world-curiosity-rover-lake

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The desire to experience awe in some form, big or small, is, I have often observed, a fundamental driver of human endeavour. One of my relatives goes to the movies to find that perfect repeatable quote. Another friend is astounded by how quickly her baby twins pick things up from each other.

On a larger scale, that human search for awe leads into fields of science, philosophy and sometimes even politics. This desire for discovery naturally bleeds into space exploration, which in part seeks to answer how we came to be, and where we'll go. Is there another Earth circling a distant star? Does the red giant Betelgeuse contain information to help us understand our sun's future? And, as David Bowie famously put it, is there life on Mars?

Many of us felt awe watching the latest results from the Nasa Mars Curiosity rover mission, which is looking for habitable environments on the red planet. One major discovery (among many) is that scientists found evidence in an area called Yellowknife Bay of an ancient freshwater lake that could have hosted tiny life forms. The ingredients were certainly there: water that wasn't too salty or acidic, as shown by the clay minerals that formed there; multiple elements that life needs, such as carbon and hydrogen. Scientists (who reported their findings in the journal Science) also noted an overall persistence of the environment for at least millions of years because they were unable to find evidence of cracks in the rock samples that would have indicated that the lake dried up.

As John Grotzinger, the project scientist for Curiosity at the California Institute of Technology, said on Monday:

<blockquote>"We're turning the corner from a mission which is dedicated to the search for habitable environments, to a mission that is now dedicated to that subset of habitable environments which also preserves organic carbon. That's the step we need to take as we explore for habitable life on Mars."</blockquote>

Curiosity was a mission that came at an immense development cost to Nasa of £1.52bn ($2.5bn), a figure that does not consider the ongoing costs of running a rover and its suite of scientific instruments, or the money paid to Nasa-funded researchers on the mission.

Nasa, like many US government departments, is fighting for funds in the fiscal 2014 budget. Cuts to planetary science in recent budgets have been harsh, critics say, who add that the agency is turning its back on the rest of the solar system to focus on Mars. One fear in the planetary science community is that the longstanding Cassini mission to Saturn's system, still functioning perfectly, could be terminated for the sake of operating funds for Curiosity.

It's hard to quantify blue-sky research. A few years ago, the prolific products-focused company 3M (perhaps best known for Post-it notes) moved its research and development to align with business needs. Under a former CEO, James McNerney, it saw a temporary boost to revenue. Soon after his departure in 2005, however, the company swung the pendulum more towards research again. "Invention is by its very nature a disorderly process," said then-CEO George Buckley in a 2007 interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.

If invention is disorderly, so too is scientific work. Scientists base their work on the facts they uncover through methodology, and work to draw from those facts as they reach conclusions. Then everything must be verified by others, again and again. The process can appear tedious to an outsider, but it is through these small steps – sometimes forward, sometimes backward – that progress ensues.

Scientists can see information in front of them through Curiosity's eyes – which they are working to confirm – but how that will affect us in a year or 10 years or 100 years is something nobody can predict. Maybe we won't ever be able to justify the investment in purely business terms. Isn't there an inherent value, however, to seeking the new in our world?

It's hard for an individual researcher or agency (such as Nasa) to come to clear terms on that question, especially in a tough fiscal environment. What I do know, though, is in my own life my teachers and mentors always preached learning in some form to grow as a person. There must be a way for nations and the international community to accomplish that as well. I can't say if space exploration is that frontier, but if we turn our backs on the projects we have, we'll never know for sure.

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