Is sending humans to Mars actually feasible?

[Buster's Uncle]

Is sending humans to Mars actually feasible?
The Week's Editorial Staff 8 hours ago

 "The challenge ahead is epic, but historic," says Buzz Aldrin. "We are on a pathway to homestead the Red Planet."
Why go to Mars?
The idea of a manned journey to Mars has animated science fiction for more than a century, and since the dawn of the space age, plans have been proposed for how it might be done. But for decades, any real momentum toward that dream seemed lost. In 1989, a plan advanced by President George H.W. Bush to send a manned mission to the Red Planet was shelved when its costs were estimated at more than $500 billion. In recent years, however, the prospects of a Martian voyage have been looking up. In 2010, the Obama administration called on NASA to set "far-reaching exploration milestones," including sending astronauts to Mars by the mid-2030s. But NASA still has no budget for a manned mission, let alone the technology to land humans there safely and then bring them back. Several commercial spaceflight companies are working on plans to send people to Mars in about a decade. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin believes it's possible. "The challenge ahead is epic, but historic," he says. "We are on a pathway to homestead the Red Planet."

What would such a mission take?
Just getting humans to Mars would require new solutions to some stiff challenges. At the closest points of their orbits, Earth and Mars are 34 million miles apart, and astro-engineers figure it would take a manned spacecraft five to 10 months to reach Mars. That is a long time for astronauts to be in interplanetary space, where they'd need much tougher protection against cancer-inducing space radiation than they do in Earth's orbit. A trip to Mars would require vast quantities of equipment, food, and fuel. Some have suggested sending supplies separately to allow astronauts to travel in a lighter — and faster — vessel. But even if a manned mission reached Mars' orbit in good order, landing there safely poses other daunting problems. Mars' atmospheric pressure is less than 1 percent of Earth's, making it difficult to slow a spaceship hurtling toward the surface at an estimated speed of 13,000 miles per hour. Unmanned rovers have cushioned their descents with heat shields, parachutes, and rockets, but current technology is insufficient for landing a much larger manned spacecraft, even if supplies were sent separately. "We're talking about landing perhaps a two-story house, and then another two-story house with fuel and supplies right next to it," said former NASA technologist Bobby Braun. "That's a fantastic challenge."

How far have plans progressed?
NASA teams are working on experimental projects with an eye to a possible mission to Mars and back about 25 years hence. But some in the private sector don't want to wait that long. Multimillionaire space tourist Dennis Tito has hatched a low-budget, $128 million plan to send a 50-ish married couple on a 501-day flyby that would zoom past Mars in 2018 and then use the planet's gravity to slingshot the spacecraft back to Earth. More ambitiously, the Dutch nonprofit Mars One wants to start colonizing Mars within a decade, and has already collected more than 78,000 applications from civilians willing to take a one-way trip to Mars. The group plans to select six teams of four with the necessary "intelligence, resourcefulness, courage, determination, and skill, as well as psychological stability." They would then undergo seven years of training and testing, including time in mock Mars colonies — all to be chronicled in a revenue-yielding Survivor-style television series — to make the final cut.

Would living on Mars be dangerous?
Scientists have serious concerns about the health risks of long-term exposure to radiation, reduced gravity, longer days, and extraterrestrial atmospheric conditions. Astronauts are known to experience bone degradation, muscle loss, and swollen optic nerves from spending too much time in zero gravity. A Russian-sponsored experiment called Mars 500, in which six men were confined for 500 days under conditions meant to emulate a Mars mission, showed that Mars travelers could face severe sleep disturbances, lethargy, and depression. Scientists also worry about the Martian surface's ultra-fine dust, which contains highly chlorinated salts called perchlorates that can cause respiratory problems and thyroid damage. And there's a chance, however slim, that Mars harbors potentially virulent microbes.

What would daily life on Mars be like?
Martian colonists would need a base large enough to contain comfortable, long-term living quarters and a vast array of life-support systems and supplies. They would have to construct their pressurized, air-tight habitat in phases, much the way the International Space Station was built. A secure, long-term food supply would be crucial. One company is working on 3-D printers that would combine powders and concentrates to create foods that replicate the textures, flavors, and smells of natural foods. Eventually, Martian farmers could grow food in pressurized greenhouses, using genetically modified crops to compensate for the planet's high radiation and low sunlight. Volunteers for the commercial missions say that the trade-offs in quality of life would be worth it. "I've had a deep need to explore the universe since I was a kid," said Peter Greaves, a self-employed technologist. "I envision life on Mars to be stunning, frightening, lonely, quite cramped, and busy. But my experience would be so [different] from all 6 to 7 billion human beings. That, by itself, would make up for the factors I left behind."

An insurance policy for human survival
"Single-planet species don't survive," says former astronaut John Grunsfeld. He is among the researchers, astronauts, and space exploration firms who see establishing an outpost on the Red Planet not just as a scientific challenge, but as essential to mankind's survival. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking thinks so, too. "The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," he says. Should nuclear proliferation, shrinking resources, a growing population, climate change, or a visit by hostile aliens threaten humankind on Earth, a colony on Mars could serve as a lifeboat to keep the species going. "I believe that we will eventually establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars and other bodies in the solar system," Hawking says. But he figures it won't happen "within the next 100 years."

http://news.yahoo.com/sending-humans-mars-actually-feasible-100000933.html

[Lord Avalon]

Sending people to Mars is perhaps feasible - well, providing people can come up with the funding.  Surviving there will probably be more of a problem.  And if your first expedition croaks, will there be another?

[Buster's Uncle]

You know, I love, love, love the idea of people living on Mars - but I'm not going myself.  Too many ways to end up being sorry.

[Lord Avalon]

I've always thought that a Moon Base is needed before a Mars Base for the latter to be truly viable longterm.  Yeah, maybe we can send people to Mars, but right now everything has to be brought up from Earth's gravity well.  Going to Mars may be sexier, but if you have a Moon Base, and bring in asteroids for mining and have industry and space station(s) at the Lagrange points, you can move things for much less energy, and not so much needs to be brought up from Earth.

[Buster's Uncle]

And there's the whole working out lord knows how many bugs in the necessary tech thing, too.  And the Moon's a three day flight, not six months.  Lotta advantages, there.

[Lord Avalon]

I kinda see a human Mars Expedition as a plant the flag(s), we were here, Yay! We Went to Mars, and There was Much Rejoicing thing.  Human Achievement, check.  But for getting off the planet and establishing a true human presence in space,  we've got to develop infrastructure in cislunar space.  Go out and grab some heavy asteroids (if there's a term for asteroid with lots of metals, it escapes me at the moment - of course other types of asteroids have their uses, too), bring them back, mine them, make factories in space, so you can create more factories and larger space stations and a Lunar Base.

[Buster's Uncle]

(if there's a term for asteroid with lots of metals, it escapes me at the moment - of course other types of asteroids have their uses, too)

Metallic?  I know the term for one kind is carbonaceous - I think those are distinct from the merely rocky, or icy, or metal-bearing ones - a good many having some of all those qualities.

The metallic ones sure would be valuable...

[JarlWolf]

In simple planning:

1- Create a international space agency, pool all state agencies into it to cooperate and require private space agencies to help fund it.
2- Make a global effort to further advance the international space station
3- Use upgraded international space station as launching point to the moon
4- Colonize the moon and create industrial and scientific compounds and facilities in and around the moon.
5- Proceed to let economical drive of private interests as well as international gov't interest help fuel the colonization of lunar space.
6- Send much more scouting probes and surveillance to Mars
7- Warrant enough resources, time, energy and using lessons garnered from the moon to carefully plan a colony on Mars
8- Send said colonists to Mars. Hope for the best.
9- Once on Mars, get massive amounts of industry up and running
10- Have Communist Revolution once Martian miners are fed up with Earthern corporations
10- Proceed to stabilize the environment, using the pollution output to your advantage by warming the Martian climate
11- THEN have said revolution.
12- Proceed to make puns on the "Red Planet" for millenia.
 

[Buster's Uncle]

I do love having a genuine Russian communist here...

Last time I saw this joke, it was something about using lawyers as colonists and repeating the recovery from disaster as necessary.

[JarlWolf]

Jokes aside, I was serious for the vast majority of it.

And on Socialism for Mars, Socialism is the only real way a society would be able to function on Mars: You'd need to have publicly owned and accessible facilities for all colonists to use without financial cost, finances in the new colony are going to be redundant during the first years, people need to survive before they can thrive, and later, profit.


And perhaps people will like the system and keep it. Who knows. I've always been in a firm believer of space exploration regardless of who leads the charge. Without my former nation's space program, space exploration wouldn't have been breached. Without that first satellite we wouldn't have developed internet, GPS r other forms of communication that revolutionized our world and greatly improved our lives.

Without the Americans having landed on the moon, we wouldn't have thought traveling to other celestial bodies was possible. 
And the international space station is a testament to the will of cooperation between all of humanity. Nationality is shed aside in space. In space we are all comrades; we have to be in order to survive it.

But if you noticed with the space exploration and it's monumental contributions, its all done in painstaking steps and labour. And thus we need a cemented plan to have a united space agency to guide all of our efforts into one, powerful consolidated force. International law dictates no nation can claim celestial bodies, and this means, if we are to adhere to this law, that we must discard nationality if we wish to colonize space. And I think that colonizing mars and other bodies will advance us not only in the realms of science and economics, but as a species and our integrity to our evolution and maturity.

[Buster's Uncle]

It takes a lot of tech research, and research pays off; that's for sure.

[JarlWolf]

Indeed. Every major advancement in human civilization as a whole was done through pain and toil. Our ancestors started farming and created agriculture when they learned of different seeds of grain and painstakingly worked the earth and made food for themselves, and from this they made cities. On from this point, despite superstition and fear of the unknown we chartered oceans, traversed great distances, fought for survival both against the elements and ourselves and over the course of history we climbed to the point we are now. And if we wish to continue we have to make costly decisions and sacrifices, as its the only way forward.

[Buster's Uncle]

I have the standard libertarian streak for a North American nerd - I fear and loathe Big Brother.  But one thing the Man does that does a lot of good is funding science (when the Man is in the mood, that is; see the NASA funding story I posted today).  It's an investment in the future.

[JarlWolf]

Mind, I am not speaking of a international gov't, merely a international agency to collectively garner and consolidate all space research and efforts. There is no point to have nations competing to get into space when they have no real gain for their individual selves, or rather very little gain. Its costly and hard to go into space alone. As a group we can achieve more then as alone.

As for a Big Brother system, it depends on who is in charge and who is our Big Brother. And on Mars, "Big Brother" is merely there to watch OUT for you, not watch out for YOU. The people who run said system are people who are tied n the same basket as you are, and if they wish to screw the entire operation for their sociopathy they are just committing suicide. Also the people who would be chosen for such an expedition would probably be rigorously tested and analyzed to make sure there is no huge errin mental instabilities as such.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, I would sure like to see all that science and exploration happen - and there's an inspirational value to space exploration that people don't talk about much in the States, but it's real and it's HUGE.

I haven't been able to walk outside and look up at something in the sky and think "there's people walking around there right now" since I was a little kid.  It was really awesome to do and think that, and I miss it a lot.  Dreams matter.