The public and most of the Mars scientific community is absolutely giddy over the ingenuity helicopter that hitched a ride under the belly of the Mars Perseverance Rover. It’s cool. I get it. You know what else it is? It’s an affront to the established peer review process upon which successful missions are built. The NASA public relations machine has done an almost flawless job of distracting the public and the scientific community from the egregious violation of the rigorous peer review process that determines what flies into space. Look! A mechanical flying Martian squirrel! I’m not impressed. I’m disgusted.
The Ingenuity helicopter did an end-run around the brutal proposal process that determined what was ultimately manifested on the Mars rover. That process began with the solicitation of scientific investigations and accompanying instrumentation that could achieve one or more science objectives of the mission. The teams who responded to that solicitation put in a massive amount of work, often with great personal sacrifice, and their institutions committed substantial resources and funds to support those proposal efforts. The proposals underwent a thorough and intense scientific and technical review process. Most of those proposals were ultimately rejected by NASA, because they were some combination of too costly, too risky, too difficult to accommodate, or were not deemed as the best instrument to achieve one more of the predetermined science objectives. Win or lose, the community respects and understands that the review process is necessary to preserve the integrity of the scientific process. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s the best we have and, generally speaking, it works. In the small pile of proposals that survived the review gauntlet, a Mars helicopter was nowhere to be found. Either it wasn’t proposed, or the peer review process rejected it.
Yet, here we are. The entire rover mission, comprising hundreds of scientists and engineers, is being held hostage by an illegitimate public relations stunt. After almost 60 Martian days on the surface, the rover and its team has been prevented from doing their intended work: Seeking, analyzing, and caching soil samples that should eventually be returned to Earth. The opportunity cost is staggering and growing. Further, the opportunity cost goes beyond time and money. The helicopter consumed resources and accommodation volume that could have been used by other worthy science investigations, some of which, undoubtedly, were far less costly, less risky and less difficult to accommodate. That science will never happen. Apparently, NASA’s claim of limited funds, risk aversion, and accommodation challenges were not truthful. (The reader may substitute the more appropriate synonym of “not truthful”).
Whether the helicopter has science, engineering, or public
relations value is irrelevant. Let’s set
aside that it’s difficult to conceive of a more hostile environment than Mars
for a rotorcraft. Its tenuous and extremely
turbulent atmosphere is a flight operations nightmare. Let’s set aside that
many of the difficulties of successful flight were left as an exercise to be
solved later. Let’s set aside that the
helicopter may be able to carry out some amount of beneficial reconnaissance. Let’s set aside the arguments of how the technology
might feed forward to future exploration. This is not a question of science or benefit. The time for those questions was during the
proposal evaluation process, and that time passed long ago. What this
is about is whether we want to strive for the best in space exploration or
whether we want extrajudicial back room deals to determine what we send into
space. It’s about the integrity of the
scientific method and the peer review process. There is no middle ground here. To
the public: You’re being duped by carnival barkers. To my colleagues: Are you cheering, condemning,
or remaining silent?
The comments expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
