Let's Shoot for Quality Teachers, Not for Mars

In 1609, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler completed a story that is often considered the earliest work of science fiction. Titled "Somnium," or "Dream," Kepler's charmingly bizarre tale describes a trip to the moon by a young Icelander named Duracotus and his mother, Fiolxhilde, a lady who dabbles in magic and communes with spirits. It is one of these beings who transports the pair to our celestial neighbor by sheer force of its will. But if the journey smacks of the supernatural, the moon itself, on their arrival, is very much within the natural order. Indeed, the purpose of Kepler's tale was to describe the lunar orb as a real physical world governed by empirical laws of science.

Until this time, the celestial bodies were not generally believed to be actual physical worlds, but nebulous balls of ether. In 1609, Kepler's acquaintance, Galileo, pointed one of the newfangled "telescopes" at the stars and discovered to his surprise that the moon had mountains, suggesting it was made of the same crude matter as the Earth.

Kepler embraced Galileo's discovery and took the idea further still by setting out in "Somnium" imagined details of lunar geography and speculations about the kinds of creatures that might inhabit this alien world.

"In general," his narrator says, "the serpentine nature is predominant." About 3 1/2 centuries after Kepler's dream, humans finally traveled to the moon, and today proponents of space travel are itching to extend our reach to the other planets as well.

In February, a delegation from the Pasadena-based Planetary Society delivered a presentation to members of Congress titled "Mars: a New World for Humankind." In making its pitch for an all-out effort to explore the Red Planet, the society was hoping to push along the agenda set last year by President Bush when he promised a manned return to the moon by 2015, if possible, and 2020 at the latest. Even more ambitiously, the president declared that the moon would become our staging post for manned missions to Mars.

But trips off-planet do not come cheap. The cost of a manned Mars mission has been conservatively estimated at $100 billion, though seasoned observers believe it will be many times that figure.

Hundreds of billions are hard to justify in any economic climate, let alone the current one, but Bush has a ready answer. "The fascination generated by further exploration" of the moon and Mars, he said last year, "will inspire our young people to study math and science and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers."