Hype: ‘Cosmic rays stymie Mars mission’

I’ve seen a lot of scientists complaining about how the media reports on science. For the most part, I’m pretty indifferent because I don’t read science stories and because I don’t know a lot about science. However, I do know a little something about space and common sense.

So today when I was reading an ABC News article covering the the release of a report on radiation in space, I finally realized what said scientists were talking about. The reports findings on cosmic rays is almost laughably overstated:

Cosmic rays are so dangerous and so poorly understood that people are unlikely to get to Mars or even back to the moon until better ways are found to protect astronauts, experts said on Monday.

It would behoove the media to ask a tough question every now and then. In this case, an appropriate hardball would have been to question why cosmic rays posed no problems for the six crews that landed on the Moon, came back to earth, and have lived long (cancer free) lives.

Instead of passing this off as if its the only thing holding us back from deep orbit travel, these ‘experts’ and the media could have simply added it to the laundry list of reasons why we aren’t going to Mars for some time. But no:

“Given today’s knowledge and today’s understanding of radiation protection, to put someone out in that type of environment would violate the current requirements that NASA has.”

They assume as if a trip to Mars is a matter of fact!

Cosmic rays are not even in the top 1000 reasons why we aren’t going to Mars for some time. We don’t have the technology to send men there and bring them back — let alone sustain their lives on an extra-terrestrial planet that doesn’t have drinkable water. Read: they’d have to bring water with them, which is enormously heavy and requires additional enormously heavy fuel.

Thus I don’t even see the point of putting this out there under the guise of ‘prohibiting’ a mission to Mars — there is no mission to Mars.