When asked about human missions to Mars at a recent campaign event, Donald Trump replied,
“Honestly, I think it’s wonderful; I want to rebuild our infrastructure first, ok? I think it’s wonderful.”
This demonstrates a pattern often voiced by politicians and others, that we need to fix things here on Earth before “spending money in space.”
While infrastructure in the U.S. certainly needs improvement, if we followed this scenario, we wouldn’t be landing humans on Mars this century, nor accomplishing other difficult feats. But the truth is, our infrastructure problem is vastly more expensive and complex than sending humans to Mars. Whether Donald Trump or other candidates support human missions to Mars, it is safe to assume that many of them adhere to common myths about such missions. This should not be surprising, the general public and many policymakers have a vastly inflated perspective of the cost of human space exploration.
The issue of space has come up several times on the campaign trail. When candidates are questioned, space exploration receives mixed answers. Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and others have expressed support, while other candidates have expressed skepticism. Regardless of their current stance, Mars will never be a top priority for any of them. However, if the candidates understood that Mars exploration won’t cost much more than NASA’s current budget, they may view it differently. Actually, roughly the same level of funds will be spent on the space program whether we go to Mars or not. As such, this should not be a difficult decision for the next president – and it will not negatively impact any infrastructure programs. In fact, it will improve another area where America is currently challenged, the improvement of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. At the same time, it will offer inspiration and technological breakthroughs we can’t even imagine that will improve the economy.
In addition to inflated perceptions of cost, some believe that when budgets for space missions are proposed, this constitutes entirely new spending (on top of the current NASA budget projections). In reality, the majority of mission budgets come from funds already projected within the NASA budget – it’s mostly a decision of how we decide to use these NASA funds.