Manned Mars Mission Some Way Off

10,9,8,7... Count Down Aborted writes "The BBC brings some perspective to the manned mission to Mars debate recently reinvigorated by the discovery of vast H2O ice reserves on Mars. Basically, they list many of the reasons (e.g. psychological, political, monetary, and technological) why we must proceed very carefully and slowly despite the significance of such a mission if it were successful. They also raised the interesting question, "Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?"" Update: 05/28 14:28 GMT by H : Another good link is on USA Today.

Comments

Mars is quite a haul

[Greyfox]

I don't really see us going there anytime soon. And even if we do send a crew there, what then? I would have expected that after getting someone to the moon, we would have followed that up with a permanent base, but we pretty much got bored with the whole thing and never went back. If we're going to ask a crew of people to risk their lives and spend a couple of years in a tin can, I'd want us to show a little more commitment to the whole endeavor.

Politically Correct Ideas

[Alien54]

One appealing suggestion I heard a few years ago is that included in any crew should be a representative of the poorest nation on Earth and that this individual should make the first footfall on another world as a pledge to the poor of planet Earth. And if this person did become the first human to stand on the red soil of Mars, what would they say? Discuss.

gak. sounds like a college professor.

but in any case, such considerations sound like something from the politically correct crowd, and tend to overlook the qualifications that such a person would have to have. It looks like to actually do something like this, you would have to preselect someone from the poorest nation on earth now, and groom them for the job 20 years from now. not very likely, considering how many administrations we'll have between now and then. Not very likely at all.

Does it really need to be manned?

[nautical9]

With the major advances in robot technology, A.I., computer vision, etc. etc., I'm very surprised they'd even consider using people again. The cost associated with maintaining a human crew's life support, food, and environment is huge (not to mention how much larger the craft must be to hold all this, and how much more fuel it takes to get out of Earth's atmosphere, AND bring them all back, AND the usual huge risk of loss of life...). I think it would be better spent building a better robot.

Obviously, the robots can't do everything themselves, but humans on earth can reasonably control them (it would take anywhere from 3 to 22 minutes for a one-way communication from Earth to Mars, depending on their respective orbits around the sun).

Unless we're ready to start terraforming, I don't think it's cost-effective to send humans.

God DAMN it

[Rogerborg]

Does nobody else remember how ludicruous a moonshot was in 1962? We didn't know how to do it, we didn't know if we could figure out how to do it, and JFK might as well have signed the death warrants of the Apollo 11 crew.

And yet we did it, and got them there and back safely. We did it because one man said we would do it, not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

Every time I read this pussyfooting around a manned Mars mission, it turns my stomach. We are now so petty and adverse to risk that I cannot see that we will ever launch a Mars mission. There are too many negatives and not enough positives. There's too much that we don't know, and that we think - assert vehemently even - that we can't learn or fix. It's too hard, we complain, it's too dangerous, we might fail. We can't afford the risk, we have to wait until we can make it safe. We have to wait, and wait and wait.

What we need is for one man - hell, even Dubya - to stand up say "This country commits itself to putting a man on Mars and bringing him back safely by the end of this decade. Make it happen."

Then we can turn some of our horrifying arms budget to something a little less self destructive, we can find volunteers, brave men and women who understand the risks and choose to go anyway, and we can stop nay-saying and do our damndest to get them there and back safely.

And we might fail. That's not an option, but it is a possibility. But to not try for fear of failure means we're already defeated, and we should weep not for a lost crew of astronauts but for the loss of all astronauts. Buzz Aldrin - a man who has walked on the surface of another planet - laments that he never thought space exploration would mean shuttling cargo around in low Earth orbit. Perhaps we'd just become so used to watching stage managed, post-produced heroes on film and TV that we'd forgotten that the real thing still exists, until September 11th reminded us. We wept for the emergency services men and women who died, but nobody - nobody - cheapened their memory by suggesting that it would have been more prudent, more sensible, for them not to have put themselves in harm's way.

If our reach no longer exceeds our grasp then we might as well gear up to manufacture parts for the Chinese Mars mission, because if we don't go, then they will. Because they seem to understand (as we've forgotten) that constantly striving to achieve more than we believed ourselves capable of is the defining trait of being human.

I've heard talk that we'll rebuild the twin towers, just to show that our spirit isn't broken. Great, but why stop there? Why not keep going up, and up? Why not stop saying "We'll go when it's achievable" and say "We are going. Achieve it."?

Let's got to Mars, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Re:God DAMN it

[uradu]

I can hear the sounds of the national anthem and see a huge flag unfurling behind you while you utter these most patriotic words. Oh JFK, you most American of our sons, what would our country be without you? Of course, thank God for the Cold War and the need to beat them godless Russkies, too.

Re:God DAMN it

[Reality Master 101]

It's too hard, we complain, it's too dangerous, we might fail. We can't afford the risk, we have to wait until we can make it safe. We have to wait, and wait and wait.

That's NOT why we're not going. We're not going because going there is TOTALLY WORTHLESS.

People really need to clue in to why people made voyages in the past. They didn't make the voyage for the hell of it, or just to see if they could, they did it for selfish reasons: 1) Find Gold, 2) Escape oppression, 3) Escape crowding and find virgin land, 4) Gold.

There currently is just economic reason to go to Mars. If you want to men in space and you want men in space to stay, then stop whining about how the government should dump money when there is almost no return on the investment except "Gee! Wow! We made it! Whoop-de-doo!"

If we are ever to stay in space, space has to pay for itself through industrialization.

The reason we don't go to Mars is exactly the opposite reason you cite: We don't go because we already know we can do it with enough money. With the moon mission, that really was new.

Re:God DAMN it

[Reality Master 101]

Or something like that. Sure, economics drove the exploration of the New World. But the sheer thrill of exploration is also a factor. We didn't climb Mount Everest after running a detailed cost/benefit analysis.

I agree that a certain amount of exploration is done for the sake of research and learning. I think that's why we went to the moon in the first place. The USSR certainly gave us some motivation, but more than that, we wanted to do something that hadn't been done before.

Of course, in the long run, any colony would have to be able to sustain itself. But what would it hurt if we splurged just this once?

But see, that's the problem: space has been done before. There was a lot more mystery surrounding the moon shot. The was truly something that had never been done before. But going to Mars is just more of the same. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that we can do it; it's just a question of spending the money. In other words, we've already done the splurging -- on the moon. If we're going to spend money like that, we can do 100 unmanned probes for the cost of 1 manned probe.

Re:Well: A Serious Problem

[d.valued]

It may seem somewhat comical, but this is a serious hinderance.

Consider the following: If you were on the first trip to Mars, barring some radical breakthrough in propulsion technology that violates Newtonian physics (the only way we'll see decent high speeds on such long trips), you would spend:

-18 months going out in a tin can the size of a two bedroom apartment with four or five other people in microgravity
-after you lose some bone and muscle mass, several months on a planet which you can only experience in a fully-encloesd suit
-another 18 months to three years coming home in the same tin can with the same people

...and that's assuming things go smoothly! What happens if someone has appendicitis or develops some other codition? Operating in zero-g is at the least damned hard, and at most impossible!

The people also have to be of a certain sort. Unlike the original moonshot pilots, who were psychologically stable hotshot pilots with an excess of personality, the Mars crew would have to be able to tolerate each other for up to FIVE YEARS. And these five would be the only real human contact that they'd have.. considering that, at furthest, there's something like a twenty to thirty light-minute gap between Earth and Mars. You could play chess, do the occasional interview, but you couldn't surf the Web (real well).

So, the people involved on the craft have to be extremely intelligent, genial, and self-deprecating. Not too likely to find a couple of hackers that have those characteristics. (Of course, they'd not discuss it too much if they did. Part and parcel, you know.)