Europe Joins Race To Send Humans To Mars

hereisnowhy writes "CBC reports that the ESA hopes to send humans to Mars within three decades. They first hope to return a Martian soil sample by 2014. They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface, because "You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."" Kame-sennin links to a Reuters article on the plans.

Comments

Too long.

[jdray]

They are still on a decades-long timeline. Here's hoping that The Mars Society can speed that up.

Re:Won't they be in suits anyway?

[WindBourne]

We are loaded with bugs. In fact, without Esheria Coli, we would not be able to digest our food. We use bacteria and virus to protect us as well. So there is very little chance of protecting the environment if we have something on the ship.

Re:Won't they be in suits anyway?

[samurairas]

The suits are actually nowhere near sterile. Normally, at least when dealing with shuttle operations, they're stored in the airlock, just hanging there. Putting them on is no robot-assisted, hands free task either; you're usually talking two people to get into a suit: the person wearing it, and their assistant. In space (microgravity) it's possible, if you're good, to get into a suit yourself, but its not easy by any means.

Anyway, once you're into the suit, you can head out into space/whereever. Of course, the exterior of that suit is probably lousy with contaminants, so that's not such a good idea if you're looking for bacteria or whatnot on the planet.

You could probably use some sort of cleaning solution, but given the ridges and folds, not to mention the binding and connection points on the suit, you'd probably miss some spots or even worse, get liquid that could (perhaps) freeze in a joint or seam. Something like that happening near the helmet or glove attachment point could be very bad news.

Finally, lets not forget that taking enough of those chemicals to sterilize the suit everytime you go out could get both very heavy AND very expensive.

A billion years of contamination

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Zubrin, meteor strikes boost ten tons of bacteria off the earth every year. As proven by Apollo, some of them easily withstand outer space. And they can survive in a dormant state for millions of years...we know this because we've dug bacteria out of the middle of hundred-million-year-old rock, and they came right to life. Once in space they are pushed outward by the solar wind. According to his calculations, since life began on this planet our bacteria have colonized whatever worlds orbit the 100 nearest stars.

So we're already contaminating Mars. There's nothing we can do about it.

Re:Won't they be in suits anyway?

[iabervon]

Good thing it would be instantly wiped out by the inhospitable Earth conditions. Any life on Mars would be adapted to the Martian environment and extremely ill-suited to other conditions. It would be contending with significant differences in pressure, temperature, air content, and gravity just being on Earth, let alone trying to live in the human body. Sure, life can adapt to an extreme range of conditions. But a bacterium that could overwhelm Earth is not going to evolve on Mars.

Re:Won't they be in suits anyway?

[ciroknight]

We know the suits arent sterile, that's the point, why not sterilize them? Bringing the suits back on would be easy to sterilize, just put the suit in an autoglave and tada..

But before they went out, this might not be so easy. Remember, astronauts are used to working in SPACE. SPACESUITS are massive, bulky, radiation shielded, air conditioned and heated, and many, many, many other things. On Mars, with the presence of gravity, this bulky, massive suit would just be plain useless. Instead, a more sleek body suit might be prefered. Something like a scuba suit here on earth, ribbed with heating and cooling and bio-sensors, and instead of zipping or snapping or locking, make it skintight and put on simply by crawling in. Put on a sterile helmet and air supply. Go through into the outer airlock and go under a quick, high pressure wash, then a longer hair dryer like phase. Step out on the planet relatively germ free. Wanna make even more sure? Use Anti-bacterial substances on area's that wont get washed well such as helmet fasteners, and coupling points. This module could be sent seperately and wouldn't be as uneconomical as you make it sound.

As for the temperatures on Mars, they would have to be well monitored.. during the day it can get really hot, and nights are really cold due to the lack of a dense atmosphere, but if you chose the right time, with a temperature around 100 degrees to 40 degrees, you wouldn't have to worry about freezing, and the heating and cooling in the suit should take care of any astronaut discomfort. Ripping a suit on mars should also see less of a consern as there is an atmophere, and the worse that would happen is a really bad sun burn. What about sand storms? Martian Sandstorms are really high speeds, but where the atmosphere is not dense, they don't have very much force. The worse damage would be the covering of solar cells or helmets or other equipment. The sandstorms shouldnt bother the marinaut; feeling more like freezing rain or at worse, small hail.

It's all about how the suit is designed, but as for cost, you can keep it all low simply by shipping first, arriving and unpacking later. You wouldnt need to resupply if you used an autoglave to do sterilization of instruments, and if you recycled your water supplies right. Antibacterial solution is very potent, so a pill bottle distribution of the equipment, mixed with water, should be able to last a very long time.