How Close Are We To a Mars Mission? (thenewstack.io)

destinyland writes: NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s," reads the official NASA web site. But National Geographic points out that "the details haven't been announced, in large part because such a massive, long-term spending project would require the unlikely support of several successive U.S. presidents." And yet on November 4th, NASA put out a call for astronaut applications "in anticipation of returning human spaceflight launches to American soil, and in preparation for the agency's journey to Mars," and they're currently experimenting with growing food in space. And this week they not only ordered the first commercial mission to the International Space Station, but also quietly announced that they've now partnered with 22 private space companies.

Comments

The Answer:

[Pikoro]

I'm going to guess about 225 Million km. (on average)

Re:The Answer:

[dotancohen]

We could just hitch a ride on a comet that is flying close by both planets to avoid fuel costs and size of spacecraft limitations :)

At what relative velocity would you like your spacecraft to land on the comet?

I know that you are joking, but I've heard this idea proposed seriously more than once. This comment is for those people.

Mars isn't going anywhere.

[sycodon]

We should not be in such a hurry that we are sending people in fragile tin cans reliant on chemical rockets. Instead we should be working on building an actual Ship in orbit.

What is a "Ship"? First, it is a vessel with ample power: some kind of reactor that can run all the ship's systems, plus a magnetic shield. The other systems a reactor would power is the engines...Ion or those EM drives (should they pan out. I expect the truth should be sorted out by the time they get around to building something like this). Sure...they are low thrust, but you can have a lot of them. And they have some pretty powerful ones in development.

Another thing it would have to be is big. Room for rotating sections for artificial gravity, hydroponics, a workshop (because AAA doesn't serve Space yet). Storage for fuel, water, a lander of some sort, etc.

Sure, it sounds all futuristic, but we have the essential technologies or they are on the drawing boards, or can be with just a bit of political will. It's time we took the next step in Space Travel...the step where it's actual travel and not just joy rides to lower orbit. We can put off Mars for a decade or and instead focus on building something that is safe, reliable and not a one and done soda pop can.

Re:Mars isn't going anywhere.

[Rei]

All of that is vastly more impractical than the current minimalist Mars mission concepts. We can't scrounge up the funding for one of them, and you want to build something vastly larger?

Magnetic shields are good for preventing solar radiation but do little against GCR. You still need physical shielding sufficient to block GCR - which is harder to block anyway, aka, you still need significant shielding.

You - and TFA - mentioning growing crops is naive. The reason that all serious baseline approaches only call for small, experimental-level (rather than sustinance-level) crop growing is because A) that's way too much risk (starvation due to crop failure, which is tough enough to prevent here on Earth from thousands of different causes, yet alone in a radically different environment) to impose on an early mission, and B) shipping in the food to last for a typical mission duration is actually lighter than the cost of shipping in a facility large enough to grow that much food and the associated power and environmental systems required to operate it. The ability to grow crops would be important for long-term habitations (which is why NASA is researching it - although the plant growth experiment designed for the Mars 2020 lander got cut), but the first missions to Mars absolutely will not be relying on it for any relevant portion of their calories.

VASIMR is not new. One however does need to remember the downside: any high ISP /moderate to high thrust system is inherently going to be consuming vast amounts of power. And producing vast amounts of power means vast amounts of cooling area. So while it's "possible" to power a ship like this, it also means a very large ship... which partially eliminates the reason why one would want such a craft in the first place. It's more important for space "tugs"/"ferries" which take many trips, and for outer-planets missions. And note that there are many alternatives to VASIMR.

And please, you do a discredit to yourself by adding "or those EM drives".

Re: Mars isn't going anywhere.

[JockTroll]

Look, dating the Moon is freaking hard. She's lunatic every darn month. Moreover, she's got a hidden side to her. I'll tell you, the Moon is a harsh mistress.

Re:Mars isn't going anywhere.

[dotancohen]

...many of the same challenges:

Temperature extremes, radiation, micro-meteorites (common to any space mission, I suppose). Needing to lift gear much further up than a 300~400 km low orbit. Actually succeeding in landing that gear undamaged. Gravity - but lower than on Earth. Redundant and/or extremely reliable life support systems, since Earth will be 'close' but still too far away for actual emergencies.

Not at all the same. Due to having an atmosphere, almost all those parameters are vastly different. The temperature extremes are not nearly as extreme on Mars, there is (slightly) less radiation, and almost no micro-meteorites. There is no 'landing' on Mars like with the moon, but rather EDL (Entry, Descent, Landing) as on Earth. That is actually much more difficult than landing on the moon: the atmosphere really isn't thick enough for parachuting a large mass, but too thick to light a retro rocket at high speed. I suspect that this is one of the reasons that SpaceX ignite a retrorocket on landing the Falcon 9 first stage: to practice doing so for a Mars mission. Also, Mars has twice the gravity of the moon, which will bear in ways that we don't know yet on astronaut's physiology.

Other than the "getting there" stage, Mars will be much easier to colonize than the moon. And the "getting there" challenges are surmountable with current technology, the "living there" challenges are much, much more difficult.

Re:Still far

[Maritz]

Humans are still more concerned with blow each other than exploring other planets.

Too bad your typo isn't true. But yes. Humanity is not the space-faring species we are looking for.