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Editor: Kris Cerone

ESA Mars Express spacecraft and sponsor Ferrari cars

Mars Express with Ferrari's F2002 and the 575M Maranello © ESA 2002. Photo by P. Dumas/EURELIOS

Ferrari to Mars

By Robert Gounley

You can tell a lot about a person by how they pack for a trip. Some take only a clean shirt and a toothbrush, figuring they deal with the rest at their destination. Others pack for every conceivable natural disaster thinking it would be just their luck to experience a once in a thousand years earthquake while visiting Chicago.

My favorites are the people who take a little bit of their daily life along with them. Comedian David Brenner tells the story of buying a vacation on a cruise ship for his elderly parents. Watching them unpack in their cabin, David noticed his father had taken along an old and battered Thermos™ bottle. When asked why, his father replied, "I carried this to work every day for 30 years. I want to look at it every morning to remind myself where I have been so I will appreciate where I am."

In this context, I was surprised and perplexed by an announcement made by the European Space Agency (ESA) last month. It concerns a spacecraft they are building to explore the planet Mars.

Artist's conception of Mars Express at the planet Mars.

Mars Express will be accompanied by a sample of Ferrari's red paint © ESA 2002. Illustration by MediaLab

"What is the fastest Ferrari's distinctive red paint has ever traveled? Next year it will be 10,800 km/h! Mars Express, to be launched in May/June 2003, the first European spacecraft to visit the Red Planet, will be speeding on its way accompanied by the very essence of Ferrari: a sample of its distinctive red paint.

"Following the outstanding success of the Scuderia Ferrari with the victory of Michael Schumacher's fifth Formula 1 driver championship title, the Ferrari team has agreed to fly the symbol of that success on the Mars Express mission. Ferrari's high-tech red paint is recognized all over the world as being synonymous with the record-breaking marquee.

There you have it. Space exploration, in its middle years and facing declining popularity with reduced vigor applies an association well known to generations of middle-aged males. For renewed vitality, increased confidence, and greater respect, BUY A RED SPORTS CAR! Surely this will remind the public of "the Right Stuff" and the glory days of space travel. To build enthusiasm for the Mars Express mission, and to give it a uniquely European flavor, ESA sends a red Ferrari to the Red Planet. That's machismo!

Puu-leese!

Casting space exploration in the context of thrill-seeking is absolutely the worst message to send. It suggests something with high cost and no practical value other than to impress others. Moreover, it connects with countless billboards and commercials that advertise their products by placing them beside fast cars and beautiful women. To sell mouthwash this way is comical. To sell space this way is pathetic.

There are other implications. Twenty years ago, women were rarely seen around the meeting rooms of aerospace corporations. Engineering schools were predominantly male. Only a single woman had ever flown in space - Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova from the Soviet Union. It was overwhelmingly a man's world -- a middle-aged man's world at that. The few women in the field struggled for attention and recognition.

Their efforts have produced visible results. Look at TV pictures from Mission Control in Houston and you'll see women directing operations in the Space Shuttle or the Space Station. The astronauts they direct include 32 women, one of whom, Colonel Eileen Collins, is a Shuttle Commander. In design rooms and boardrooms across the aerospace industry, women are increasingly visible and hold responsible positions. In places that the "glass ceiling" has yet to be broken there are at least numerous fingerprints marking where many have tried.

Call me hypersensitive, but I haven't noticed Ferrari directing their products to professional women, unless the cool blonde sitting alongside the leather-jacketed driver is representing all of them.

Respectfully, space exploration should be a unifying experience where risk is part of the experience, but not its only reward. Its images should be of new worlds for Mankind to explore. In this exploration we will change our ways of thinking and, in so doing, change ourselves. It is the vision expressed by Gene Roddenberry when he created Star Trek. In the TV series boldness and swagger opened the space frontier, but reason and compassion made it our new home.

My grumbling will probably reach very few. Rush Limbaugh may even vote to expel me from the fraternity of middle-aged males. The rest, if they contemplate it at all, will think, "Ferrari. Mars. Cool!"

America will not take this challenge to cultural supremacy lying down. Should NASA follow suit by painting a Harley-Davidson logo on the side of its next planetary spacecraft?

For more information about the Ferrari paint chip, see redencounter.esa.int.