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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.
"Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?""
Well, what about me, a large stack of books and my laptop?
I don't think I would hesitate when asked!
...In other news, Richard Stallman and Santa Clause are fat guys with beards.
Film at 11.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I vote to send the Survivors teams as they are experienced in survival techniques as shown on TV. ;)
Return the bells of Balangiga.
From the article: "The crew will have to be specially selected to be able to cope. Should it be a mixed crew or all men, or all women? "
For some reason I think that it shouldn't be all women... Maybe one geek guy and the rest of the crew women?
Is to add to the global knowledge base / historical experience that will be necessary to achieve interstellar space travel before sol turns into a red giant. For the masses, it will be for 'gold' minerals, settling the question of life on mars, or, for most tabloid readers, just to check out the face of Elvis.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I'm not even sure I've found any "intelligent force" in Europe, let alone expecting to find it on Mars.
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
There is serious questions on whether humans could touch down safely on Mars in any case. People who have spent extended time on Mir, for example, need hospitalization and cardiovascular rehab to teach their hearts to pump blood against a gravity well again. And when these astronauts land on the Martian surface, there will obviously not be a vast, healthy medical staff awaiting them.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
"Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?"
Well, we all know who will get all the votes!...
CowboyNeal!
[alk]
I particularly like this one:
Yeah, it's a shame we have no ice here on Earth with which to test this system. Anyway, the rocket booster that lifted Armstrong and Aldrin off the moon had to "work the first time", and they still signed up.History is full of shortsighted people telling us what scientists can't possibly do, sometimes only months before they do it.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
> Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?
Oh, too easy! The MPAA and the RIAA, of course!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?
Definately Keanu Reeves wearing some cool sunglasses. Definately not Tom Hanks crying and being sentimental like a big girl.
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Most of the cost of sending people to Mars is the cost of getting them back again. The trip should be one way, with new people and supplies sent every few months. Eventually, after 10 - 20 years, there may be enough manufacturing capacity on Mars to send people back to Earth, but that wouldn't be guaranteed. I'm sure out the 5 Billion people on Earth we could find a few thousand settlers. Most of the people who settled the "New World" (Europians coming to North America) came on a one way trip.
Maybe the volunteers remaining families would receive money (a pittance compared to the savings). There might be enough demand to go, you could run a lottery, with the winners going and the money raised for paying part of the trip.
In the earlier slashdot subject there was a lot of discussion about the use of the water in terms of oxygen to breathe, water to drink etc for a human expedition. But isn't all of this things that to some extent can be recycled?
Isn't the importance of water it's use in fuel - you only need solar power to build up a supply of hydrogen and oxygen to power you rockets and give inertia on the journey back. The real advantage is that you don't have to bring along fuel for the way back (and extra fuel to propel that mass) and this could be an advantage even for non-human expeditions if you want to bring something back.
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.
"Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?"
Er... trained astronauts, perhaps?
RMN
~~~
The crew of a Mars mission will be 50-somethings who will die of natural causes before they have a chance to develop cancer from radiation exposure during a Mars trip. Send somebody in their late 20s or early 30s like Apollo/Shuttle and they are going to have some obvious and serious health problems from the trip before they live out their lives. Most people don'r realize how serious radiation in space is. The biggest problems are cosmic rays and solar flares. During the Apollo program there was an August 1972 flare which could have subjected an astronaut to 20,000 REM in 14 hours - 20 to 40 times the lethal dose. Luckily Apollo 16 was back and Apollo 17 was still on the pad. On a Mars mission there won't be any such luck. It lasts YEARS instead of a week and radiation exposure is UNAVOIDABLE. Once you get outside the Earth's protective magnetosphere, you are literally on your own in the unknown...
As evryone knows, Mars needs women, not men... geez, when will the male centric NASA get it right!?
I believe that there is a period around 2019 when Mars is at it's closest to earth. Picking the right time to go can make a big difference in terms of cost and flight time. I think is covered in a recent Wired article.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Band member: we're number one in Bulgaria!
Translator: We're crap.
Band member: we're number one in Czechoslovakia!
Translator: We're totally crap
Band member: We're number one in America!
Translator: We're crap... but rich...
Of course, the answer to who we send is obvious -- We should send an ethnically-diverse "Power Rangers" like team to Mars, because that way, we can sell action figures and color-changing cups at Burger King. We should send an African bush man that speaks in grunts and clicks, along with an Eskimo, an Aboriginie, and perhaps a midg^H^H^H^Hsmall person, because sending qualified engineers and scientists from the actual country footing the bill for all of this crap would be RACIST. So what if most of the engineers and scientists happen to be white. So's 80% of the country. How did they get to be such a big majority? Simple.. They're RACIST!!
For the humor impaired: The parent article dicusses the question of "who we should send".... In other words, "lets discriminate", which is a subtle form of racism in and of itself. It infers that the people who are going to be picked will NOT be picked for their qualifications, but rather, picked for their ethnicity or skin color, which is friggin retarded. I say, send the best people for the job. If they happen to be blacks, cool. If they happen to be hispanic, cool. If they happen to be white, cool. If they happen to be friggin purple, cool. The whole issue of picking an "ethnically diverse" crew is a crock of shit, because "ethnically diverse" may not mean the same thing as "best people for the mission". Neil Armstrong wasn't chosen to be the first guy to walk on the moon because he was white. He was chosen because he busted his ass in training for several years, training that anyone could have undergone, and many did.
Call it like you see it.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I know Mars is the trendy spot in our solar system right now, with its beautiful Southwestern-style landscape, but can I hear an answer as to why we don't try building a base on the Moon first?
Both have very similar challenges involved; one just happens to be 300 days closer. Doesn't it make sense to start closest to us and work our way outward? Development on the Moon could give us crucial insights into how we should develop Mars, and besides: The Moon is really the only likely space tourism destination in our lifetimes.
The Sea of Tranquility, The Bay of Rainbows, The Ocean of Storms, the Lake of Dreams... if nothing else, the Moon is the most beautifully named object in our solar system. So can anyone give me a reason why we should colonize Mars before we colonize the Moon?
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Surely it's better to extract raw materials from an uninhabited ball of rock than from our own planet. I think the Chinese have the right idea. Start mining the moon, and maybe we won't screw up the Earth so much.
Sending prisoners to populate another world probably isn't a good idea. I mean, sure, Australia turned out ok, but have you read Arthur C. Clark's Rama series?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
There's an urban legend or true story about the moon mission. They should bring the same message to mars.
---
About 1966 or so, a NASA team doing work for the Apollo moon mission took the astronauts near Tuba City. There the terrain of the Navajo Reservation looks very much like the lunar surface. Among all the trucks and large vehicles were two large figures that were dressed in full lunar spacesuits.
Nearby a Navajo sheep herder and his son were watching the strange creatures walk about, occasionally being tended by other NASA personnel. The two Navajo people were noticed and approached by the NASA personnel. Since the man did not know English, his son asked him who the strange creatures were. The NASA people told them that they were just men that were getting ready to go to the moon. The man became very excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts.
The NASA personnel thought this was a great idea so they rustled up a tape recorder. After the man gave them his message, they asked his son to translate. His son would not.
Later, they tried a few more people on the reservation to translate and every person they asked would chuckle and then refuse to translate. Finally, with cash in hand someone translated the message,
"Watch out for these guys, they come to take your land."
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I think you have it confused with the moon. China recently announce that they are planning on building a base on the moon within 10 years. I'm sure this will respark our interest in the moon (as long as we aren't spending every cent we have chasing after, but not capturing this binladin guy..)
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
I read some place that because of accelerated bone loss, women might not be able to make the trip. They would be toothless and have fragile bones by the time they got back. the lack of gravity on the way over and back being the culprit. It would still do the same to men...but not to such a radical and damaging degree.
It just isn't science fiction or political correctness that should be the judge in picking a crew...but in success of mission...and who would reasonably be expected to complete the mission.
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.
Pfffffftttt - Yeah, that'll happen....
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Who should be the members of such a crew if it were to be launched?
A mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician.
As a longtime observer of the mega-series "Going to Mars", it seems that some people are real eager to avoid seeing someone walking there. All this looks much more as the prolongation of this soap-opera to cope with some "less interesting" discoveries which point not only to the presence of water in places like the equator but also with the fact that some places strongly suggest the presence of living beings out there (small and thiny but probably bigger than bacteria).
It is interesting to note that since the end of the 60's there have been lots of news that could bring some positive moves on sending a manned craft there. However the large part of these stories don't get even the last page of the web. The rest gets some atention when it is NASA or its affiliates who found something (maybe to appease the taxpayers). But even these discoveries get into oblivion after a few massmedia dumb articles.
Specially interesting to note that after such or similar discoveries, for a week or two we keep hearing that "Mars case moves on", "New findings give a boost to manned mission". After that we catch a lot of critics who repeat all the same song that the findings add nothing either because they are flaw, useless or the discoverer drinks too much. Later we get Hoagland & Co. talking on how this is connected with the hyperphysical squareness of the Egyptian Pyramids and how Tuthankamon still rules the world from his sarcophage by sending telephatic waves to the Face of Mars and back...
And we wait for the next discovery... If it is about having some living dark dirt on the surface don't worry. We already know that Tuthankamon has his hand on it, that the government is after it and we just wait for the next discovery...
On what concerns Man on Mars... Well maybe one day, far, far away...
I agree with your sentiments despite your pejorative header. :-)
Look, the technology is mostly in place to attempt the so-called Mars Direct mission that has been espoused for a number of years.
We really need to bring back the spirit that brought Apollo to the Moon; imagine the possibility with the right funding that we could have a manned mission to Mars and it will be done in time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence (2016).
Besides the obvious boon of what we'll learn once we get manned missions there, what science we learn developing the spacecraft and landing systems for the Mars Direct mission could have huge benefits here on Earth; after all, the technology developed for the Apollo program is a major reason why I can type this message on Slashdot.org. ^_^
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Given that a manned trip to Mars will be a multinational mission, we would probably see the following flags planted on that planet once we land:
1. United States
2. European Union
3. Russian Republic
4. Canada
5. Japan
6. United Nations
The first five flags are listed because the countries listed plus the countries of the European Union will provide the technical expertise needed to build the spaceship and the lander systems. The UN flag will be included because this mission will truly be going for all mankind.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The hardbitten chick pilot/copilot.
The nerdy scientist who doesn't want to go but can't not go.
The ex husband of the pilot chick who has some kind of vague 'command' role.
The secret robot.
The known robot who is amusing.
The weird vaguely ex drunk science chick who is not as hot as the other chick.
The corporate guy who knows the real deal about a secret alien weapon.
The black guy who dies.
The young buck army recon type who wants to populate Mars with either chick's offspring.
A humanly smart mammalian animal of some kind.
The other scientist who's kept his terminal illness hidden up to now.
The world is a mess right now
Unlike during the cold war, where the threat of nuclear missiles landing on LA, NYC, Washington, London, Paris, and wiping out not 3,000 but 300,000,000 was very real.
What's all this about H20 ice, Water ice, etc?
Isn't ice just ice, except when it's dry ice or ice cream? Or do you get some other kind of ice too? The solid form of water is ice. Who's going to think they discovered something else when they report "Ice discovered on Mars"? Let's check the dictionary:-
Water frozen solid.
- Easy enough, that's what they found
A surface, layer, or mass of frozen water.
- Yep, same again
Something resembling frozen water: ammonia ice.
- Note the qualifier AMMONIA in there
A frozen dessert consisting of water, sugar, and a liquid flavoring, often fruit juice.
Cake frosting; icing.
- Maybe they found that on Mars? And the freakin' big bakery / freezer to go with it
Slang. Diamonds.
- Ya never know, maybe Ali G thought that
Sports. The playing field in ice hockey; the rink.
- Canadians maybe thought they found a hockey field buried deep under Mars, and are already planning the 2004 tour to Mars?
Slang. A payment over the listed price of a ticket for a public event.
- Hehe, like, you'll be paying in ice to get to Mars?
Slang. Methamphetamine.
- Maybe that's what they found too!
My 2 Haitian Gourdes worth.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Let's face it: there is simply no political motive for going to Mars; science is fine as far as it goes, but not many people would pay US$30 Bn to know if there really is life on Mars.
Eventually, though, some group of very rich people or companies are going to realize that Mars has the land area of Earth, and most likely has similar mineral content. There is no one there to contest the land, and for a few tens of billions of dollars, a 1500% or better return could be anticipated, if the investors are willing to look at it over a 20 year or longer term. And, hey, we happen to already know how to make a colony work there, to some degree - at least, well enough to determine and quantify the risk factors. And there are plenty of qualified people who'd go for room and board.
Once that calculation is made by the right people (those with the money), the colonization of Mars is inevitable.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Um... the moon was pretty much worthless when we went back in 69. It's only been recently that we've discovered that there might be value there.
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.)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
It'll be cheap. We don't need to send space suits.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...we went to beat the Russians.
That's the simple, God's honest truth about it. There's been alot of talk here comparing going to Mars to the Moon landings in the 60's / 70's, talk about how we did it "not because it was easy, but because it was hard", etc. Make no mistake that any objective reading of history will show that the race to the Moon was a high-tech form of cultural feather-ruffling between superpowers. Two nations, in the absence of direct armed conflict, were contending with each other on the fields of engineering and science rather than weaponry.
We fed ourselves alot of hype about doing things for all mankind, to boldy go where no man has gone before, etc, but the truth, the real truth, is that Sputnik scared the shit out of us. Snug in our belief that the USA was the best at everything and that the Rooskies would soon see the errors of their ways, we were taken aback when they acheived such a feat before we'd even really pushed for it. And everyone could hear it, that beeping above our very own skies proudly declaring the technological prowess of the Russian state.
In response, we jumped on science and technology spending & education with a ferocity rarely ever seen on a national scale. The Moon-shots were our attempt to catch up & surpass the USSR, nothing more & nothing less. Once we'd beaten them to the goal, the Moon program died of ennui.
What gets lost in our debates on things like going to Mars is that there's a time and place for everything. Without the partitioning of Europe and the ensuing Cold War, we likely would have never landed on the Moon. Why not? Because there would have been no reason to. We need a reason to go to Mars, a good reason. And a reason is only as good as the number & quality of the people who believe in it. Perhaps to bring the world together in a uniting effort is a good reason, I don't know. But I do know that the missing reason for doing it, for trying to overcome the monstrous scientific challenges to such an endeavour, is what's preventing it from happening.
Such lofty science & engineering goals as the Moon landings or the Panama Canal all derive from a need to solve real problems -- to show we're superior to the Russians technologically (and thus militarily), or to drastically lower the costs of trade & improve the ability to defend ourselves on the high seas. It's insipid to do anything "not because it is easy, but because it is hard". Under that rationale you can justify anything.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Technically, a cosmonaut is someone who travels through space (cosmos). An astronaut is someone who travels to a planet/star/asteroid/whatever (astro).
Anyway, if my vote counts, I say we send Steve Ballmer. His armpits alone can cover the planet in an ocean several developers deep.
RMN
~~~
>
>The trick would be getting them all into one ship without them killing each other.
I'm not sure I follow you.
You're talking about getting all the telemarketers, door-to-door salesdrones, boy bands, RIAA and MPAA execs, Sally, George, and what-not on the B Ark.
But there's a "trick", namely how to load 'em onto the ship without them killing each other.
"Trick?" Either way, I fail to see this as a problem. ;-)
Balanced people are a *liability*, not a strength. They make too many safe decisions and aren't willing to take the kinds of risks necessary for a "one-way" trip to Mars to work.
Admittedly you don't want psychotic people, and a military-type discipline would probably be essential to maintain supplies, but at the same time a bunch of conservative, highly rational people aren't going to experiement and try edgy things that might be really successful.
Look at the profile of successful people in business, sports, etc -- how many of them are sane, stable, follow-the-rules kinds of people? They're mostly not unstable, but they're also the kinds of people willing to take huge risks for huge rewards. Guys like you and I take tiny risks for tiny rewards, which is why we couldn't do the one-way to mars.
Obvious:
Jodie Foster, Tom Skerrit (and maybe Matthew McConaughey, for moral support).
He is working in top secret and will not patent, publish or share concepts as he says no physicist or scientist he has ever studied or researched had this approach
My bullshit detector just went off.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Totally non-sequitur references to MPAA and RIAA.
- Have a picture
"In the 1960's, every single American astronaut was a married, white male in his 30's or 40's. "
There was a black astronaut in the 1960's. His name was Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. He deselected himself from the program before he could make his space flight, however. He did this by digging a multimillion dollar hole in the ground with an airplane during training. This was a common way for test pilots and astronauts of all races to end their career back then, so gravity was not being racist at the time.
Great, so some petty tyrant's nephew gets to be the 1st man on Mars. What does that say about Earthlings? Come on, you don't think the poorest nation in the world is going to be a corruption free democratic society do you?
And, how would the people in the 2nd poorest nation feel? They could have had one of their people on Mars... if only the had been just a little poorer. You know what that says to me? "We reward failures."
If you wanted to use a slot on the Mars mission to help motivate the 3rd world, then we should invent some kind of "most improved" award where we would give a crew slot to the nation that can increase it's per capita GDP the most between now and then. Of course, that would lead to fraudulent GDP figures from everybody. I wouldn't even trust the U.N. to produce honest figures to base the choice on. Then again, perhaps if the politically unconnected citizens could keep some of the wealth they earn instead of it going to buy el Presidente and his thugs a new private jet they would be even more motivated to produce real wealth. Nah, that's crazy; a useless gesture from the gov't that makes spoiled rich 1st worlders feel good about themselves without them having to really get off their @$$es and help solve the problem is much more sensible.
That does it. No more posting on Slashdot until AFTER I finish my first cup of coffee. :-)
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
But gravity is RACIST!!!! And i'll bet you the plane was RACIST too!!!!!! you RACIST!!
;)
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
They laughed at Newton. They laughed at Einstein. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Real scientists always publish and share their work. When someone says they have something brand new that no one has ever thought of before, and claims it will change the world, but won't tell you what it is, they are a fraud 99.9% of the time. That's what the bullshit detector picked up on.
And why does the link on his site about flying saucer propulsion point to a Popular Mechanics article about a 40 year old US Military project?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!