How do you get millions of Americans to watch with baited breath as the U.S. government spends millions of dollars on exploration for the mining industry?

Send a motorized chemistry set to Mars.

Well, yes, the Mars Pathfinder is more elaborate than your average high school lab experiment; but, while it's up there inching its little metal butt up to every rock on the red planet, we're down here yawning and thinking about how all that money could have been better spent on research into more vital human problems. You don't have to be completely against all forms of technology to feel this way--you just have to have a good, common sense desire to see that more new technology is designed to alleviate social ills, instead of provide profit for private industry.

The Mars Pathfinder should have been named the Mars Pit- mine-finder. Its main purpose is to discover the geologic composition of the Martian terrain and to study the weather (presumably to design future manned missions?). Its stated mission was to search for signs of life on Mars, yet it's not equipped for the complex tests required to discover microscopic life forms or fossilized traces of them. A glance at NASA's timeline for future robotic missions to Mars shows that NASA won't get around to testing Martian soil or rocks for signs of life until well into the next century.

Clearly those fantastic, panoramic views of Mars are meant to help geophysicists and corporate executives decide if its worth lobbying the U.S. Government to get a few more missions funded. NASA already has plans to launch the aptly- named Lunar Prospector in late September. Its main mission: to boldly land on the Moon and study its mineral composition. We can't let any other country get the jump on exploration for uranium, aluminum, and titanium (nicknamed "un-obtanium" by many engineers because of its scarcity and its high value to industry). That would be detrimental to our "national security." After all, Japan has its own Mars mission planned for next year and a Moon mission that's scheduled to launch in early 1999.

While the U.S. public is footing the bill for this space scam, we're also being entertained with an endless round of disasters on the Mir Space Station. It would be easy to say that it's just those two dumb, inefficient Russians who are responsible for all the accidents up there, not Michael Foale, the U.S. astronaut on board. Yet surely you'll have noticed that the press wasn't told the name of the crew member who pulled the wrong plug, thereby reversing all the hard work done to repair the station. Or maybe they were told, but the U.S. press has kept it a closely guarded secret, for national security reasons. It must have been our guy who did it. But discussions of the problems on the aging Mir are a cover for the real controversy over projects like the space station or the U.S. space shuttle missions.

The main experiments conducted on the Mir and the space shuttles are designed to provide basic research for the aerospace and weapons industries, all at taxpayer expense. And just like typical defense industry graft (remember those $17,000 toilet seats?) NASA has provided an expensive way for the U.S. government to keep alive a useless and disfunctional military-based space exploration program. Let's look at what we've bought for our money:

A group of astronauts and a school teacher were blown to bits when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. In 1989, NASA sent the Galileo probe up with a faulty main antenna. Remember Galileo, the Jupiter explorer? It's still up there, but it's only working on a low-gain antenna that functions at 1/10,000 the capacity of its broken main antenna. It gave us a few blurry pictures of a comet smacking into Jupiter. Wow.

Then, of course, there have been problems with the Hubble Space Telescope from day one, when it was sent up into orbit with a screwed-up mirror, and couldn't take focused pictures of anything for a long time. Now we have people fumbling around at Mission Control trying to iron out bugs in the Mars Pathfinder's computer software. How many billions of dollars are we talking about so far--and for what purpose? To enrich the aerospace companies and defense contractors who build these gadgets and who never seem to pay for their mistakes (yet still keep helping themselves to millions in taxpayer funds).

With this type of looting going on, it's understandable that NASA is amenable to sending nukes into space (see ETS! #41). The Cassini Probe is a space-born, fly-by version of the Mars Pit-mine-finder. With its plutonium power cells on board, it'll wiggle its way past the moons of Saturn in search of clement weather and lusty rock formations. And all we will have in return is a lot of pretty pictures, more data for the mining industry, and millions of dollars down the drain. Somewhere in the next century, when we're all wearing gas masks and drinking distilled water here on earth, miners will be laid off on Mars for lack of work. But, never fear! There'll be some new hellhole opening up on Ganymede or Titan, where people can relocate, work like hell, live painfully short lives, and make a few bucks for themselves, while they make a load of bucks for a bunch of shareholders and company executives. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

The future doesn't have to turn out that way. First, it's necessary for us to insist that research and development priorities be driven by human needs and not profit motives. Ethical considerations and social impact must be taken into account before the first million is spent on any project. The development of the atom bomb and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants are an example of what happens when ethical considerations are thrown by the wayside.

Secondly, projects that are now in the works should not be kept hidden under the veils of "national security" or "trade secrets." The argument that "the other guy will steal my secret" is bullshit, when most research and development is already being conducted with public money and in public institutions--primarily universities (often these projects employ foreign exchange students). Anyone who follows advances in biology, genetics or medicine knows that problems are solved more quickly and efficiently when researchers cooperate with one another, instead of competing. For, instance, some researchers now believe that competition between laboratories and companies from different counties has set back the search for an AIDS cure by nearly a decade. The human cost of this attitude is too much for it to continue.

And finally, we need to evaluate existing technology and decide which debacles belong on the scrap heap along with silicone breast implants and single-hulled oil tankers. One candidate is making its way into the Port of Seattle on August 6, the anniversary of the explosion of the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. A Trident nuclear submarine is going try wiggling its butt into Elliott Bay to give tourists an eyeful of the largest mobile death machine in history. The Navy claims that the Trident is only part of Seattle's maritime history; so, we should respond by giving the Navy a taste of Seattle's activist history. Let's get together to protest this blatant muscle-flexing garbage. It's time to say "enough is enough" and demand that these expensive, nuclear behemoths be dismantled forever.

To protest the Trident's maiden voyage into Seattle waters, you can call Mayor Rice at 684-4000 (phone) or email him at mayors.office@ci.seattle.wa.us. The phone number for Seafair Public Relations is 728-0123, extension 110. You might want to call a few other people, too, while you're at it--check out Jean Buskin's letter in the letters column of this issue for more names and numbers.