 Q. In January 2004, President Bush announced a new space policy, setting goals for manned lunar exploration and a manned flight to Mars. What do you think about manned exploration in the future?
That vision was announced while I was on board the International Space Station. In fact, I was very privileged to be the video introducer of President George Bush at the announcement in Washington, D.C..
I believe very much in that vision. I think not only the United States, but human beings should go back to the moon. I also believe that we should then use the moon as a base camp for going to Mars. There are a lot of little problems that we need to solve on the moon, but I hope this project will take place in the next 15 to 20 years. I also see the space station becoming a base camp that would lead us to the moon.
And the idea of using these outposts, the International Space Station as a base camp to go to the moon, and the moon as a base camp to go to Mars, means that you need to develop these techniques. You get all of your equipment together, you get it ready, you prove it works, and then you make your sortie to the next outpost, from the station to the moon, and then from the moon to Mars. To accomplish that, the space station needs to be finished. I think it needs to be finished, as the President said from the American point of view, because they need to spend money on the exploration vision. From the American point of view, I believe we should complete our obligations to our partners. So we need to keep the Columbus module attached to the space station, and it's important to attach modules from Japan and Europe, for our partners to be getting what they put into the space station, out of it.
At the same time, we need to develop the space station as a test bed for the technologies, life support in particular, that will be used from Earth orbit to go to the moon. We also need to get a replacement for the space shuttle. That should happen as soon as possible. As soon as we have Japanese and European modules attached to the International Space Station, the shuttle should be stopped, and we should put all of our resources into a rocket that can return crews not only to the space station but also to the moon.
Q. During your flight on Mir, you experienced a collision with the supply ship Progress. Despite the risk of accident, why do you think people still want to go into space exploration?
I think your question is two-fold. One is, why do people even want to go into space? Why don't we just send robots? If it's only for science, we could just use our telescopes, or send robots, and we could try and measure things in space at a distance, without sending a person. However, there are always things that a robot doesn't see, smell, or touch. And, when you put a person closer to that place where you sent your robots, he would have far more questions than the people running the robots on the ground would. The nature of investigation and inquisitiveness is such that humans are so much better at it right now than robots. And so, sending a human is the way to get the most out of that experience. It is also ten times more expensive, so there has to be a balance in why you do this.
Another reason you go into space is that you are also actually increasing the possibilities of people living on Earth. If people are looking at going not only into Earth orbit but to the moon and Mars, and if we are actually thinking about colonies on Mars in the future, then no matter what a terrible calamity happens to Earth, for example an asteroid hitting it, it would be possible that human beings could survive in the solar system if we were on another celestial body. So, it's not only an issue of curiosity - a childish drive for exploration - but it's also an issue of survival of the human species in the long term.
Why do I still do it when there are risks like the collision on Mir? I think the games, the excitement, the interest of this adventure overwhelms, for me anyway, the possibility of dying or being hurt in an accident in a space flight. I believe, actually, the risk I had on Mir was quite high, but it was not quite high enough to stop me going again.
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