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Dennis Tito's 2018 Mars Mission To Be Manned
Last Thursday, we discussed news that millionaire Dennis Tito was planning a private mission to Mars in 2018, but details were sparse. Now, reader RocketAcademy writes that Tito has provided more information about the tip, and that he intends the mission to be manned:
"Dennis Tito, the first citizen space explorer to visit the International Space Station, has created the Inspiration Mars Foundation to raise funds for an even more dramatic mission: a human flyby of the planet Mars. Tito, a former JPL rocket scientist who later founded the investment firm Wilshire Associates, proposes to send two Americans — a man and a woman — on a 501-day roundtrip mission which would launch on January 5, 2018. Technical details of the mission can be found in a feasibility analysis (PDF), which Tito is scheduled to present at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in March. Former NASA flight surgeon Dr. Jonathon Clark, who is developing innovative ways of dealing with radiation exposure during the mission, called the flight 'an Apollo 8 moment for the next generation.'"
Whats the point? You're shoving many extra tons (between person and life support), and you have to put it on an orbit that brings it back home, and for a payload that can do little more than look out the window and go "ohh, pretty" while being irradiated for years outside of the protection of the Earth's magnetic field.
Even if the mission goes 100% to plan, the cancer risk alone is probably a death sentence for the two passengers.
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What kind of radiation shielding is the mission going to have? If they get hit by a solar flare event they'll probably be dead.
Stories like this sort of pisses me off. There are a lot cool things we could be doing if, as a nation, America used it's wealth for good instead of evil. But we'd rather spend trillions enriching the very few via wars/police state crap to prevent fewer deaths than dog bites cause (*), or on bailouts for the very rich and unscrupulous. What a fucking waste.
* http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/25/304113/chart-only-15-americans-died-from-terrorism-last-year-less-than-from-dog-bites-or-lightning-strikes/?mobile=nc
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Unless I'm misunderstanding what was in the article, they seem to be sending two people almost 2 years in space to just fly around Mars and their not even going to land there.
The ship comes back with an extra passenger or two..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Landing and living on Mars might actually be safer than a cruise back to Earth and a 10g landing, after two years of microgravity. A better idea would be to send older people, land them on Mars and schedule resupply missions.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Build an automated city on Mars first. A habitat is needed so that people can land there and have something waiting. It would be even better if the automated city were busy harvesting water and splitting it into H2 and O2 for the return trip.
Before you do any of that, get international agreement that contamination of Mars is acceptable. Once humans land there, it's inevitable.
An "Apollo 8" for Mars just seems like a really bad idea.
IMHO, the tech for exploring Mars has to come from the mining industry. Yes. Mining. Start with ultra-automated mines on Earth. Then, Mars-adapt that technology and send it there. Ditto for construction. Come on miner/builder-bots guys, build us some Mars bots and get 'em on the job.
sorry to burst your cum-bubble, but jizz and vag spoo and sweat dries very quickly.
Well, perhaps, but it will still be floating around unless it connects with a surface before it dries.
And if it does dry and continue to float about, will that be a respiratory issue?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
sorry to burst your cum-bubble, but jizz and vag spoo and sweat dries very quickly. The answer to your bukkake question is that it will be possible at a somewhat greater distance than on earth. the only thing left for you to fantasize about it how the place will *smell* after the mission is done. I find it ridiculous that they talk of sending a middle aged couple because of radiation concerns regarding sperm and egg, plenty of young couple opt to be made sterile by one means or another, tubal ligation or vasectomy or whatever. deep space porn rights could help offset cost of mission.....
Control of biological...undesireables... is actually a bit tricky in space. Lots of problems that just solve themselves when you have an entire planetary atmosphere to work with just don't when you have a few thousands or tens of thousands of liters of atmosphere along with whatever climate control you packed with it.
Both Mir and the ISS developed moderately nasty mold problems, and Mir even had a number of horrid water globules hiding behind rarely used access panels growing various vile slime.
It isn't obvious that sexual fluids would be worse than mere sweat(might actually be less troublesome, since there is a strong evolutionary imperative in favor of mechanisms that keep other microorganisms from hijacking our gene transfer mechanism for their own ends); but we know that mere sweat and exhaled water vapor are enough to really gross up the place.
How about instead of people, we send a few robots and some self-contained factories with which to build more. Once things are up and running, we can start constructing a base via remote control.
Wonder why they are assuming sea-level atmosphere inside the pressure vessel... long term human habitation has been recorded near 6000m (less than 50kPa).
*insert pithy sig here*
The problem is that Earthrise is going to be kinda lame.
The sleeping quarters are going to look like a Jackson Pollock under the blue lights! Seriously, how do you cum on someone's face in zero G? If I'm doing it "doggy" and pull out right before I fire my huge load like a rocket, will the force blow me into the wall and hurt my back? And I mean, seriously, unless there is some kind of environment vacuum system to suck all the cum and sweat and other liquids out of the room space, by a few months into this thing, the whole place will be filled with free-floating globs of cum and pussy juice. On second thought, I'M IN!
I don't know if you've spent much time with a girl, but after a few weeks of constant contact with no breaks and no showers, there's not going to be a whole lot of sex going on.
I don't know if you've spent much time with a girl, but after a few weeks of constant contact with no breaks and no showers, there's not going to be a whole lot of sex going on.
On the contrary, it will me like rutting animals. There will be nothing else to do. In fact they should take the Kama Sutra and a video camera, and sell the rights to Vivid Entertainment... And of course they will have to sign up a couple who are HOT looking and so forth...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Orion's life support is too heavy for the Delta IV heavy, and it is only good for several people for a few months. NASA has spent over a few billion dollars on Orion, and it is still not ready. How will they build and test a capsule to support two people for 1 1/3 years in 5 years? Not to mention a bigger rocket will be needed, and no, the Falcon Heavy will not have the power to push an Orion massed craft past Mars. Heck, only early studies of galactic cosmic on the brain have been preformed, and they show that high energy iron is not good for the brain.
I have to say that the sex drive doesn't give a shit. It's like ugly girls in the absence of pretty girls. Suddenly they start to look damn good. If you don't get any pussy for a long time they look fucking fabulous. After a few weeks you just want to get laid and your mind adjusts to anything it has to in order for it to work out.
The ISS LEO experience tells us very little about the radiation environment that they will spend the large majority of their time on during a mars mission. Even at solar minimum and ignoring the possibility of a solar flare, these people are going to be subjected to an extraordinary amount of radiation. It is much much nastier outside of the protection of the earth's magnetosphere. Odds of death by radiation poisoning or just serious damage due to long term exposure to medium levels of ionizing radiation are very high. In the event of a solar flare or errant impact from a cosmic ray, death would occur in a number of days.
The technical paper largely ignores this critical issue. Which means they're unlikely to be successful. On the plus side, the equivalent of sitting next to a reactor core with a few millimeters of aluminum shielding is an excellent contraceptive.
I hope this gets actually done soon, so we can call it a day and get back to more interesting concepts like building a base in the south pole of the moon (using robot), or trying to build space elevators, or placing shades in the L1 point to regulate global warming, or, you know, maybe funding actual science (e.g. gravitational wave detectors, and plenty of other very cool missions).
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Why send a man AND a woman? Does he think people cant go 501 days without sex? I got that beat in spades. Sign me up. ....posting anonymously in shame.... :)
Where does one sign up?
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Very informative, "fuzzyfuzzyfungus." Are spores etc your line of work?
Have they done a similar study for a Venus flyby? The launch dates might be more forgiving, the target a bit closer, the trip length might be a shorter and the delta-V requirements a bit less. Most important maybe the earth re-entry requirements would be a little less extreme. It is a 14km/sec aero-capture maneuver prior to re-entry that would, in some scenarios, put the vehicle in an elliptical, battery power only, 10-day trajectory beyond the moon (not to mention abusing the heat shield TWICE) just to reduce G-forces!. And there's only a 6km entry "window" between burn-up and bouncing off the atmosphere on an escape trajectory!
I mean since this trip is mainly a (very useful) test of long duration deep space flight with very limited "observation" of an already well-studied planet (there are currently three orbiters and two rovers on Mars), does it really matter which planet we flyby? Since the trajectory for this mission already takes it inward almost to Venus' orbit, they will be exposed to the same levels of solar heat (and radiation). Mars is, of course, more relevant for future long term exploration but other than the P.R. value there is not much more that would be gained over going to it versus Venus.
On the other hand, if somebody forks up the money for this tomorrow, please ignore everything I said. Mars or bust!
you mean they're sending Silvio Berlusconi up there?
Seriously. On a 501-day trip, intercourse will happen at some point. If it gets too wild, she could get pregnant. And having a baby in the middle of such a mission will be a major catastrophee. They should really make sure that the two humans in this mission are sterile. I don't see it worth of taking any chances.
Anyone who boarded a rocket in 2018 for a manned trip to Mars is more likely to become a frozen corpsicle. It's a seriously short period of time to plan, design, construct, schedule, launch and assemble essentially a second space station and crew and set it on course around Mars and back again. If it happened at all it would cut so many corners it would border on reckless. Make it 8 or 10 years, and maybe it might be feasible.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/space-couple-to-have-massive-row-when-they-miss-the-turning-for-mars-2013022861307
501 Days with the same person? 501 days with a WOMAN!?
*spins office chair around to glance at woman sitting at the desk behind me*
I'd jettison myself after 501 minutes. Hell with THAT.
Ok, one of the reasons for sending an older couple is so that the woman is post-menopausal and thus you won't have to deal with the possibility of pregnancy, the ickyness of the menstrual cycle (and additional weight for "feminine hygiene" products which is a line item in the life support planning!) and hormone cycles. I guess the planners then presume that the man should be equally old (I guess they are discounting the possibility of, as they say here in Vietnam, "old airplane young pilot" :)
Why not avoid all that and send a gay couple? In that case you could pick two (men) who are in a stable long term relationship already. They wouldn't have to be (as) old as menopausal considerations as well as pregnancy (and post mission children) wouldn't be an issue. With the old age requirement gone you could get two individuals at the peak of physical and mental fitness.
Anyway, I don't know if that would turn off some potential sponsors but it might entice others (how much money could the rainbow coalition raise?).
On the other hand, sending two women, while re-introducing the possible menstrual cycle requirements (unless both were post-menopausal) might be worthwhile because of the potential weight savings. The life support is modeled on two seventy kilogram males, two fifty kilogram females would consume appreciably less. So sending a lesbian couple to mars would have its own benefits.
Ok, cue the jokes! :)
Before anyone sinks too much money into this mission, perhaps we should wait and see whether a 50-km wide comet is going to slam into Mars in 2014 ?
It would suck if there's nothing left to see but ash clouds and a 500 km wide magma lake.
>;k
A space carrier with rotating sections for gravity, nuclear propulsion, and some form of thick protection against the radiation (either thick plating or a magnetic shield or a combination) would be a much better approach.
With such a vehicle, manned space travel between Mars - Earth would become a commodity.
It's getting there with a ship that will provide an ethically adequate living environment for the crew. I'm not too interested in seeing play-by-play on an astronaut's decent into madness.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Why do you think they're bringing the wife? HOUSECLEANING
-l
/totally kidding, do not reply if you are humor-impaired.
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Your one of the richest people with the best connections on earth Denis.
Do you want to captain your own ship? I sure as hell would.
Your halfway there In 1972, he founded Wilshire Associates, a leading provider of investment management, consulting and technology services in Santa Monica, California. Dennis Tito serves an international clientele representing assets of $12.5 trillion.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Tito
A similar plan called "Mars Direct" is outlined in Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". It's a fun read! :-)
The idea is to use a simple factory to make the return fuel in situ. Then when the factory reports after a few years that the return fuel storage tanks are full, you launch the actual mission, knowing that the crew can probably return safely once they make it to the first Mars landing site.
I don't like their idea of using some kind of nuclear power plant for the compressor and Sabatier process, surely it can be done with solar power, it will just take several years longer. Their idea is to "bring your own" hydrogen, compress Mars air of 95% CO2, and make water, methane, and oxygen. It sounds simple and brilliant.
And I think that they should park another factory next to it to manufacture solar cells from doped amorphous silicon
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Whoops!
Anyway, there is a very good Wikipedia page about the atmosphere on Mars. The numbers given vary seasonally as the carbon dioxide comes out as snow!
I'm surprised they don't have a Donate Now button. I know they plan to raise a lot of their money from "philanthropic" (i.e. large) donations, but I think a lot of slashdotters would love to donate a few bucks.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
"Man belongs wherever he wants to go--and he'll do plenty well when he gets there." Wernher von Braun, Time magazine, 1958