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

[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.

Re:More importantly...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the process of being evicted from their Pennsylvania Avenue home in D.C., presently, I believe.

Exactly the same

[thered2001]

Except you can breath the outside atmosphere, the gravity is Earth-normal, and emergency help is much closer. Otherwise, a great simulation of life on Mars. (An Antarctic simulation lab would be a bit closer to the mark.)

Participant Point of View

[realperseus]

My daughter had the privledge of participating in the MDRS back in the Fall of 2006. She described it as "Fun and awesome!" Their mission was to refit the "Hab" as best as they could within their limited budget. She described living conditions as "cramped, much like a typical Mars mission. You need to work as a team to get things done". Here is another link to MDRS project for those who wish more information:

The Mars Society - Mars Desert Research Station

Re:how about a submarine then?

[Kugala]

Weight. One of the largest issues getting anything into even orbit, much less Mars, is weight.

A Delta IV Heavy rocket could get about 14 tons to high orbit. A Virginia class submarine weighs about 8,000 tons. This would take around 570 launches to lift.

Even considering you don't need half the features, there's probably more you do need, so the final product might wind up weighing more.

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.

Re:This is idiotic

[ShooterNeo]

Except that no-one at NASA is even TRYING to build a cheaper rocket. And they also have no concrete plans for a Mars mission, either. Meaning the engines you would need to even get the Mars are not even in the design stage.

So if you don't even have a guess as to how much stuff you could bring to Mars, then playing with habitats is pointless.

Best case scenario, we build a super-efficient laser launch system and a nuclear powered VASIMIR rocket to get to mars real fast. In that case, we could just cram the spaceship with a bunch of MREs and life support components right off of a nuclear submarine.

Worst case, it is still super-expensive to go to Mars, and NASA has to custom build every last part, min-maxing for mass.

15 minutes

[dwarg]

I just wasted about 15 minutes of my life looking over this thread and I have to say I'm fascinated.

> Moderately funny comment

>> Strange non sequitur attempt at political humor

>>> Openly racist, long-winded slur

>>>> Stupid attempt at humor after making said slur

>>>>> Masturbatory over-analysis of thread

This analysis was made after looking through the racist poster's previous comments to see that he isn't a perennial troll, but has made several Insightful and Informative posts recently.

What does it all mean? Why did I bother posting this? Shouldn't I get some work done?

Oh the humanity!

Re:15 minutes

[Tubal-Cain]

Welcome to Slashdot.