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.'"

Comments

Re:Very VERY stupid idea...

[hawguy]

Even if the mission goes 100% to plan, the cancer risk alone is probably a death sentence for the two passengers.

It's right there in the article:

The expected total radiation exposure is below NASA’s accepted lifetime limit for a middle-aged crew, Dr. Clark said. Clark expects that radiation exposure would result in a 3% excess cancer risk over the crew’s lifetime.

You may dispute the numbers (but I don't see how you could, given that the details of the spacecraft aren't known), but I think many people would be willing to take that risk - smokers probably face worse cancer odds than that.

Re:Crash and colonise

[catchblue22]

One concern is the life of their pressure suits. Lunar fines are very abrasive and Apollo surface suits had a short working life. Martian fines may cause similar problems.

I don't think the fine particles on Mars will for the most part resemble those on the Moon. Mars has had wind blowing the particles around for a very long time, smoothing out the rough corners on the particles. The Moon clearly has no wind. The particles on the Moon likely formed via meteorite impact ejecta, either from shattered rock or by condensation from vaporized rock. After formation, there would likely be less corner erosion of fine particles due to the lack of wind. Thus the Moon's fine particles are quite abrasive.