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Utah, the New Red Planet
tsornin writes "The Philadelphia Inquirer reports in this article that Mars Society crews have chosen Wayne County, Utah as an effective simulant for the Red Planet. Although Mars exploration is hardly a high priority on any government's list at the moment, Robert Zubrin and other Mars Society members hope that through their research in Wayne County and in the even more remote northern Canadian location, they can show world governments that a mission to Mars is viable."
The Martian atmosphere, Zubrin says, is 95 percent carbon dioxide. By combining that with a relatively small amount of hydrogen brought from Earth, the plant would be churning out an ample supply of methane, CH4, and water, H20. The methane would serve as a propellant to get the ERV and the astronauts back home.
Methane as propellant, uh hu. I'd like to know where the hell Zubrin wants to get the oxygen to burn the methane.
There would be areas of Antarctica that would be more like Mars than Utah with a constant hostile environment due to the extreme cold. You would only need a place not constantly covered in ice. Of course the abundantly rich oxygen and no radiation are other problems in simulating Mars here on Earth. Perhaps the best way to simulate Mars with be through some bio dome like structure with virtual reality.
The other big question of course is "Why". Why do this at all? Do people really think simulating and then visiting Mars is a possible step in permanent habitation? Our only chance of survival in THIS solar system is here on earth. And any planets revolving around other stars are too far away for us, right now. It's a disservice to get everyones hopes up for living on Mars.
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
The best 'Case for Mars', IMO, is that it's a (hardly effective) motivator to get us off cradle Earth to secure our survival - people are just USED to living on planets and don't bother thinking outside the gravity well (box).
What we should be striving for is using the raw material in the asteroid belt to build large (rotating) space habitats which are much much much more efficient than the waste of space/material below your feet on Mars.
And hey, one day we'll probably disassemble Mars for its matter too -- we'll save Earth for last. :)
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Power to the Peaceful
Society members hope that through their research in Wayne County and in the even more remote northern Canadian location, they can show world governments that a mission to Mars is viable.
Shouldn't the goal of this research be to determine if a mission to Mars is viable? The society has already decided that it is viable, and no doubt whatever research they do will be tainted and shaped by this assumption. The research that comes out of this experimentation will be no more accurate than Exxon's studies concerning the Valdez's environmental impact, or the IPCC's terribly flawed global warming studies.
I was watching a 2 hour Discovery special on the Mars Society Canadian habitat project last night, and I couldn't decide if these guys are visionaries or crackpots.
One some levels, the organisation was impressive, with tons of construction material being airdropped onto an island. The last drop shed it's 'chute and wrecked the construction crane and some other material. Brought up on a diet of space opera (and Junkyard Wars), I expected them to swing into action with a "can do!" plan. What actually happened was that the project manager and society head had a falling out over safety, the construction team walked off, a new architect had to be flown in, and a long debate over what to do next ensued. OK, they did get it all sorted eventually, but the attitude of some of the team really surprised me. After all, this was an "opportunity" rather than a problem (to use management parlance), but some of them seemed to think that it was better to play it safe, call the whole thing off, and try again the next year. Uh, guys, a manned Mars mission wouldn't have that luxury.
And then there were the mock EVA suits that they were using, that were - to be brutally frank - kiddie playtime stuff, being mostly trash can lids and plastic tubing. They were quite honest about this, saying that the idea was merely to try out a lot of activities in the suits to try and predict the problems we'll encounter on Mars. Problem was, they failed to apply lessons that we already know, and started with circa 1950's technology. The big problems were that the helmets fogged up (duh), that it's hard to get items out of your own pockets (so you need mirrors on your wrists, which they knew that NASA suits already have but didn't put on their own suits) and that it's hard to read dim LCD screens through a fogged up helmet.
I really do want to be enthusiastic about the Mars Society, but I can't help but feel that it's a big talking shop and mutual support society for very frustrated people who really wish that some serious money would get put into a Mars mission. It's hard to criticize them for doing something, but it's also hard to take Mars Society seriously when they seem to be more like a Disney Space Camp group having a fun vacation rather than doing bona fide boundary pushing experimentation.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I would've thought that the Moon would be more of "an effective simulant for the Red Planet" than Utah (or any other place on Earth) could ever be. But then again, what do I know. Let's just jump into the deep end and see what happens. If we fail, then so what if people won't fund us for another hundred years.
if you haven't read Zubrin's The Case For Mars, do so. You'll be on the streets demanding Mars missions within minutes of finishing it.
The current Mars Rush has all the potential to become another Apollo program - siphon off all the money from everything else, in return for 2 weeks of TV coverage, some flag-waving, and then everyone goes back to watching reruns of Star Trek Voyager. Bye bye funding, bye bye Mars, direct or not. And bye bye the rest of the space program.
Here's a radical thought - long term space projects should be self-funding.
Mars is at the bottom of an inconveniently large gravity well, so its export potential is severely limited. Exports are essential for an economic entity which is not self-sufficient.
So, how about a real, useful goal for the space program? I propose that, rather than land a man on Mars (what for?) we resolve, by 2020, to deploy an automated factory on a near-Earth asteroid.
The factory should make something that would be useful in low Earth orbit (fuel, oxidiser, solar cells, whatever), and be capable of delivering those somethings back to Earth orbit for use. It should produce enough useful stuff to pay back its development and deployment costs well within its design lifetime.
The ideal "useful something" for our factory to make should really be other factories, but that's a little further down the line. An oxygen/water/methane refinery would be a good start.
Of course, this won't happen. Good ol' George wants a nice pretty picture of an American astronaut saluting a flag on Mars, not a working space infrastructure.
Oh well, now I duck and wait for the flames...
Sean Ellis
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