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

Won't they be in suits anyway?

[Knight55]

Suits that are sterlized? Then hit with some sterlizing solution before they leave the ship and before they enter?

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.

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.

Sterile astronauts

[k4_pacific]

You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut.

Sure you can, just take the shielding out of his microwave oven.

I would like to see this

[micaiah]

I would like to see us collaberate with the Europeans.
Not only for good relations, but because it is such an expensive venture
for us to go it on our own.

Re:I would like to see this

[Total_Wimp]

Having seperate missions would give us a little healthy diversity.

For instance, it's good to have the Soyuz available whenever we have to ground the shuttle. The Mir was cool when we didn't have any kind of space station.

We also get a boost from some healthy competition. Would we have made it to the moon if not for the desire to beat the Russians there?

If we really do want to get to Mars, I'll bet we get there faster with multiple programs.

TW

Re:They should send RMS

[Anonymous Coward]

......would it then be GNU/Mars? :)

Sterilization...

[mynameis (mother ...]

Well you CAN sterilize humans, but it's really not very polite.

Re:Whitey on the moon

[Migrant Programmer]

I'm sorry if this sounds trollish, but I think we really need to focus on stuff down here on the earth (like those WMD's) before we send anyone out into space.

You mean the USA and Russia's weapons of mass destruction, right? The ones that were made possible by the technological advancements of their respective space programs?

The only focusing the USA government wants these days is for people to not focus on their own past and present actions and capabilities (like those WMD).

USA right now is still suffering from a financial downfall. The last thing we should be thinking about doing is sending our money up in a rocket.

Of course, send it to the Middle East instead, in the form of lots of smaller rockets and such. Who cares about the long term viability of the species, or exploration of our universe? Pshaw!

Re:Russia Joined the race long, long ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe is still behind Russia and Russia is a 3rd world country!

What you're saying is only partially true. Let's first take a look at Russia: Yes, they've fallen on very hard times. What's their annual budget for spaceflight? $100M? It's something ridiculously low. But they're the country that keeps the ISS supplied. They have reliable, cheap rockets that get the job done. The US has no rocket that offers the same value as Sojuz does, nor does anyone else. So, some respect is due. Though it's plain to see that these times the Russians simply don't have the money to continue their pretty impressive work of past decades.

Europe: For one, Europe never put much effort into manned spaceflight. In the 60s, there was no European space program worth mentioning, and later on, there was no will to spend much money at it. Apart from some failures of early Ariane 5 models, Europe has shown that they can build powerful rockets. Their first Mars mission is mostly successful, and for an orbiter, Mars express can compete with anything anyone else has sent up there. The SMART-1 lunar probe is tiny and not exactly a racehorse, but its techonology is nothing to just diss either.

So, in short, nobody questions that the US is ahead. But don't discount the potential of other countries. In terms of technology, I doubt that either Europe or Russia are more than maybe a few years behind the curve...

Re:Too long.

[ezHiker]

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

Well, the problem is that something as bold as a human Mars mission does take decades to prepare for.

That wouldn't be such a big deal if we had started seriously working toward that goal while the Apollo missions were still going on, but now we are 30 some odd years late at getting started.

Instead, we invested nearly everything into the Shuttle, which IMO has been a major diversion, as well as a money pit. The Shuttle is an amazing machine, but it still boils down to basically being a high-tech glider which can withstand re-entry (sometimes!). I'm not totally convinced that the Shuttle technology has been a total waste, but I know that the money could have been better spent trying to develop simpler, effective systems to get us out of LEO, rather than keep us in it. The Apollo missions should have been the first steps to a Mars mission, but we withdrew and went down the Shuttle path, and all we have to show for it after 30 years is a partially built ISS and a couple of major disasters.

We can do better than that. But we are basically back to 1972 again, and it's going to take a while for a Mars mission to materialize. America has a problem with long term investments. People don't see immediate payoffs, so they withdraw the funding.

I just want to see humans reach another planet in my lifetime.

Re:One way trip

[jc42]

Australia was a dumping ground for poor people the mother country didn't want and threw away as "criminals"... and hasn't turned out badly anyway.

A while ago, I heard some Aussie comment that he was glad that Australia got all the criminals and America got all the religious people.

Re:THIS planet is your only home

[utahjazz]

I've been to Bora Bora, and the cosmic rays did get me.

Re:THIS planet is your only home

[jc42]

Want to live on Mars? Be my guest. While you are spending 90% of your life in a spacesuit, I will be on the beach in Bora Bora.

Of course, our ancestors who left the plains of East Africa tens of thousands of years ago could well have made the same argument.

"Want to go to Europe? Be my guest. While you are spending 99% of your life wearing clothes that cover 90% of your body to keep out the cold, I'll be warm and comfortable here wearing not much at all."

Of course, they could have been right. For most people, life wasn't noticeably better in Europe than it was for their distant relatives in Africa. Nasty, brutish and short in both areas.

Those that headed east to Bora Bora did have it better than either, at least until those Europeans arrived.

And, of course, the Neandert[h]als might have some comments to add to the discussion, if they were still alive.

Not A "WASTE OF TIME"

[ImTwoSlick]

I don't know what the obsession with Mars is either. It's so close to Earth anyway. I'd rather know what's out in the farther reaches of space. We don't know much about what's beyond our own solar system. Let's send some robots to the deepest reaches of space and see what's there.

Last time I checked, babies needed to learn how to crawl before learning how to run a 6-minute mile.

How about we take some baby steps first? Or....Lets wait the thousands of years it would take to get a probe to even the closest star, let alone "the deepest reaches of space". That would be a REAL waste of time.

End of the Shuttle -- Not so simple. History...

[dekashizl]

Instead, we invested nearly everything into the Shuttle, which IMO has been a major diversion, as well as a money pit. The Shuttle is an amazing machine, but it still boils down to basically being a high-tech glider which can withstand re-entry (sometimes!).

The main reason NASA has been able to do anything over the last several decades is because of revenue/money. And a large part of that revenue has come from government agencies, especially the US Air Force. And the USAF required a launch vehicle with large payload capacity to bring up large satellites and the ability for humans to fix them. And once the USAF was behind NASA, the government was willing to put more money into the program because it seemed that much more important. And then the USAF put more in, because the government backed it... Etc. etc.

The shuttle has definitely cost a lot of money (and lives), and perhaps has lived longer than it should have, but it was an important step in our ascension to space. It is not entirely clear that any other path would have been faster or even possible, given the issue of funding, and the positive feedback loop resulting in getting the USAF and government behind the program.

The shuttle was a marvel for its time, and now somewhat antiquated in a large part due to the onward march of technology. This will be the history of every major human technological achievement for the forseeable future. It is easy to look back and see all the flaws. But it is not so easy to stop a multi-billion dollar project and start from scratch when you barely have the funds to continue operating on the current path.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Re:Too long.

[teamhasnoi]

Imagine if everyone on earth was able to combine their resources and technology with no political, religious, or cultural boundries. I reel at the idea of what we could accomplish if everyone was united to one idea.

I fear that something that the world could rail against, such as a super-SARS, a 'killer' asteroid, or sudden climate change would destroy the human race before we could become organized, especially when information is withheld from citizens, other countries, and competing corporate scientists.

Mars could be a couple of years away or less, if everyone worked together. Mind you, I in no way think that this will happen. Sadly, I find the vison of earth as a self-created wasteland far more accurate.