First of all, I will say that I would like very much to see an exploration mission to Mars, and I could also say that I’d like to have seen it some years ago, and now to be witness to its initial settlements. Many will say that the technologies are not mature enough. I would reply that technologies to go to the Moon simply didn’t exist in 1961, when President Kennedy challenged NASA to reach our natural satellite within ten years. So please let’s not listen too much to the ones who make things even more difficult than they are, in order to “raise the price” of their supply.
The book written by Andy Weir is much better than the movie, from the point of view of the novel: we listen to Mark Watney, his desperation, his hopes, his continuous reasoning on the practical problems he does his best to solve, by his skills of as an astronaut and botanist. And, most of all, the book is a manifesto of the human initiative, and capacity to never give up. The book also gives us the measure of how much Mars needs to be explored, in order to understand the conditions in which the first settlers will find themselves. This is something that the movie doesn’t convey, or, if it does, in a reduced measure.
The message is quite clear, and it is repeated several times during the movie: the goal is to do exploration missions, and always to bring the explorers back to home, on Earth.
Are we sure that, in 2030, should the only space strategy remain exploration, we will have resources and funds to re-purpose an Apollo-style program to Mars? Considering the social, economical and environmental situations that could be logically anticipated, considering that likely in 2030 we will be 9 or 10 billions people on Earth, I have many doubts. Only expanding our industrial development beyond the limits of our mother planet we can hope to revert the global crisis, and to ignite the greatest economic and cultural revolution of all times. So, why should we just keep on exploring, and not to start expanding? And, talking about expansion, what are the logical first steps? Industrializing the geo-lunar space region, of course, the so called Greater Earth, including the Earth’s orbit, the Moon, the Lagrange Points and the Near Earth Asteroids crossing in or near such area.