Slashdot Mirror
The Challenges of Building a Mars Base
ambermichelle writes with an excerpt from an article in Txchnologist: "Going to Mars? Expect to stay a while. Because of the relative motions of Earth and Mars, the pioneering astronauts who touch down on the Martian surface will have to remain there for a year and a half. For this reason, NASA has already started experimenting with a habitat fit for the long-term exploration of Mars. Last year, students at the University of Wisconsin won the XHab competition to design and build an inflatable loft addition to a habitat shell that NASA had already constructed. The final structure now serves as a working model that is being tested in the Arizona desert. Like any home, it's a sacred bulwark against the elements; but not just the cold, heat, and pests of Arizona. A Mars habitat will have to protect astronauts from cosmic rays, solar flares, and unknown soil compositions all while keeping inhabitants happy and comfortable."
and build it in there.
The base will build itself with corporate sponsorship. Problem solved.
It's a cool thought, but we haven't even built a base on the Moon yet, or sent people to Mars. (although I guess you could send modules, and robots to Mars first to get things put together before they send people).
I rememeber in Middle School (Jr High) I had a science teacher that made an assignment where we would all have to design a "feasable" base design for mars. Obviously at that young age we didn't go through the mass complexities that really exists, but he did expect us to do a fair amount of research on Mars, and what plan what kinds of things would be necessary for survival, how you could make the base as self sustainable as possable, where on the planet would be best (and why we thought so) etc.
I've never forgotten that lesson, it was actually one where a teacher expected growth of thinking skills, not just a rehashing of materials from a text book...
That those fucking rocks are really spiders!!
The NASA video shows them bringing whole hab in on 3 semi-trailers -
Why not airdrop the major components in, and see if putting the thing up while encumbered with a suit is feasible.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
To even consider going to Mars we first need to send at least 5 rockets full of supplies and land them literally next to each other. We also need to park another 2 or 3 in orbit to hold fuel for Mars Orbit Docking in order to dock and go home within a reasonable time frame. Aldrin's free transfer trajectory is great but unsuitable for human passage.
Get the supplies and contingency machines in place, then think about it. But first figure out how to drop 5 tonnes safely to a very particular spot on the surface. Now do it repeatedly. Because that's what landing on Mars requires.
If NASA was smart, they would send robots to build a tunnel in a mountain, or underground. This would protect astronauts from all the elemnts including cosmic rays.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I hate to bring up something that can only bring up more cost and delay to the exploration and colonization of Mars (and other worlds) but we REALLY need to figure out human biological response to differing gravity levels. Extended stays in zero (micro-gravity) environments have shown that a vigorous regimen of physical activity is necessary to keep astronauts healthy. Will the same be true on the Moon (1/6 earth gravity)? On Mars (1/3 earth gravity)? Will they need to do the same strenuous (and tedious) daily exercises for the same length of time?
Eventually, of course, it'll be "vital" to know if women can conceive, gestate, bear and raise infants in these varying gee environments (at least until they're old enough to exercise by themselves). But that can wait.
This seems to be perhaps the ONE thing that the ISS could do that cannot be possibly done on earth. Perform long term studies of humans in environments where the gravity is 0ISS1. Of course that would involve a big (very expensive) centrifuge or at very least a smaller one capable of using small animals. I understand that there was a (small) one planned but it was cut. Considering the long term importance of this, I would say that they should spend the big bucks and put in a big one (large enough so that coriolus effects wouldn't be noticeable) and study it thoroughly. Since this (human biology) is truly an international issue (rather than one nation planting a flag), I would hope it would get international support. Pinwheels in the sky a la 2001 here we come!
Of course if the results are bad (humans, especially reproducing females, are found to be exquisitely tuned to one gee) we may need to wait until genetic engineering can adapt us to our environment rather than the other way around. In that case I've got a whole host of other "improvements" I'd like to see (radiation tolerance, hibernation capability, vacuum safe bodies...)
The NASA video shows them bringing whole hab in on 3 semi-trailers - Why not airdrop the major components in, and see if putting the thing up while encumbered with a suit is feasible.
Testing is done in stages. First see if we have the concepts and solution correct with basic equipment. Then figure out how to ruggedize the equipment. If the concept was flawed or the basic equipment lacking then ruggedizing would be a waste of time and money.
The obvious and simple solution is cryo-sleep. Just ship some capsules along with a rudimentary habitat, and be prepared to sleep most of the time away. The Mars explorers can't realistically bring 18 months' worth of food and oxygen and medical supplies and whatever else--tampons, contact lenses, etc. So just send a month's supply of food, and they can sleep for 17 months until the return vessel arrives.
I think that compared to the amount of fuel and supplies they're going to have to carry to travel to mars, build a habitat and survive for months (years?) on Mars' surface, supplying them with food on the trip there is not going to be a big deal. The ISS goes through around 3 tons of food per person per year.
Cooling the human body to a near-death state has been demonstrated--actually, it has happened many times when people fall into icy water and are revived many minutes later (google extreme hypothermia).
But waking them up again without a team of doctors to assist is rare.
Another concept might be to simply upload the astronaut's neural net into a very high capacity computer. Once this task is accomplished, the computer can continue to operate a space vessel and otherwise completely imitate a human being's decisionmaking and responses. One possible catch is that the computer, unlike an organic brain, lacks any stimulus from hormonal secretions, adrenaline, etc. This kind of stimulus would have to be simulated. The astronauts themselves would remain on Earth, monitoring the flight. Any mistakes or accidents would be blamed on the individual whose brain had been uploaded, obviously.
How would you do this? Dissect a live astronaut's brain cell by cell to determine each neural connection?
Lastly is the idea of telecommuting (similar to the second idea expounded above). A completely automated vessel with remote controls would allow a team of astronauts to "work from home". Unlike an actual trip into space, this virtual exploration would be much safer.
The 6 minute to 45 minute round trip communications lag makes this difficult (but not impossible as demonstrated by the mars rovers).
I think a hybrid of your last two approaches is better than sending men right now - send smart robots to build a base, they can be largely autonomous, and when they need help, they await communications from earth.
Or, maybe instead of sending a large team of men to live on the surface and build a habitat, send a large team of drone robots controlled from orbit by a small team of humans.
Its not soil, it is regolith.
We're not entirely sure about that yet. The difference between soil and regolith is that soil has active bacteria and organic material suspended among the ground up rock particles. We've taken a few samples that show no organic material, but the methodology behind the testing and the results is in dispute.
Bear in mind, though, that except in geology papers, regolith and soil are synonyms.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm always confused by base designs for other worlds that are invariably above ground. Why waste the protective features of just burying things?
I suppose it's difficult to dig a base into the earth but because there's very little atmosphere to speak of you have no real protection against radiation. And then there are questions of insulation. Put twenty feet of dirt between your habitat and the surface and all sorts of problems go away.
No problem with micro meteorites since they'd have to penetrate 20 feet of dirt to even touch your habitat.
No problem with radiation unless it can go through 20 feet of dirt. I know really hard radiation can... but that has to take most of the edge off it. And if needed you can always go deeper.
No problem with dust storms because it's all raging above you. I suppose a dune could position itself on top of your access shaft but there are some fairly cheap ways to make that manageable.
So on and so forth.
this goes double for the moon. For the love of god there's not even a weak atmosphere on the moon. No protection. Put the facility down twenty feet though and you can inflate your little habitat to your heart's content knowing that the whole place isn't going to get stabbed by a thousand micro meteorites or flash burned by a solar flare.
The only thing that really needs to be on the surface is an access shaft complete with airlocks. A communications array so you can broadcast to orbital relays or directly to earth. And some solar cells. Bury everything else.
If we build underground we might not even need those somewhat elaborate bubble walls they're talking about inflating. We might just be able to get by with something to harden the earth up and then maybe a spray on polymer to make sure the walls are airtight.
If people want to see the surface they can use one of the video feeds or climb up the ladder/take the elevator to the surface.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
A new Total Recall movie is in the works. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386703/
Going to Mars was cool last century. This century our priorities have shifted and we can't put humans in orbit of this planet without making them honorary cosmonauts.
If you want to get people interested in going to Mars, you need to start by erasing the memory of the film "Mission To Mars" from the public consciousness. The very thought of going to Mars now triggers a knee-jerk reaction of: "Wait... didn't Quinn Mallory, Ken Mattingly and Merlin already do this? And it sucked?" It might be easier to simply rename Mars and make it sound like we're going somewhere new and exciting, like Pandora. Then we can start thinking about this again.
Bear in mind, though, that except in geology papers, regolith and soil are synonyms.
You mean: aside from places where the term regolith appears, regolith and soil are synonyms. That means the same as what you said, but is less misleading. :)
Cryosleep might be needed if we're ever to engage in interstellar travel in the future, but the problem with a Mars mission is not that the astronauts are going to age into old farts before they get there: it's surviving once they DO get there.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Perhaps the entire chain of "sober assessors" should take up drinking since this is some pretty flaky reasoning going on.
It's not about the will to do it (although that does play a role). The minute the copycyt Chinese land on the Moon the US -- possibly together with Russia &/or the EU -- will put an Apollo-type effort into getting to Mars. Hell, Just read Mary Roach's Packing for Mars (ISBN 978-1-85168-780-0) and see what nearly insurmountable problems there were in getting to the Moon, and she really only deals with life sciences, not physics.
The problem is that we can't realistically get a payload of sufficient size there. The technological hurdles are easy; the problems are physics and biology. We can build a dozen rockets, take advantage of orbital mechanics for unmanned segments, launch 'em off three full-size gantries together so that one launch window serves three machines.
But before we even think about getting the people there we still have to figure out how to arrive, orbit, and then land precisely -- repeatedly -- unmanned, all while dealing with the 8-minute radio delay in the best of circumstances.
The problem of human physiology is even worse than the physics problem. We can come up with odd trajectories and multiple burns and en-route dockings to provide additional fuel to carry such things out. Have you ever seen the astronauts coming back from 3-6 months on the ISS? It takes a huge fucking crew to get them out of the return vehicle and into recovery. It takes three strong men just to pull those poor bastards off the couch and out of the capsule. And that's from LEO. There ain't no recovery crews waiting on Mars.
Human body fat is the most efficient way for a human to store energy. Give them enough (recycled) water, some vitamins and protein and they will shed weight all the way to Mars, and back maybe too.
Cryo sleep will not work, because joints will become fibrosed, muscles will atrophy, etc.
So to figure out how FAT our ASTRONAUTS will be - we'll need to look at some numbers.
A pound of fat can expend about 3500 KCAL of energy.
An average male basal metabolic rate is around 2000 KCAL/day.
Now using conventional fuel - the trip takes 214 days, using a constant propulsion nuclear motor might shorten it to 120 days
Soooo - ballpark FAT ESTIMATES are for conventional fuel 214 x 2000 = 428,000 KCALs /3500KCal/fat = 122 pounds (or about 56 Kilos extra)
428,000 KCAL
Nuke fuel require them to only gain about 70 pounds extra.
Now this is a one way trip - so lets double the weight to provide for our FAT ASTRONAUTS to get back home safely
So now we are looking at 244 pounds EXTRA - or a 444 pound (200 KILO) Buzz Aldrin... for conventional fuel
and for constant acceleration nuke powered craft - a 340 pound Buzz Aldrin
This will make the newer movie version of the RIGHT STUFF a bit different to watch. All those neck beards out there - yep - you're training for a MARS mission....
..........FULL STOP.
A near vacuum is actually a pretty good insulation. Regolith would help against radiation, though. Ice would be even better, there are quite a few places on Mars with thick ice deposits. You also get water there (no, really?)...
Still, all of this is pointless. There's just nothing that robotic probes wouldn't do much cheaper, especially since they don't need to breath, eat, drink, wash and be returned.
...of doing anything in space, but particularly important for going to mars, is getting to low earth orbit more cheaply, regularly, reliably and safely. without easy access to LEO and more significant orbital infrastructure than a tiny tin can toy space station (yes, the ISS is a useless pos), any trip that is made to mars will be hugely expensive and will never be repeated (vis-a-vis the moon race).
going to mars at the moment is like starting to build a house by picking out curtains
Don't forget oxygen. Soil on earth has had very prolonged exposure to free oxygen. Not so in a lot of other places. Oxygen is, obviously, very reactive. That means that the chemistry of terrestrial and non-terrestrial soils might have a lot of differences. The non-terrestrial soils might be full of all kinds of toxins that you wouldn't find in terrestrial soils, not to mention that, without the same erosion and corrosion found on Earth, the actual particles are going to be a lot sharper and more abrasive. Of course, it might turn out that it only takes a relatively short exposure to oxygen, soil bacteria, worms, etc. before those aren't issues any more. At the moment, we need to be able to get into a position to actually experiment.