Mars Desert Research Station Simulates Mars Base

An anonymous reader writes "Placing humans on Mars will be an extraordinary feat in itself, not to mention even living in such a harsh environment. To help train future astronauts to sustain life on Mars, the Mars Society has created the Mars Desert Research Station. The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is one of four planned simulated Mars habitats (or Mars Analogue Research Station Programme) maintained by the Mars Society. Crews sign up for two week shifts during the winter months (it's too hot in the summer for pleasant simulation). Crews are not paid during their time at the station, but do get valuable experience."

Comments

Wait another 4 years

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Obama has already made space exploration a back burner issue, so it's a nice idea but realistically we won't be seeing a mission to put a man on Mars anytime in the next 4 years. Maybe it would be better to vote in a guy who wasn't so hostile towards pure research next time.

Re:Wait another 4 years

[Elisanre]

as opposed to Bush who was a pure mercenate of pure science?

Re:Wait another 4 years

[jonadab]

> we won't be seeing a mission to put a man on Mars anytime in the next 4 years.

We wouldn't be anyway. I'm not a big Obama fan, but the idea of sending humans to Mars within eight years, let alone four, is not realistic at this point. We have a ways to go before we're ready for that.

Among other things, a desert simulation doesn't really do a good job of simulating the lack of any significant amount of atmosphere on Mars. That's a pretty big deal. An orbiting space station is a much better simulation, despite the lack of much gravity.

But the real kicker is the whole "You're pretty much on your own for at least two years, longer if the next mission gets canned" thing. The closest we come to that now is the south pole base which is *difficult* (not impossible) to get supplies to in the winter. In a pinch we make overflights and drop packages in. It takes a couple of weeks to make it happen, due to the weather issues, but a couple of weeks is *not* the same thing as a couple of years.

And the south pole base takes advantage of the fact that it's *very* accessible in the summer, by building up supplies over the course of many trips over several months, to get enough stuff brought in to be prepared for the winter. A mars mission won't have that option. The team would only have what they bring with them.

These are not unsolvable problems, but they are problems that will require significant work to solve, and that can't be done overnight. Frankly, twenty years would be an optimistic timeframe. Four years is right out, even if funding were no problem at all.

Re:Wait another 4 years

[gregbot9000]

The biggest problem to me is: how are they going to get off the rock?

In order to get them off they will need to ship a man rated rocket, and its launch facilities, down to the planets surface, assemble it, pray one slight flaw from operating in a completely alien environment without prior testing doesn't blow it up. As I recall, rocket science on earth isn't without it's mistakes, even with back up parts, high tech facilities, and maintenance crews. And they are going to do that on the martian surface?

Re:Wait another 4 years

[DerekLyons]

Among other things, a desert simulation doesn't really do a good job of simulating the lack of any significant amount of atmosphere on Mars. That's a pretty big deal. An orbiting space station is a much better simulation, despite the lack of much gravity.

An orbiting station is important, but reasons other than you think... Any Mars mission will spend the bulk of it's time in transit, and the systems need to be proved in their operational environment - in space, in zero-G. Thus an orbiting station is extremely valuable for that purpose. The thermal environment will be a bit different, but we've had enough probes in solar and Martian orbits that once you proven the basic systems and components designing the actual system is fairly straightforward.
 
 

But the real kicker is the whole "You're pretty much on your own for at least two years, longer if the next mission gets canned" thing. The closest we come to that now is the south pole base which is *difficult* (not impossible) to get supplies to in the winter. In a pinch we make overflights and drop packages in. It takes a couple of weeks to make it happen, due to the weather issues, but a couple of weeks is *not* the same thing as a couple of years.

You're setting an unreasonably high goal. There is no need for a full dry run of two years unsupplied - something almost certainly bound to fail the first few tries.
 
You do need to operate the equipment for a period of years, but sending supplies doesn't harm anything. In fact, sending supplies is a good thing because it tells you where your logistics calculations were off. So you send a few supplies (mostly repair parts as food and water consumption is easily calculated in advance), update your logistics information, and continue the mission simulation. Constantly starting and stopping the simulation is hard on the equipment, hard on the personnel, and makes things overall much harder for essentially zero return. (I've done simulations like this on a smaller scale in the Navy - sitting next to the pier and pretending we were underway.)

Re:Wait another 4 years

[Ortega-Starfire]

Some people have the will and the skill to explore. Even more are willing to die for the chance. Don't worry, there will be plenty of volunteers.

Re:Wait another 4 years

[smoker2]

Really ?

I'm left wondering how they managed to get those astronauts off the moons surface. No construction, no launch facilities, no assembly needed.

If we are to establish a base on Mars, then crew changes will be necessary I presume. Leave the "command module" in orbit and use a lander. One crew gets out, another gets in. It's not rocket sci...
hang on, maybe it is, but it has been done before.

I get tired of the whining about small issues regarding Mars habitation. Nothing is that big an issue if we are prepared to give it an honest go. Even the long periods in space to get there aren't that bad. How long did it take to sail around the globe the first few time ? Nearly 3 years. Ok, they stopped here and there, but not for that long. The scientific challenge is to get the travellers there without being nuked by the cosmic rays, but if we build a ship in space then the heavy shielding can be done little by little, which will keep the costs down.

This is idiotic

[ShooterNeo]

This is stupendously stupid and idiotic.

The most BASIC problem has yet to be solved : how do we loft things into orbit without blowing $10,000 of taxpayer money per kilogram? Every last dollar of the manned space division of NASA SHOULD go into solving this problem, FIRST.

THEN, once it is cheap and easy to put stuff into orbit, and only then, do we work out how to put up a real space station, then a trip to the moon, then to mars. In roughly that order.

And before you say something dumb like "well, a modern Saturn V is as cheap as possible"...no. Disposable giant rockets aren't cheap, they are just cheaper than rube goldberg spaceplanes (aka shuttle)

What do I think will work? Probably laser launch. LED Solid state laser technology is finally cheap enough that we could use infrared lasers to blast spaceships into orbit. Instead of one launch every few months, a laser launch system would fire a smaller payload off daily. After a few thousand successful unmanned launches, we would buy more laser modules and launch small manned capsules, probably one person at at time. (with a laser launch system, you can run the solid state lasers all day, so long as you pay the power bill. But adding more capacity costs money)

Rotons, or space elevators, or a railgun, or Saturn Vs made in China, or various other 'out there' ideas might also work. The point is, we need to keep working on better ideas until we get one of them to work, and then worry about conquering Mars.

Re:This is idiotic

[cowscows]

Well, here's the thing. Different people are skilled at solving different sorts of problems. A rocket scientist isn't necessarily the best person to be designing a mars habitat. And since it's not the same person doing both, they can both be worked on at the same time.

And while there's almost certainly going to be a need for a mars habitat to make design adaptations to work with whatever the launch vehicle is (and vice versa), there are plenty of habitat issues that need to solved irregardless of how it's gotten into space, so work spent figuring those out isn't wasted.

Besides, once the rocket is ready, it'd be nice to have the mars project almost ready to go, instead of just starting up.

Colonizing Mars is the stupidest of ideas imagined

[bradbury]

The colonization of Mars is one of the stupidest of ideas conceived by humanity. (A) The individuals involved have no understanding with respect to the DNA damage which could occur on a trip to/from Mars. (which of course makes such astronauts ripe for dying of cancer in contrast to their several % lifetime risk which is the allowable increase for current missions) and (B) if they reside on Mars for an extended period they will accumulate even more significant radiation damage.

(1) If you want to go to Mars (and colonize it) (before it is dismantled -- see Matrioshka Brain concepts) *you need a new species*.) It does not need to be too different from us. It could still interbreed with us. But it definitely needs to be engineered to withstand the rigors of space (and that needs significantly more complex DNA repair systems).

(2) Why is there no discussion of creating a species which could colonize Mars? Is there some (flawed) concept that only "God" can create species?

Re:15 minutes

[Tubal-Cain]

Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:3D mockups of the mars base facilities

[gregbot9000]

Why? simply answer why? there is nothing there, there will be no long term benefit to humanity. The costs to great. Why does mares get so much attention when an average near earth object has more high quality metal ore than human society has produced in the last 10 years? Space was a fun romp, but the only reason anyone will go back is for money, which mars lacks.