Slashdot Mirror
The Dusty Concern for the Mission to Mars
eldavojohn writes "Astronauts sent to the red planet may find much of their job involving the task of dusting off their equipment and suits. The president says we're going there but the dusty planet has some obstacles and uncertainties for engineers because we don't have a sample of Martian dust. Is it toxic? Will it conduct electricity and short circuits? Will astronauts suffer from the triboelectric effect? How large is the average grain? Will humans be allergic to it? Will sinuses jeopardize a mission? Will a dust storm stop a take off and return flight? So many uncertainties from something as simple as dust but one thing is clear — we need samples!"
We'll never know. Let's throw up our hands in awe at the ineffable planet Mars.
"Earth Needs Dust!" as opposed to "Mars Needs Women!"
On another note, don't any of the rovers there have the ability to measure this kind of thing? That would sort of make sense.
Actually, there's some body of work that describes a larger problem for Lunar explorers, although the Martian problem isn't anything to sneeze at, either. Pun intended.
As TFA points out, the lack of weathering processes on Luna leaves the dust/regolith mainly as sharp-edged grains, which actually gives them incredible abrasive power. This poses an enormous problem for mechanical assemblies that have any wear surfaces. The Apollo astronauts, IIRC, went through a couple pairs of suit gloves each simply from the wear of the dust on their metallic glove locking rings.
Martian dust might have a similar range of effects, but I hadn't heard of the "toxic dust" issue, yet; that's the interesting bit. Silicosis of the lungs and related disorders, yes; toxicity, no. Yikes.
Toxic dust makes me think of the blended iPhone. "Don't breathe this." Sorry, that's another article...
-joe.
The surface of Mars looks just fine in every movie I've seen, so it shouldn't be a big problem. Obviously these engineers haven't been paying attention.
Just put together another pair of Mars Rovers and update them to answer those questions and to survive better than the ones down there now. The two rovers on Mars now have been ridiculously successful and have outlived their expected lives tremendously. So not only should we send improved rovers, we should send tools, equipment and supplies there too. Perhaps some rovers capable of assembling structures to house the eventual human guests. I think there's little doubt we can do it. So why aren't we? (yeah I know, money... the question is rhetorical... I wish I could join NASA...)
Another as of yet unanswered question about Martian rock:
Will it blend?
(Sorry, but I just discovered the videos today, so my view of the universe if somewhat blendocentric)
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
"Dig a 1-foot deep hole in 30 seconds, as opposed to 30 years."
"Walk further than 100m per day"
"Walk into the bowl of a crater, poke around for interesting rocks, and carry the interesting rocks out."
"Immediately discern between 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' rocks without having to wait 24 hours to ask for new instructions."
No disrespect intended to our robot overlords; they've done wonderful work over the past few decades, but sometimes the right tool for a job is pickaxe powered by 200 pounds of meat.
Play golf.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
IIRC, the Mars rovers were originally (at least in concept, before budgetary reality set in) designed to drag back a sample or two. Why not build a mission that, you know, does what the original plans intended them to do in that regard? If nothing else, get up something with better instrumentation; Viking 1 and 2 were supposed to have the tools to answer nearly all of the questions, though they had been found to be flawed in many respects and hampered by things which today's tech has a better chance of overcoming.
Dunno... just sounds too easy to dismiss in light of all the ungodly extrapolation that we are capable of from mere astronomy, let alone what we can bring to bear with instruments on the ground there right now.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I thought it was well known that the majority of dust was made up from dead skin....
Max.
Can we stop pretending we're going to send astronauts to Mars? There's is no way we're going to spend the enormous amount of money required to do it, and we don't even know if the astronauts can survive the radiation exposure on the trip.
Besides the fact that it won't be done by any government in the next 30 years, it *shouldn't* be done. I've harped on this before, but it's still true: we could send 1,000 probes similar to the Mars Lander for the price it takes to do a P.R. stunt like sending humans to Mars. Yeah, it's romantic, but if the goal is science, then it's a total waste.
I like space. I'm a supporter of space. But I think humans should go on the back burner until space exploration is much, much, much more of a mature technology. We don't even have casual trips to orbit, much less the moon, much less significant space stations, and much, much less Mars.
Let's be rational about space exploration and let an army of robots do the work, instead of a few fragile, expensive humans.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
One thing that is worth mentioning is that it takes half an hour for the light to travel from Mars which means the robot operators have to wait a long time to make any intelligent feedback-based move.
Imagine turning your head right and not seeing what's there for at least half an hour.
A liberal guise to stop the Republican agenda. Just like those nasty Surgeon Generals and all of their "Real Science"
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
when the first time we went to the moon was 8 years after the first person landed on the moon.
I suspect you mean 8 years after the first person journeyed into space.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I wonder when the issue of sex in space will be taken seriously, and studies undertaken in that area. American may like to avoid the subject, but to most Europeans both Western and Eastern, its a well known reality. If we're going to take long missions to places like Mars, sex better be understood to be something that's going to happen. And I'm not talking about solitary masturbation...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Hey, it's that 'the barbecue's over' sound again!"
sic transit gloria mundi
So send better robots, and put some humans into Mars orbit to control them. Still no direct need to put people on the ground.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
NASA would be wise to also carefully contemplate what is inducing the dust to rise to form dust storms in the first place. They already have access to THEMIS images from the Mars Odyssey Mission that suggest that there is filamentation of Martian dust storms at both the leading and trailing edges. For a sample image (there are others too), go to:
t devils.htm
n adoes/insidetheeye.shtml
r ge_sheath_vortex_basics_for_tornado.html
0 06%20%203/sprite2006.3.13.html
P RITE/galleryhome.html
P RITE/Carrot/gscar01.html
http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20060512a
Furthermore, we also know that Martian dust devils can contain lightning bolts at their cores:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/14jul_dus
In addition to that, we also know that firsthand accounts from people who have seen the inside of a tornado and lived to tell about it indicate that tornadoes here on Earth tend to shimmer like a fluorescent light from the inside. This is typically obstructed from the outside by dust. There's a brief mention here. I'm sure there are other sources for this information:
http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/tor
This could indicate that tornadoes and Martian dust devils are actually both electrical plasmas, and that the electrical activity is inducing the vortex -- not the other way around.
It is possible that vortexes are the natural result of the right-hand rule within electrodynamics. Peter Thomson's Charge Sheath Vortex site is an excellent tutorial on how this may be so:
http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/tornado/fusion/Cha
He demonstrates his point at the end by creating a miniature vortex using electricity in a petri dish.
My point here is that NASA should seriously consider that the Martian dust is molecularly bipolar and is responding to solar and other electrical plasmas that are affecting the Martian planet. The evidence from both Mars and Earth suggests that it is a possibility.
We already know for a fact that upper atmosphere lightning exists. The weather scientists told us that this was not possible, and they were proven to be wrong. It's now easy to find pictures of upper-atmosphere sprites on the web. Try these:
http://usjma.jp/~sprite/sprite2005.11pic.html
http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Sprite%202006/S%202
http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Gallery/Gallery%20S
http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Gallery/Gallery%20S
So, why isn't it possible that they could also be wrong about current theories about tornadoes? And why in the world are those dust storms filamentary? When we see enigmatic features on Mars, we should create future missions to follow that data. As of recently, NASA has been exclusively following their script instead of the anomalies. We need to be doing both.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
My posted content re: gettting off of this third rock, and do not neglect the one reply to the post either. Also, for the experimentalists out there I have some collected bookmarks re: aerospace, DIY jet engines, etc..
People, please review the pertinent Mission to Mars video manual for all of the Martian conditions that can be expected. This work has already been done. Oh, and watch out for the nematodes.
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
Apparently, there were many, many unanticipated problems with lunar "dust".
. stme id=51367
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6460089
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980327.html
http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articl
As expected, enginerds never seem to want to underestimate a problem especially when they've heard of a similar problem before...
Certainly we should build space crafts that leave open the option for possible human "passengers", but, in my opinion, our focus should be on building capable and independent robots to do our dirty work for us. The current "boots on the ground" at Mars are great examples. In fact, we are in desperate need right now of moving to true computer intelligence instead of our current programmable logic.
A level of a 4 year old would actually be sufficient for most applications. Not only is this type of technology useful on world exploration, but it would revolutionize our world. One small example is that burglarly and building fires would become a thing of the past if we had a truely intelligent computer systems monitoring and managing buildings.
In addition, it will allow the survival of our species. Quick point on this, is where are the dinosaurs? Personally, I would like to think that my descendants will not end up being oil for a new species.
With that said, the questions that I see here remind of what I heard as a child. ppl, including scientists, were worried that the lunar lander would sink into 10 foot of dust. They thought that they would come back with new monsters. All in all, before the first HUMAN trip to mars occurs, we will send a mission there. In fact, I am guessing that the armadillo or one of the other new space craft will go there and send back a number of samples. These issues that are being explored, are just that; being explored. The idea that we can only send robots there has to rate as one of the worst ideas that there are. The reason why we send robots now, is because sending humans is still too expensive. But the costs are coming down. Our infrastructure is being built. We will be on mars in my lifetime, barring a nuclear war or a massive disease. In fact, the more that I think about it, those may spur us to get there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And, ummm, this would be a lot simpler and cheaper than having the humans continue the remaining 0.001 percent of the way?
rj
Oh, all right. I'll go up there and get some damned samples. I had other things to do, but since this seems to be such a big deal to you....
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
"this would be a lot simpler and cheaper than having the humans continue the remaining 0.001 percent of the way?"
Nah - just send 'em one-way... heaps cheaper!
I don't think this is right. When Mars was in opposition to earth, it was just three light minutes away. I think now it is about 10 or 11 light minutes distant.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
Except to gain experience making piloted landings on Mars, to gain experience sending crews through the radioactivity-laden wastelands of interstellar space, to gain experience walking on Mars, to gain experience sustaining human life on Mars, to gain experience working with the Martian environment...there's a lot of complex shit involved with putting human beings on Mars, and you don't want to be doing it all the first time when you land the first colony ship. Sending a permanent colony without any experience sending human life to Mars is an incredibly reckless endangerment of human life. There are risks involved with sending people to Mars, such that the first humans to die in space will undoubtedly die, either en route to, on, or on the way back from Mars. The purpose of sending manned missions prior to permanent settlement is so that those risks can be better known and mitigated, providing greater safety to the eventual colonists. Better to risk it on a volunteer group of four than on a colony ship of 12-50 (or more).
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Yes, yes, yes,yes,yes, and yes.
Everything you fear is true, plan for it.
solution, give the astronauts a pair of leaf blowers to blow each other off before heading back in the habitat, that would reduce dust ingress into the habitat significantly, make all suits banished to the entry room, force a shower in recycled water before entering station.
They got any hard problems? because industrial complexes have dealt with these problems already for decades.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's pretty much bullshit then. The Mars Direct plan calls for a 1 year manned surface mission, waiting for the Earth and Mars to move into prime position until they return. Although maybe an initial manned mission would last for 11 days, that would be, at best, practice for the real manned missions.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
There are several much more significant challenges than dust:
* The lack of any kind of spaceship capable of making the return trip
* The lack of any kind of system for keeping the crew alive in space for that long
* The lack of any serious programme to develop the above
* The lack of the money such a programme would require
* The lack of the political will to address any of the points above
* The lack of public interest in any of the points above *this* point
Overall, I think it's probably not a good idea to burn Earth yet.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
"Didn't have" is certainly not the same thing as "Didn't need"
Advanced users are users too!
I don't know about you, but I'd like to join the 36 million mile high club! Let's see a Hookerbot beat that!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Won't there be similar lung related illness like asbestosis on Earth caused by all that dust?
My web domain.
Will it blend?
Actually, given that everything blended comes out as toxic dust... what happens if you put toxic dust INTO the blender?
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Yes, on Earth. On Mars, 200 pounds of meat need 20000 pounds of support equipment. Humans breathe air, eat food, take dumps of shit. Robots recharge their batteries from sunlight, and that's it.
What we really need for exploring Mars is better artificial intelligence. Instead of sending 200 tons of support equipment, why not send a 20 ton computer able to, as you say, "Immediately discern between 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' rocks without having to wait 24 hours to ask for new instructions."?
That's a wonderful idea. Someone should just go tell the computer scientists and engineers to get their thumbs out of their asses and invent us some artificial intelligence, since obviously all they do now is sit around playing D & D and doing bong hits.
The sheer vision - it borders on godlike.
Absolutely. In terms of delta-v, it's much much more than 0.001 percent of the way. Not to mention the requirement to launch a man-rated rocket from a planet with no ground support staff and several light-minutes away from Earth.
According to Robert Zubrin's proposal for Mars exploration, which NASA's seems loosely based on, a Mars Sample Return Mission would be an important precursor to the manned mission. The reason for that would be not so much to make the geologists dance for joy, as to demonstrate the "in situ propellant production" (ISPP) technology that will generate most of the return fuel's mass from the Martian atmosphere, greatly increasing the mission's efficiency. And, of course, to demonstrate getting a spaceship back from Mars. If the dust is a concern, that's another good reason to do that mission. Bring the stuff back so we can look at it!
Revive the Constitution.
"Immediately discern between 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' rocks without having to wait 24 hours to ask for new instructions."
There's been a lot of work on this in the past few years, and researchers have made some significant progress. The upgraded Mars Rovers can already understand enough about their environment to recognize interesting atmospheric phenomena and collect extra data. Tests have demonstrated the ability to identify rocks, approach them, and deploy sensors. And automatic geology analysis (e.g. 'finding the interesting rock') isn't too far off either. In any case, I wouldn't bet against improved AI for mission planning on decade scales.
This comparison is unfair because sending a human there is many orders of magnitude more expesive than sending a robot. So the question is rather, would we learn more from a hundred different robotic missions or one manned one? I think scientifically it is quite clear that sending humans to space gives you less bang for the buck than sedning robots. Arguably sending people can be justified on other grounds though.
Mars is a 4 billion year old desert, and they are worried that it might be dusty.
This is my sig.
On the other hand, I believe we do need to get humans to Mars as a step toward further space exploration, so that human would get sent, anyway, and thus no real cost saving exist (outside of safety issues) by sending probes. The astronaut(s) would probably feel a lot better if he/she knew what the soil was like, first, though.
Yep -- 3 to 20 minutes one way, meaning you don't see the results of your command until 6 to 40 minutes later.
wouldn't the same principles we learnt on the moon apply? sure we need a mission to collect samples purely so we have a test run of getting there and back again. but come on people, most of these questions have been answered in our moon missions.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
So put some people in Mars orbit and send nice robots down to do the ground-work. Still cheaper than sending the people down, and you get the "human in the quick loop" advantage.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
No, the real question is why does anyone think space exploration should be a duty of the federal government.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
How about the delta-mv required to launch humans plus their life-support system from Earth orbit to Mars orbit and back?
rj
just because the president made some handwaving in the direction of mars doesn't mean it's going to happen... He doesn't actually have any authority to do such a thing, no matter what he says.
That said, I think that we should be looking into manned space travel, because ultimately we are going to want to send *people* into space. Learning stuff about the geology of mars is nice, but speaking long term the real value of space exploration is that we're going to have people living out there someday.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
"Walk further than 100m per day"
"Walk into the bowl of a crater, poke around for interesting rocks, and carry the interesting rocks out."
"Immediately discern between 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' rocks without having to wait 24 hours to ask for new instructions." With the amount of money we would need to blow to get a handful of humans there (much less getting them back), we could EASILY build a robot to do each and every single one of those things. You could send a massive unmanned nuclear powered Mars lab complete with every single piece of analytical equipment you could wish for and a dozen rovers that range from toy car size to frigging backhoe. Not only could you dig a hole 1 foot deep, you could excavate a trench 10 feet deep, grab a sample, and throw it under a SEM.
The logistics of sending a human to Mars are silly. The rewards are pittance compared to what you could get for a fraction of the price with unmanned equipment. Sending humans to Mars is silly when we can barely crawl out of our own gravity well as it is. If NASA wants to do something productive, they could directly take on the problem of making space travel cheap so that everyone can do it, not a dozen humans per year. Forget screwing around the edges, NASA should dump the manned space program and pour all of its money into only three things; earth science, astronomy, and making space access as cheap as humanly possible.
As spiffy as the moon landing was, its only real practical value was to show the Soviet Union how big and meaty an American cock could get and how long the Americans could piss with it. Pissing contests are generally silly, but a pissing contest with yourself is just stupid... which is what the Mars mission is.
Take the money we are going to blow on Mars, and start working on a way to get humans into space so that there are actual commercial applications. If we could get the cost of sending a human into orbit down to say a million dollars or so, you could start seeing some real commercial applications and humans living in space full time.
For chuff's sake, just run a kamikaze mission. Don't even bother about getting the astronauts back. Enough lives are being wasted pointlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a few astronauts give their lives collecting important data which can be sent back to Earth and used to plan a safer mission in future, well, that counts as much more pointful than getting blown to bits in a war there is no hope of winning.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
...because we won't go to Mars.
"The president says we're going there". Sure he is. He's also saying lots of other things.
He is not, however, financing NASA for this. Yes, they're cutting all kinds of other projects to scrape the money together. But it won't work, simply because they need true support From Above to do so instead of just some babbling.
I cannot believe that many people think we're really going to Mars any time soon. Sure, we should. Yes, we'd learn lots (always important!). Yes, obviously it's dangerous - part of an astronauts job. Yes, it's something new and fascinating.
However, the only thing which certainly will happen is that some of the Bush friends will earn a heck of a lot of money off NASA. And that'll be it.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Would an asteroid impact affect interstate commerce and/or foreign relations?
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
No, they really can't. We're going to have to gain real human experience in these matters, and that's something you can't replicate by gathering data with robots.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Then why hasn't it been done? Why did we send mostly useless rovers to Mars? Oh and how much did they cost?
I think you are giving our engineers and our government to much credit.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_v
rj
When the bomb goes off there'll be a thousand mutations! Andromeda will spread everywhere! They'll never be rid of it!
Anyway, I cannot agree with the statement that landing people on another planet with little air and then launching them on a rocket with no ground support is "simpler and cheaper" than leaving them in orbit and skipping the landing and the take-off.
It hasn't been done because it is expensive.
I do not agree. We sent the rovers to Mars. What exactly did we learn from that mission that had any REAL value? Oooh, they have rocks on Mars Whoopee! The cost to throw on a microscope on one of them and get some much more useful information would have been nominal at that point. The reason they didn't do it was either incompetence or ignorance.
Incompetence/ignorance on the part of the engineers for not including it in the design/budget request OR incompetence/ignorance on the part of Congress for not seeing the value and properly funding it OR incompetence/ignorance on the part of the Scientific Community for not standing up and being heard and renouncing stupid investments.
I just think you give engineers too much credit stating:
"You could send a massive unmanned nuclear powered Mars lab complete with every single piece of analytical equipment you could wish for and a dozen rovers that range from toy car size to frigging backhoe."
From what I have seen from NASA they lack the ability to CONSISTENTLY deliver anything anywhere, given any amount of funding.
We've had over 30 years, where are we? Why aren't they delivering what was promised? My argument is simple. They (Congress, NASA, and yes, even the scientific community) are to blame. These people are supposed to be the "Best and Brightest" we have to offer. And yet I, and I am sure many who read this, have very real doubts of their ability to get anything like this done at all, let alone done right.
Blame it on whatever you would like, the bottom line is it AIN'T gettin' done. See I'm not arguing with you, I'm arguing WITH YOU. Where we differ is in our solution to the problem. You say don't send people, send robots. I say don't send anything, cause you're all to damned corrupt/incompetent/ignorant to get it done anyway. Give me the money, I'll find a much better use for it than pissing it away.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Actually, there is an instrument specifically designed to study Martian dust aboard the Pheonix Mars lander that is launching next month and will arrive on mars next June.
The MECA (Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer) instrument actually began life as the Mars Environmental Compatibility Assessment. It was initially sponsored by NASA's Human Exploration and Development of Space initiative, and was designed to determine what risks Martian dust would pose to astronauts. It will look at the size, shape, and composition of the dust using both optical an atomic force microscopes, study the reactivity of the dust using a series of wet chemistry cells, measure the thermal and electrical conductivity of the dust, and look at how the dust sticks to a wide range of materials.
It may not be sample return, but it's a pretty in-depth study of the Martian dust. Given that it is launching in less than a month, I'm surprised it was omitted from the article.
Chocolate?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
We don't call it a "space probe graveyard" we call it a sparing ring for robot boxers and their earth-created punching ba... I mean sparing partners.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I wouldn't agree with that either, and that's why I didn't say it. RTFP, and focus on the words **** A LOT ****. The costs of getting the humans to Mars orbit and back are orders of magnitude bigger than the costs of landing them.
rj
I thought "interplanetary", but I evidently stopped thinking it halfway through "inter" and wrote the first word that came to mind. I'm strange that way.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
It never has before in the entire history of the United States. You're just grasping at straws as to why the government should waste a zillion dollars so some idiot can say "beep... beep... - I'm a spaceman!"
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score