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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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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
The ship comes back with an extra passenger or two..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
I envisage landing at the Hallas low point, for the highest temperatures and highest atmospheric pressure. The crew would dig or drill for water and use photovoltic power to extract oxygen from the water. They may also use oxygen and hydrogen in fuel cells for energy storage. They would land with two years of food, but they would have an inflatible habitat which could be used to grow some food as well.
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.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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!
There is very little to learn. We already had ground simulations of the flight, and they were generally unsatisfactory. Humans cannot sit in a tin can for two years and retain sanity. That alone overwhelms all the other issues, of which there are many
Russia, the EU and China conducted a joint simulation with mission lengths of 15, 105 and 520 day durations. After the 520 day mission:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500#Experiment_stages
The 520-day final stage of the experiment, which was intended to simulate a full-length manned mission, began in 3 June 2010 and ended on 4 November 2011.[8][9][10] This stage was conducted by a six-man international crew, consisting of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian/ Colombian and a Chinese citizen.[10] The stage included a simulation of a manned Mars landing, with three simulated Mars-walks carried out on 14, 18 and 22February 2011.[11][12] The experiment ended on 4 November 2011, with all the participants reportedly in optimal physical and psychological condition.[10]
In January 2013, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that four of the six crew members had considerable problems sleeping, and some avoided exercise and would hide away from the others, in behaviour compared to animal hibernation.[13]
Insomnia and exercise avoidance doesn't sound all that unsatisfactory. Though I don't think it's possible to truly simulate a mission to Mars here on Earth when the participants know that if things go very bad, they are just an escape hatch away from help. I think the only way to do a true simulation would be if the participants really thought that they were in a space capsule, which is pretty hard to do when gravity gives it away.
They had 6000 volunteers for the long mission - I suspect that an actual mission to mars will result in many more volunteers, despite the risks.