The Human Mission to Mars Colonizing the Red Planet

[jakeXT]

The Human Mission to Mars
Colonizing the Red Planet


I. Astronauts On Mars

II. The Future is Mars....

III: To Boldly Go: Getting to Mars and Design Reference Architecture

IV. The Scientific Investigation of Mars: Humans, Geology, Geophysics, Atmosphere, Climate, Biology

V: Psychology, Stress, Behavioral Health of Astronauts & Crew

VI. Medical Health, Physiology, Biomedical Risks of a Journey to Mars

VII. Planetary Protection and Infection Risks on Mar

VIII. The Search For Life on Mars

IX. Mars Base, Exploration, and Colonization of the Red Planet

X. Sex, Radiation and Reproduction on Mars. Brain, Heart, Sexuality, Fertility, Pregnancy, Fetal Development

XI. Robots on Mars

XII. Terraforming Mars

XIII. Marketing Mars: The Mars Prize. Financing the Greatest Adventure in the History of Humanity
http://journalofcosmology.com/Contents12.html



While reading this I asked myself how many astraunauts had sex in space and how such manuals would look like.


Sex On Mars:
Pregnancy, Fetal Development, and Sex In Outer Space

...
The frequency of sex between male and female astronauts is unknown, due in part to NASA's unofficial "mind your own business" policy (Mullane 2007) and its failure to mandate an enforceable code of responsibility which "decreases the likelihood of such behaviour being reported" (NASA 2007; Office of Audits, 2010). Inadvertently, NASA encourages sexual behavior by not restricting it, or training for it; and this could be disastrous for a human mission to Mars.
...
http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars144.html

[WinkyDink]

1. Because they know the Earth is done, re: Humans. Let's pay to save the wealthy.

[Ian David]

2. Nothing there about viruses in the ice that turn people into Water Zombies?

[Occulus]

4. I tend to intentionally forget that that DW special ever happened.

This year's was cool, though. Fish that fly in the fog? Oh my yes, please.

[txlibdem]

3. Unmanned supply missions and semi-autonomous robots

The chances of survival would be just about nil if the astronauts were to set down on Mars and then have to 1) build their shelter, adequate to breathe, live without spacesuits and protect them from the higher radiation, and 2) build, supply and plant food crops then wait for them to grow to maturity, and 3) roam around to find and catalog local resources, and 4) set up power sources (nuclear reactor as primary with solar panels supplying supplementary/optional equipment), etc. Each of those tasks could have hundreds of steps, any one of which could cause serious delay or potential as a "show stopper" (damaged parts, soil instability, faulty design, human error, etc).

The only way to give the first Mars pioneers a chance is to send supplies and equipment there first, then send semi-autonomous robots (NASA has already sent several of these to Mars, sending instructions and then waiting till the robot does what it's told with no further control from Earth). Think of them as remote controlled construction vehicles with a brain. The OP's linked articles do not think that part out well enough:

The first colonists to Mars wouldn’t go in "cold." Robotic probes sent on ahead would establish necessities such as an energy source (such as a small nuclear reactor augmented by solar panels), enough food for two years, the basics for creating home-grown agriculture, one or more rover vehicles and a tool-kit for carrying out essential engineering and maintenance work. In addition, the scientific equipment needed for the colonists to do important research work should be part of the preceding unmanned mission. All this equipment could easily be put into place using current technology before the astronauts set out. The first human contingent would rely heavily on resources that can be produced from Mars such as water, nutrients, and shelter (such as in form of lava tube caves). They also would be continuously resupplied from Earth with necessities that could not be produced from the resources available on Mars. This semi-autonomous phase might last for decades, perhaps even centuries before the size and sophistication of the Mars colony enabled it to be self-sustaining.

The first human contingent would consist of a crew of four, ideally (and if the budget permits) distributed between two two-man space craft to allow for some mission redundancy such as in the Viking mission or for the Mars Exploration Rovers. Also, if any technical malfunction occurs on one space craft, the other craft could come to the rescue. Further, any critical part of equipment after landing would be available in duplicate in case of an emergency.

http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars108.html

Two years worth of food? Essential engineering work? That's just asking for trouble. Everything should be in place and "move-in ready" before the humans leave Earth orbit.

The authors propose sending people to Mars before the colony is self-sustaining. I hope they mean just a few essentials like phosphorous or nitrogen for fertilizer, or computers and other high tech gadgets. It's not a hopeless cause, however:

(updated 6/26/2008 4:43:41 PM ET)NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander found evidence of mineral nutrients essential to life in Martian dirt, mission scientists announced Thursday.

After performing the first wet chemistry experiment ever done on another planet, Phoenix discovered that a sample of Martian dirt contained several soluble minerals, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. Though the data is preliminary, the results are very exciting, scientists said.

"We basically have found what appears to be the requirements for nutrients to support life," said Phoenix's wet chemistry lab lead, Sam Kounaves of Tufts University. "This is the type of soil you'd probably have in your backyard. You might be able to grow asparagus pretty well, but probably not strawberries."

Asparagus, which thrives in alkaline soil, would like the Martian dirt, which Phoenix measured to have a very alkaline pH of between eight to nine. Strawberries like more acidic soil, he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25396378/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Mars has nearly everything needed to grow our own food.

But what about other minerals needed for building a habitat and making it as nearly sustainable as possible?

Mars offers abundant natural resources that will almost certainly have to be tapped to enable efficient and long-term exploration so far from Earth. These resources include many materials that are extractable from the silicate-rich rocks and soils. However, Mars is also a volatile-rich planet and has an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide and other gases with resource potential. Water is known to be trapped in a small percentage of the surface soils and is hypothesized to exist either in subsurface liquid water aquifers or in water ice permafrost deposits. Self-sustaining agriculture and oxygen production are possible by extracting or accessing this water and using the abundant atmospheric carbon dioxide to fuel photosynthesis. Light elements such as hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are much more abundant on Mars than on the Moon or most asteroids, and extraction of these volatiles from crustal rocks and soils could provide raw materials for the production of propellant and manufactured goods. And because of the role of water in its geologic history, Mars is likely to have rich deposits of metals, salts, and other minerals or ores.

http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/spsc_04/spsc_04_00390.html

How will they extract all those useful things from Mars rocks and soil? Concentrating the power of the sun!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_nuvPKIi8&feature=player_embedded
... if you don't read anything in this post, check out this video --it's worth it.

[struggle4progress]

5. A manned Mars mission is idiocy. Robotics is the only thing that makes sense

[txlibdem]

6. Do you mean we should *never* send humans to Mars?

I agree with you that robotics is the only viable option for Mars exploration but robotics will also be the best way to eventually make a manned mission to Mars possible at some time in the future. I'm in no hurry to send astronauts to Mars "just to show that we can" or just to play a round of golf like the idiots at NASA allowed them to do on the moon. That was pure PR suicide in my opinion and congress cut off their budget due to the lack of any real purpose for further manned moon missions. So, likewise, I am supremely uninterested in sending a man to Mars and then bringing him back. Going to Mars has to have a purpose.

Fortunately for NASA there is a very important reason to go to Mars: the survival of the human species. Dramatic, I know, but also very true. We are only one asteroid away from going the way of the dinosaurs. In 1908 a comet exploded in the atmosphere and leveled hundreds of square miles in Siberia. What would happen if that happened again but this time over Tokyo, Beijing, London or New York? And what if the next one were double the size of the 1908 one? While not an extinction event, that would throw the world into chaos. Then there are the recent findings of jets of deadly radiation that stream out of supernovas, on the off chance that one of those comes into contact with the Earth we won't even know what killed us. Or a thousand other things could happen: a mini black hole, a rogue planetoid, a cloud of gas, a huge solar flare, the list goes on. There are innumerable good reasons why we should colonize space. Eventually.

But, robots need to pave the way first. See my post, #3, for my thoughts on how that might work.

[struggle4progress]

7. Mars as a human survival station is a mere fantasy: under optimal conditions, a one way trip

takes something like six or seven months, and optimal conditions obtain only about once every two years; every bit of food for that period has to be carted along; air and water must also be supplied; and when you get there, it's -20 on a warm day, there's essential no protection from radiation by atmosphere or planetary magnetic field, and air and water remain a problem. A self-sustaining Mars colony would require a substantial industrial base on Mars: at present there is no reason to think one has significant hydrocarbon reserves for making (say) plastics, so one will initially require glass and metal works, presumably fueled by nuclear or solar energy; life-support containment is vulnerable to all manner of small-impact catastrophes, since one cannot afford losses of air and water. Mining and processing any ores would require huge investments; if one also wants to be able to do computer work, one needs a semi-conductor industry; the amount of technical expertise required on-site would simple be enormous

[txlibdem]

8. That's only true if we do "NASA business as usual" missions

I didn't check all your facts for perfect accuracy but I can say off hand that you are correct in the general tone of what you wrote. If we do the MARS mission the same way the moon missions were done then absolutely I agree that it would be a disastrous fantasy, as well as a monumental waste of time and money that could (and should) be used here on Earth. But...

It seems as if you did not take the suggestion to read post #3, wherein I explained how robotic construction vehicles would be sent to Mars but operated (just as the smart rovers that are there now) by sending detailed commands from Earth and the computer in the robot figures out how to best carry out that command. In the case of the rovers, NASA sends coordinates to where they want the rover to go and it figures out how to get there, avoiding rocks and whatnot to safely drive itself to the destination. If it encounters something it can't figure out (or something interesting that has been pre-defined) it stops and sends a message back to Earth asking for updated instructions. Now take those concepts and apply them to a group of semi-autonomous robotic construction vehicles. The operators on Earth would need to tell the vehicle to pick up component A, take it to the correct spot, then connect it to component B. The robot would then be responsible for carrying out those instructions while 1) avoiding obstacles and other robots, 2) taking the shortest, most efficient route that doesn't violate rule #1, 3) then figuring out how to attach the two components so that the engineering plans are followed to the letter.

You're right about shelters needing to be built to withstand the higher radiation and greater risk of meteorite impacts due to Mars' thin atmosphere, the temperatures, and the hostility/deadliness of the environment. For that reason I reject immediately any thought that unshielded shelters could be acceptable. That is "the skies will surely always be blue" thinking and flies in the face of reality. On Mars, there are planet-wide dust storms that last for months. Can we sent humans to Mars and expect solar panels to provide the energy that will keep them alive? No, that would be a death sentence during one of those dust storms (and the solar panels might even become damaged beyond repair by the high velocity particles of dust). Therefore, we will have to put aside our childish fears about nuclear power because only a nuclear reactor could keep humans alive on Mars. Solar panels that can be folded up and protected with a removable cover would be a good source of energy to power the non-critical systems and provide energy for rovers and robots, they would need to be put away before the dust storm hits.

For shelter there are a number of options. Soil could be excavated, then prefab structures could be erected (complete with multiple airlocks to interconnect them and provide ingress and egress), then covered with the soil removed previously. The Martian soil can be sprayed with the right mixture of water and minerals found right there on Mars to form a hardened shell over the area to keep future wind storms from exposing the structures and also to provide protection from micro-meteorites. It is also possible to use concentrated sunlight to melt the top few inches of soil to form a hardened rock layer.

Some have suggested that we should build our shelters into the side of cliffs or lava tubes. That might be one way to have a shelter that is definitely well protected. It would require some rethinking of how to do construction: how do you get materials and robots down the side of a cliff and once there how do they dig out the shelter. Doable but needs some pretty detailed advance planning.

However they eventually decide to build it, the robots need to do all the work and have the whole thing completed, airlocks in place, oxygen from Martian soil pumped in, hydroponic fruit and vegetable production needs to be fully operational, additional plants that will produce oxygen, install configure and test everything the humans will use when they finally arrive (lights, computers, display units, communications gear, etc), then the whole thing needs to be allowed to sit for months or a year with continuous testing to make sure that the systems are stable and no contamination occurs. The experience with BioSphere 2 tells us that we do not have full control of everything (the concrete and unanticipated soil bacteria activity reduced the oxygen level till it got critically low, and more oxygen had to be pumped in to make up for the loss). That's why robots need to build, set up, supply and simulate use of the facility. After 1 or more years of continuous operation and scrutiny, then and only then should humans leave Earth orbit bound for Mars.

One thing you may be interested in knowing is that the Vasimir Plasma Rocket will enable travel to Mars in 39 days. Using chemical rockets to get to Mars may be ok for supplies or robots but should never be used to send humans. The increased time means increased supplies of oxygen, food, water, etc., thus increasing the weight which increases the fuel needed which increases the weight... an unnecessary spiral of wasted resources. Humans are protected from radiation during the trip because their stores of water are in tanks that surround the spacecraft. Additionally, an artificial magnetic field can be created outside the spacecraft by extending electromagnets on long booms so the magnetic field surrounds the spacecraft but does not penetrate to the interior. This would be more effective than the water tanks but would require a lot of power. Personally, I prefer to err on the side of caution where human lives are concerned. This spacecraft would be the "mother ship" and would never land on any planet, it would remain in orbit around either Mars or Earth when not in transit. Landing craft would take the human crews up or down to the planet's surface as needed.

The good news is that we now know that Martian soil contains the components we need to make rocket fuel so the landing craft could be fully refueled on Mars for the trip back up to the mother ship. Martian soil can even be used for growing the plants we would need. It contains important metals as well so the soil can be processed in a number of ways to separate almost everything we need for a permanent colony on Mars. A few things would need to be brought to Mars via supply ships, yes, but by using the resources that are in abundance on Mars we could keep that to a minimum.

PS, here's one example of the stupidity of current thinking on Mars habitation:
http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/EXLibrary/DOCS/EIC016.HTML
... the astronauts fly their habitat to Mars and then live in it, exposed to the Martian surface conditions. Pretty pictures cannot mask a failure to think of the consequences and outcomes of failed planning.