Slashdot Mirror
Let's Not Go To Mars
HughPickens.com writes: Ed Regis write in the NYT that today we an witnessing an outburst of enthusiasm over the literally outlandish notion that in the relatively near future, some of us are going to be living, working, thriving and dying on Mars. But unfortunately Mars mania reflects an excessively optimistic view of what it actually takes to travel to and live on Mars, papering over many of the harsh realities and bitter truths that underlie the dream. "First, there is the tedious business of getting there. Using current technology and conventional chemical rockets, a trip to Mars would be a grueling, eight- to nine-month-long nightmare for the crew," writes Regis. "Tears, sweat, urine and perhaps even solid waste will be recycled, your personal space is reduced to the size of an SUV., and you and your crewmates are floating around sideways, upside down and at other nauseating angles." According to Regis every source of interpersonal conflict, and emotional and psychological stress that we experience in ordinary, day-to-day life on Earth will be magnified exponentially by restriction to a tiny, hermetically sealed, pressure-cooker capsule hurtling through deep space and to top it off, despite these constraints, the crew must operate within an exceptionally slim margin of error with continuous threats of equipment failures, computer malfunctions, power interruptions and software glitches.
But getting there is the easy part says Regis. "Mars is a dead, cold, barren planet on which no living thing is known to have evolved, and which harbors no breathable air or oxygen, no liquid water and no sources of food, nor conditions favorable for producing any. For these and other reasons it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet's average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit." These are only a few of the many serious challenges that must be overcome before anyone can put human beings on Mars and expect them to live for more than five minutes says Regis. "The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
But getting there is the easy part says Regis. "Mars is a dead, cold, barren planet on which no living thing is known to have evolved, and which harbors no breathable air or oxygen, no liquid water and no sources of food, nor conditions favorable for producing any. For these and other reasons it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet's average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit." These are only a few of the many serious challenges that must be overcome before anyone can put human beings on Mars and expect them to live for more than five minutes says Regis. "The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
Something tells me Ed Regis isn't about to climb Everest either.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
It's about going everywhere else. The tech developed going to Mars will undoubtedly be useful when going other places. You crawl before you walk, you walk before you run.
... let's not go to Mars. It is a silly place.
It's the logical stepping stone always has been.
Easier to get to.
Can actually get aid to in case of emergency.
Will have a much quicker return on investment.
Once we have it colonized, it will be much easier to spread into the solar system from there.
Mars Mania is just rather strange.
Genuine question...
Given the difficulties of getting to Mars, the fact that Mars is barely any more suited to habitation than space and the fact that trips to and from Mars need to deal with the planet's gravity well... why do we assume that the first off-Earth permanent habitation would necessarily need to be on Mars, or indeed on any other planet?
If we want a permanent off-world habitat, would it not be more worthwhile to devote energy to exploring the possibility of permanently-habitable, (near) self-sustaining space stations? These could be closer to Earth , would presumably have rather better access to solar power and journeys to and from Earth would only need to deal with a single planetary gravity well. They would have their own challenges; dealing with radiation and with the effects of zero-gravity on the human body in the longer term, but those don't instinctively feel as difficult as some of the problems highlighted in TFA. Other challenges, such as those around hydroponics and recycling, might not be that different from those associated with a settlement on Mars.
Or is there a good reason why this is in fact more difficult than Mars-colonisation which I've just overlooked?
Technically, humanity probably could colonize Mars already. It would be expensive and unpleasant, but lots of things that have advanced humanity were expensive and unpleasant at first.
A bigger reason not to colonize Mars is that there are far better things to do in space. Mars is a deep gravity well, and there's little evidence that there is anything in it we want. The asteroid belt, on the other hand, is full of useful stuff in convenient orbits.
Even that is wrong. Given enough resources and a reduced concern for the health and safety of the astronauts, we could probably reach Mars about as fast as we could build the ship and launch it towards the red planet. We've had the technology to launch - and land - men there since the '70s. But both the cost and risk were considered too extravagant, especially considering the lack of significant reward for all that effort. While a ten-year deadline might be a bit tight considering the US would have to build up the industry to support such an effort, if it really wanted to it could very likely get a man to Mars and back within that schedule. It would just cost A LOT more money than is prudent and we'd probably see a number of astronauts either splattered across the Martian surface or stranded down their until their life-support systems gave out (landings and lift-offs are hard).
Otherwise, most of Regis' other arguments are bunk. It would be a long, cramped, unpleasant journey? People have suffered far worse; the early antarctic explorers, or sailors from the Age of Sail. Hell, we have refugees cramming themselves for weeks at a time into tiny boxes that would seem luxuriously expansive to any astronaut in hopes of reaching a better life. And the lack of gravity only HELPS here; yes, it is initially disorienting to see people hanging at "nauseating angles" but it opens up a lot of wasted space, making what appears to be a very cramped habitat much more spacious because all that wasted space on the walls and ceilings can be put to use.
Nonetheless, I do ultimately agree with Regis' premise that Mars should not be the goal simply because Mars is a dead-end. I mean, what are you going to do once you get there that can't be done here on Earth? Dreams of terraforming aside, in the short term (read: next few centuries at least) man will only be able to live on Mars if encapsulated in climate-controlled metal-tubes. And if people are going to be stuck in metal tubes anyway, it might as well be tubes that can MOVE places instead of being anchored to rock at the bottom of a steep gravity well. L5 colonies, asteroid mining, and ultimately island-hopping our way through the Solar System, the Oort cloud and beyond are far more entertaining and profitable enterprises than being tethered to another planet just because its there. Forget Mars; it's a luxury that we can look into after we get the basics down. In the mean time, if you really want to explore off-world colonization options, use the Moon; it's closer.
I'm sure there is a huge psychological discrepancy between being in orbit around Earth in a space station equipped with an emergency escape capsule, and being out in the middle of space with little to no hope of rescue.
Kinda like the days of sailing ships. You were out on the ocean in a little wooden ship, and no one to save you. Safety culture has most people people brainwashed into accepting no risk. Which is why we have houses in gated communities that are protected by ADT Security, and with a handy safe room.
There is another whole world out there, more interesting and more exciting than getting a good return on your investments, and extracting every last possible second out of life. And safety culture is doing it's best to stamp that shit out. WIthout hurting anyone of course.
And Safety culture really really really hates the idea of going to Mars. It's a scary place. Someone might get hurt.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The people who reduce Mars resource extraction to simple "We'll simply do this, then that" statements have clearly never had to work building or maintaining mining, ore processing, and refining equipment on Earth, let alone on Mars ;) We've never done any sort of actual mining on other worlds (no, using a RAT or taking tiny dust samples is not "mining"), and most of the stuff one might consider even close to "refining" we've done in space has proved to be a maintenance nightmare. Seriously, how often has the ISS lost things like its oxygen generators, its urine reprocessor, etc? And all of these are quite toward the easy end of "refining" tasks. Heck, the oxygen generator literally just dumps its hydrogen overboard and they never attempt to tank the oxygen. I remember that one of the reasons that the oxygen generators were failing at one point was that the water they were feeding it was "slightly too acidic". I mean, seriously, and you want to use dug-up muddy Mars ice with who knows what in it as your feedstock? And that's when the system's not trying to kill you - they've had corrosive chemical leaks, near-fire situations, etc.
Everyone who says "We'll just dig up X for resource Y" as if it's just that simple needs a serious reality check. These systems can take decades to refine to the point where you can rely on them being dependable enough for the long periods of time involved in a Mars mission to have peoples' lives hinge upon them. And they're anything but "simple", even for the simplest tasks like water production and oxygen generation.
To reduce risk, reasonable mission profiles for Mars that involve in-situ actually call for a long "prep phase". In such a phase, one tries to produce everything robotically and then store it, with the idea of having everything present on-site and ready when people arrive. That way, if the system fails, or produces resources that for some reason or another are not usable, people don't die. But it also means long delays before you can launch people, even after you get the mission there.
One example is with MOXIE. They're considering including it on the Mars 2020 rover (although somewhat controversially - I wouldn't be too shocked if it got cut). It takes CO2 from the atmosphere and makes O2 and CO - both just released to the atmosphere, no attempt to store it. The idea being that the atmosphere should be a more consistent and reliable source of raw materials than mined water ice. If it works right and lasts, then the idea is to make a 100x bigger system with its own dedicated high power RTG (read: expensive), as well as tankage, compressors, etc and send that to Mars, leave it running for 5-10 years, and if it completes storing up enough O2, then use that for a human mission. So this would mean:
1) Hope that MOXIE doesn't get cut before launch ... competing with a wide range of other scientific proposals for mission money. Hope it gets approved.
2) Hope that Mars 2020 makes it into the 2020 launch window
3) Arrive at Mars after a long cruise phase. Hope that there's no accidents in launch, transit or on landing.
4) Spend enough time with MOXIE operating to prove that it actually works in a Mars environment (dust storms, radiation, temperature swings, etc). Hope it actually works.
5) Take proposals for the expensive oxygen generation mission
6) Hope that people are willing to go ahead and lock future manned missions into a particular site chosen that long in advance, before the mission hardware is even designed.
7) Spend years building the refinery-craft, hope for no cutbacks or cancellations.
8) Launch the refinery craft, hope for no accidents.
9) Wait through cruise phase (hope for no accidents) and landing phase (again, hope)
10) Hope that the new system actually works as desired for many years on end (which means keeping breakage-prone things like compressors running for long periods of time).
11) Hope that a manned Mars mission actually gets funding -
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers