I’m convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we’re eventually going to run out of money.
But what if we send people the first time and they don’t come back?
What if they stay there?
Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin
Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 11
Vanity Fair
July 2010
Prologue
New York Times Exclusive
March 12, 2019
From the series “The Crew of Spacecraft Avalon”
Sharon Douglas’ early career does not follow the typical path of a NASA astronaut. Born and raised in Iowa, she graduated from Iowa City High School at age sixteen and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and literature in 2001 from Cornell College, a small liberal arts school located only a brief thirty minutes from her hometown. Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York and received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Columbia University in 2005, followed by a Master of Science degree in aeronautical science from the California Institute of Technology in 2008. She remained in California for the next five years and taught high school chemistry at Pasadena High School. Within those five years, she married and divorced Keith Hadler, a professor of mechanical engineering.
In May 2014, NASA selected her as a spacecraft mission specialist. She completed her Astronaut Candidate Training at the Johnson Space Center in February 2016. This training included intensive instruction in Orion and I.S.S. (International Space Station) spacecraft systems, scientific and technical briefings, and wilderness survival exercises. After going through intense physiological and psychological examinations, Sharon was selected by NASA in August 2017 for the controversial Project Avalon. The scheduled launch of the Spacecraft Avalon, a one-way manned mission to Mars with a crew of four, is in June of this year, despite its many opponents. Here, written by Douglas herself, is an exclusive look at the issue from the inside.
“I can only try and imagine what it was like. 1947. Muroc Army Air Field. Dry, dead, California desert. The age of the test pilot. It was a time when the pilots and their wives lived in almost-shacks with metal roofs, melting under unbearable heat during the day while huddled together, freezing, at night. World War II was over, but a fear of red communism nipped at everyone’s heels. In those days, test pilots were at the pinnacle of heroics, the men who put themselves on the line and attempted to push beyond the limit of human knowledge daily, with seeming disregard for their own lives. They hurled their experimental aircraft further and faster into the sky, the atmosphere, even the heavens if you will, than had ever been attempted before. They seemed fearless, willing to risk everything for the extra bit of throttle needed to forge a new flight speed record.
And what about the men who wanted to be pilots but admitted to a fear of failure or, worse, a fear of death? Well, they didn’t have the right stuff to be a test pilot then, did they? Because every real man at Muroc—there definitely weren’t female test pilots at this time, of course—wanted to prove he was the fastest, most courageous, the top of the pack. It was a time when wives stayed at home, filled with all the anxiety their test pilot husbands didn’t (or wouldn’t) show. They knew one flight was all it took for a man to never return. One malfunction, one attempt to push an aircraft too far, one bad decision. But even the anxious wives followed their husbands’ model, keeping any dread or worry bottled inside..
I wish I could have been there to see night slinking down on the desert when the famous test pilot and his wife went out horseback riding. She had challenged him to a race through the desert. He, filled with the usual after-five drinks of a pilot, followed, laughing and cheering. Two horses galloping between cacti, sweat pouring down their flanks. Just Chuck and Glennis and the desert and the beat of horseshoes on dry dirt. The adrenaline of the race and the competitive flirting with his wife flood his blood stream. He whoops. She laughs, still ahead, and he, so enraptured in the heat of his body and the horse, doesn’t notice the corral fence. He crashes and breaks a few of his ribs. She helps him home, feeling both disappointed and overjoyed. See, he’s supposed to take out the X-1 in a couple of days, a new experimental aircraft designed to break the elusive sound barrier, or Mach 1, about 760 miles per hour at sea level. No pilot has ever flown higher or faster and some argue that none can, that the sound barrier is literally a concrete wall in the sky: how could a human in a small jet plane break through concrete? Things start to happen to aircraft controls near Mach 1…they start shaking and go berserk, become unreadable. Every pilot who has attempted to go beyond the sound barrier has fallen into uncontrollable spins and crashed. Glennis feels ashamed to hope that maybe her war hero husband, the best pilot at Muroc (perhaps the best pilot nationwide), won’t have to go up in a couple of days, won’t have to risk his life again for the thrill of having the most courage, the thrill of obtaining a new record. She’s scared every time he flies. But she’s also proud every time he comes back home, having flown beyond the speed and distance of any other living man. Glennis hopes he won’t have to go up but, at the same time, wishes for her husband to be successful and respected as a test pilot.
But Chuck Yeager is persistent. He doesn’t mention his injury to the higher-ups. No, he has “Glamorous Glennis” painted on the side of the X-1 and hops into the aircraft a couple of days later anyways, despite the pain and the affect it will have on his strength to keep the controls aligned. He even has a friend improvise a device—a broom handle, to be exact—to help him close the hatch of the aircraft because he can’t properly use his right arm to do so. And what does he do? He flies that plane straight through the sound barrier, beyond Mach 1, and brings her back in again safely. He does what hundreds before him died trying to accomplish. And he doesn’t even break a sweat.
The greatest heroes of exploration—from Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Marco Polo to Chuck Yeager, Yuri Gagarin, and Neil Armstrong—all pushed beyond what humanity at the time thought was physically possible. Men and women try to follow in their footsteps even today in 2019: regardless of their profession, the best in any career always push themselves to reach the next level, to raise the bar just a little higher. Chuck Yeager raised the bar when he broke Mach 1 and, because of him and others like him, NASA could form and could raise the bar even higher by sending the Mercury astronauts into space. I wholly believe that humanity is nothing if not eager to explore, to discover, to know completely. And the men and women at the forefront of this exploration have always been regarded as heroes.
Chuck Yeager is a personal hero of mine and I chose to share his story because he, like the Avalon Project, represents the first step on the ladder of exploration. Many overlook him for the wider-known heroes in spaceflight’s history; the crew of Apollo 11 and their historic landing on the moon, for example, often overshadow his simple break through the sound barrier. Every American knows the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the two men who first walked on the moon. But I want to stress to you, the American people, the importance of the less remembered men and women on the bottom rung of the ladder, like Chuck Yeager, who took the first steps that allowed future heroes to be born. When Mach 1 shattered, the significance was unparalleled at the time. But, shortly thereafter, the Mercury astronauts launched into space, followed by the Gemini and then Apollo astronauts. At each step up, at each rise of the bar, the previous generation of explorers shrunk a little more into obscurity—not unimportance, but obscurity. Project Avalon is the next rise of the bar in the journey of exploration and discovery and will make the moon landings look minor in comparison. But someday, I hope, we will be the Chuck Yeager to the future’s Neil Armstrong: Project Avalon will fulfill its role and allow future generations of explorers to travel even further and faster. We are only the first step in humanity’s exploration of Mars.
Through Avalon, today’s scientists will learn about the possibility of life on other planets, the chance of colonization away from Earth, and the natural materials of Mars and how these materials can be used to benefit our society, among so many other smaller but no less significant scientific observations. We will be discovering what NASA’s Martian robots have failed to find. We will learn much more about the effect of long-term space travel on the human body and mind. Centuries ago, mankind yearned to discover the wealth of a “New World.” Why are we not now more eager to discover the wealth of a limitless number of New Worlds, especially since humanity has progressed so far since the famous journey of 1492? My fellow crewmates and I are no different from Columbus or Yeager. When those pioneers boarded their respective crafts, they did not know if they would succeed and return home; in fact, the chance of never returning was rather high.
I know I am not coming home. I know once I land on Mars, I will only have a short time left to live. And yes, of course, part of me is scared. But I have always celebrated my need to be at the cusp of exploration: the thought of being one of four humans to land on Mars, to conduct experiments, to discover the possibility of water and colonization, makes my heart beat much faster than the fear of death. I’m happily willing to lay my life on the line for our future, just like Chuck Yeager and the astronauts who followed him. Hundreds before him died trying to accomplish what he pulled off and he had no way of knowing if he would make it home. Well, I know I won’t. But I’ll ask again: does that really change anything?”