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First Mars-Goers Should Prepare For a One-Way Trip
Luminary Crush writes with this excerpt from PhysOrg about the permanance of leaving Earth for Mars, at least for early travelers: "The first astronauts sent to Mars should be prepared to spend the rest of their lives there, in the same way that European pioneers headed to America knowing they would not return home, says moonwalker Buzz Aldrin. '[the distance and difficulty is why you should] send people there permanently,' Aldrin said. 'If we are not willing to do that, then I don't think we should just go once and have the expense of doing that and then stop.'" On the other hand, maybe they'll catch a ride back with Carrie-Anne Moss.
Do we get to nominate people to go?
Would it be by lottery?
Perhaps, you buy your way?
Convict Volunteers?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
In his novel Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson tells of Mars being colonized by the First Hundred, a wave sent out after the first manned expedition, who would have to remain there forever. There are some interesting asides into the fact that, to want to leave behind your loved ones and all you know for a barren rock, you're probably not what the government bureaucrats who vet you would consider psychologically stable.
Then you use the Constellation/Orion/CEV stuff to get from Earth to the cycler, and LEM-like craft between the cycler and Mars.
The resources for the Mars base, including lots of emergency provisions and an escape vehicle or two (extra LEM-like craft to return from Mars surface to Mars orbit and dock with the cycler) can be sent to Mars in advance. It doesn't make sense to send people until the provisions etc. are in place.
For redundancy, you'd probably build and launch two cyclers.
The drawback of all this is that it takes longer to build and deploy than a one-shot Apollo-style mission, but it's worthwhile because it provides an infrastructure for maintaining a permanent base and rotating crews.
The crews would still be committing to spending quite a few years to a mission, but not the rest of their lives.
And if this were 1606, I'd agree.
However, we already have maps of Mars. We have reasonably fast communication capability and data uplinks. People "on the ground" can relay useful information without sailing two months back to the motherland (not to mention the incredibly wasteful notions of either carrying return fuel, or carrying a fuel refinery, both of which occupy space and weight that could be better used to equip the first visitors properly for their trip.
Sending astronauts to Mars to stay permanently, without any experience of the efficacy of the technology, is inviting disaster.
Sending astronauts to Mars to stay temporarily, without any experience of the efficacy of the return vehicle, is inviting disaster.
Overcomplication in mission profiles and equipment is a greater problem. The first mission there should be a simple, straight-shot delivery vehicle, loaded up with habitats, tools, and backup equipment for a one-year camp on Mars.
The second mission, which should be launched two or three months, not years, later, could include a return vehicle with additional supplies and food. The problem at Jamestown was that they brought along insufficient resources of every kind. Dedicating half of the first mission to coming home again is the repeat you fear.
The American pioneers were preceded by explorers ....
The first human pioneers to Mars have already been preceded by explorers. Most, if not all, of the work to be done in preparation for colonization has and will be done remotely via robots, satellites and the like, an option unavailable in the 1500's and 1600's.
hi!
The question is, is it cheaper to organize a return trip, or is it cheaper to have them settle there permanently which means sending more equipment and making them pretty much self sufficient or supplying them with what they need including oxygen. These are your only 2 options (unless you're willing to abandon astronauts to die on Mars).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
A suggestion: we need to stop thinking of the beanstalk as only a way to move material up to orbit. It is also a way to move stuff down from orbit to Earth. It is important to keep that in mind!
If we design it correctly, the beanstalk will use regenerative braking on material being moved downward. So long as we are moving more mass downward than we are moving upward, the beanstalk can generate energy and the cost to move things to orbit becomes no cost at all. We could even end up with surplus energy whose sale could fund other aspects of the project.
It doesn't matter what we ship down. It could be moondust: regolith scooped up into containers just for its mass. Possibly used on Earth as building material: if the containers were designed for it, they could be loaded onto gliders on a stratospheric platform attached to the beanstalk, and delivered to construction sites within a radius of a few thousand miles for less than the cost of quarrying, crushing, and delivering native aggregate.
If we developed the technology to capture an icy comet or asteroid, that would be even better. With solar power the ice becomes water, and then its waterwheels all the way down. That's 26,000 miles of waterwheels. That's a lot of hydropower.
While I doubt that the technical problems of building and anchoring a space elevator will ever be solved, the advantages would be so great that I strongly favor research in this direction.