Congressional Testimony Says NASA Has No Plan For the Journey To Mars (blastingnews.com)

MarkWhittington writes: Testimony at a hearing before the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Space suggested that NASA's Journey to Mars lacks a plan to achieve the first human landing on the Red Planet, almost six years after President Obama announced the goal on April 15, 2010. Moreover, two of the three witnesses argued that a more realistic near term goal for the space agency would be a return to the moon. The moon is not only a scientifically interesting and potentially commercially profitable place to go but access to lunar water, which can be refined into rocket fuel, would make the Journey to Mars easier and cheaper.

Comments

O RLY?

[Ol Olsoc]

So they know for a fact that there is enough water there to send ships to Mars, as well as support the needed infrastructure?

I assume this means enough for More than one or two missions, or is NASA still in Apollo -do it and ditch it - mode?

Re:O RLY?

[Rei]

We're pretty sure that - in particularly limited areas - there's water, in some form (ices, hydrated minerals, etc). The problem is not only that you have to set up large-scale offworld mining, melting, filtering, and storage (an engineering project of quite significant note, given the harsh environment and the cost of delivering hardware to the lunar surface), but you also have to create low-cost reusable rockets designed for repeat operation on the moon with little to no maintenance, fueled by materials from the lunar surface. Which is a vastly harder, more expensive task. After all, it makes no financial sense to mine a tonne of water from the surface of the moon and then deliver it into lunar orbit or beyond with 10 tonnes of hardware/propellant sent from Earth, which in turn took 100 tonnes to get off the surface of the Earth. Everything has to be long-term operable entirely in the lunar environment with lunar resources.

There's not any realistic budgeting scenario where it's even remotely cheaper, all capital costs included, to get your water from the moon in the remotely near future than to just launch it from the earth on existing rockets. But, if your goal is to advance the tech of reusable rockets, space mining, in-situ propellant production, etc, then by all means go ahead. Just don't pretend like you're doing it as a "cost saving measure" for a Mars mission.

Re:O RLY?

[bondsbw]

Since sending materials to the moon is very expensive, sending robotic 3D printers that can build objects out of moon dust could significantly reduce the expense of such an operation. Some materials, no doubt, would need to come from earth.

Re:O RLY?

[Grishnakh]

Sounds like a good analysis. Personally, I don't give a rip about having people walk around on Mars: I think it's far more important to advance technology of reusable rockets, space mining, etc., so I think going back to the Moon makes far more sense.

Think about it this way: we landed men on the Moon over 40 years ago. We haven't been back since. What good did it do us, besides having some neat photos and museum exhibits about our past greatness which we cannot replicate now (without a whole lot of money and effort--we can't just launch a Moon mission next month if we wanted to)? We've actually **lost** the capabilities we had back then: back in the early 70s, we had the ability to send men to the Moon, and we did, several times. Today, we simply don't. Going to Mars will be no different: we'll spend a bunch of money on some big-ass rockets and send a handful of people to Mars, they'll walk around, and then we'll have nothing to show for it besides some photos and rock samples, and we won't be able to easily do it again because it'll be too expensive (because we chose the most expensive method possible because we wanted to do it as quickly as possible).

If we develop technologies more, then trips to other planets and moons will be cheaper. No, a singular trip to Mars will not be cheaper than the slower method of going back to the Moon and developing a lot of tech and capabilities, but **lots** of trips to Mars, to Saturn, to Titan, etc., will be far, far cheaper if we develop the tech now, than just sending singular trips to each of these places.

So the important question is:
Do we want to just send some people to walk around on Mars, and then quit all manned space exploration after that?
Or do we want to be able to send manned missions all over the solar system?

If your answer is the former, then going straight to Mars is the correct choice. If your answer is the latter, then going to the Moon is.

Re:O RLY?

[calexontheroad66]

Do you think the European colonies in the Americas were cost effective from the start?
It took quite a lot of support from to get those colonies self sustainable, specially if it wasn't possible to enslave the natives to do their master's bidding.
The colonies were sold in Europe as way for riches, and to get more land, but mostly to get windfall riches after the Spanish stroke the motherload with the Aztecs and the Incas.
All other colonies had to endure several decades of very little growth and dependency of their country of origin,
The moon is a lot worse cause there null infrastructure, and the affordable technology for getting to orbit and out of Earth orbit doesn't exist yet.
But we now have ways to automate stuff, and we could send automated stations that could assemble buildings and materials in the Moon.
Probably, have an automated station building materials and equipment for some years would make it feasible to colonize the moon.

Re:O RLY?

[ooloorie]

I think neither the moon nor Mars are good destinations; we should be heading for the asteroid belt.

Re:O RLY?

[Xylantiel]

No, if you want to send men all over the solar system, you develop infrastructure that doesn't live in a gravity well. Which, I believe, is what NASA is actually doing. Unfortunately "mission to some to be named asteroid the identity of which depends on when we have enough funding to do anything but build a useless congressional pork rocket project" doesn't have the same ring as "return to the moon".

Re:O RLY?

[werepants]

So the important question is:
Do we want to just send some people to walk around on Mars, and then quit all manned space exploration after that?
Or do we want to be able to send manned missions all over the solar system?

I agree that your questions are the right ones to be asking. I disagree that they point to moon operations, though.

The decision that will enable travel all over the solar system isn't moon or Mars - it's commerce or government. We need high-volume space access with a profit motive included. This is happening with SpaceX and others (Blue Origin, SNC, Virgin Galactic) but NASA is still holding on to the old way of doing things.

The biggest win would be if NASA would abandon SLS entirely (they could keep Orion if they want) and start architecting missions exclusively around COTS launch providers. Instead of one SLS launch you get 7 or 8 Falcon launches, or 4 or 5 ULA launches - adding that kind of volume to the launch market would help development happen faster and help bring costs down more and more.

Once that approach is taken, then the moon or Mars is just a detail - there are mission profiles that could get us to a sustained presence on either one in a handful of launches on EXISTING commercial vehicles. Get us to Falcon Heavy in a few years and the case is even more clear cut.

Re:O RLY?

[ewanm89]

It's exactly that kind of congressional thinking that has left NASA with no ability to even get humans into space for the last 5 years.

SpaceX currently only has the ability for fairly light lift to orbit for satellites and ISS cargo runs. SNC and Blue Origin are working off NASA's old technology to get humans to low Earth orbit. And Virgin Galactic is suborbital flight only (so lets not even consider this one for anything other than a joyride for rich men at the moment). Ultimately none of these are pushing the boundaries beyond what the Russians have kept reliably running for the last 5 decades.

NASA is trying to push boundaries to move on beyond LEO however congressional politics have been flushing every attempt to even catch up down the drain every few years, and this whole session looks like they are finding excuses and setting it up to do it again as soon as Obama is out of office.

Re:O RLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still have to send the spools of PLA.

Re:O RLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were already people in the Americas. Is that also the case for Mars?

Your entire "argument" shatters in the face of grade-school level reality.

Re:O RLY?

[byornski]

Damn belters

Re:O RLY?

[Ol Olsoc]

There's not any realistic budgeting scenario where it's even remotely cheaper, all capital costs included, to get your water from the moon in the remotely near future than to just launch it from the earth on existing rockets. But, if your goal is to advance the tech of reusable rockets, space mining, in-situ propellant production, etc, then by all means go ahead. Just don't pretend like you're doing it as a "cost saving measure" for a Mars mission.

This! Ive been accused of naysaying regarding the Spacex landings on a barge.

I think it is a similar issue. If teh main purpose is to do barge landing, and enough resources are applied, yep, it's possible.

Likewise, setting up a moonbase to mine water to produce fuel is probably a 50+ year project in and of itself, and no assured success. It's an entire program, and back of the envelope math tells me that it will treble or quadruple the costs.

It would be cool, but is the most expensive option of the two.

Re:O RLY?

[mike.mondy]

[...] you also have to create low-cost reusable rockets designed for repeat operation on the moon with little to no maintenance, fueled by materials from the lunar surface. Which is a vastly harder, more expensive task. After all, it makes no financial sense to mine a tonne of water from the surface of the moon and then deliver it into lunar orbit or beyond with 10 tonnes of hardware/propellant sent from Earth, which in turn took 100 tonnes to get off the surface of the Earth. Everything has to be long-term operable entirely in the lunar environment with lunar resources.
There's not any realistic budgeting scenario where it's even remotely cheaper, all capital costs included, to get your water from the moon in the remotely near future than to just launch it from the earth on existing rockets.

Electromagnetic mass drivers might make more sense than rockets for launching raw materials from the moon. At least that was what Gerard K. O'Neill and company concluded decades ago... Of course, you still have to build the mass driver on-site or deliver it there and run a mining operation.

I have to think that for sufficiently large scale offworld operations, you're going to want to mine materials from somewhere - either the moon or asteroids. As interesting as the topic is, I don't think we'll be building semi-permanent moon bases, Babylon 5, or mars colonies within ten years though.

Re:O RLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're pretty sure that - in particularly limited areas - there's water, in some form (ices, hydrated minerals, etc). The problem is not only that you have to set up large-scale offworld mining, melting, filtering, and storage (an engineering project of quite significant note, given the harsh environment and the cost of delivering hardware to the lunar surface), but you also have to create low-cost reusable rockets designed for repeat operation on the moon with little to no maintenance, fueled by materials from the lunar surface. Which is a vastly harder, more expensive task. After all, it makes no financial sense to mine a tonne of water from the surface of the moon and then deliver it into lunar orbit or beyond with 10 tonnes of hardware/propellant sent from Earth, which in turn took 100 tonnes to get off the surface of the Earth. Everything has to be long-term operable entirely in the lunar environment with lunar resources.

There's not any realistic budgeting scenario where it's even remotely cheaper, all capital costs included, to get your water from the moon in the remotely near future than to just launch it from the earth on existing rockets. But, if your goal is to advance the tech of reusable rockets, space mining, in-situ propellant production, etc, then by all means go ahead. Just don't pretend like you're doing it as a "cost saving measure" for a Mars mission.

We could always build a space elevator rather than ship fuel up. While a material strong enough for a earth based space elevator is hard to obtain in large enough quantities (long carbon nano tubes are a hard to manufacture) building one the could work for the moon would be much easier as the materials needed would not have to be as strong.

Re:O RLY?

[Grishnakh]

No, if you want to send men all over the solar system, you develop infrastructure that doesn't live in a gravity well. Which, I believe, is what NASA is actually doing.

What are you talking about? I certainly don't see any such infrastructure, just a dumb idea to go straight to Mars without developing any of that infrastructure. That infrastructure you talk about is exactly what I'm advocating with a return to the Moon, though I'm open to other options like asteroid mining to get materials and then building stations at Lagrangian points. But the Moon seems simpler for now since we don't know how to build large stations without launching them piece-by-piece from Earth first, and what I think we need is some offworld manufacturing, which is easier done on the Moon at this time because of 1) proximity, and 2) gravity (we don't know how to manufacture stuff in zero-g; 1/6g is workable, while still massively decreasing launch costs over launching stuff from Earth).

Re:O RLY?

[Grishnakh]

It's much too far away; it's even farther than Mars. It also doesn't have that much mass, and it's all spread out except for Vesta and Ceres. We should be sending probes there, for sure, but we're nowhere near ready to send people there. Even Mars makes more sense than that.

The Moon is right next door, has plenty of material (not sure how usable it is for construction, but from what I remember it is possible to make "lunar concrete" with the regolith), has some water at the poles, has some gravity for manufacturing but not too much so it'll be cheap to launch from there or even build a space elevator (this is entirely possible on the Moon because of the low gravity), and will give us practice in doing stuff offworld without having to endure 6+month transit times.

Re:O RLY?

[Ol Olsoc]

So they know for a fact that there is enough water there to send ships to Mars, as well as support the needed infrastructure?

I assume this means enough for More than one or two missions, or is NASA still in Apollo -do it and ditch it - mode?

That message is a troll? Dis place be gotten a liddle weeeeeerd sometimes..

Re:O RLY?

[ooloorie]

It's much too far away; it's even farther than Mars. It also doesn't have that much mass, and it's all spread out except for Vesta and Ceres. We should be sending probes there, for sure, but we're nowhere near ready to send people there. Even Mars makes more sense than that.

Any major manned project at this point is going to involve a lot of robotic probes and preparation. But asteroids are a lot easier to get to and from than Mars, precisely because of their lack of gravity and lack of atmosphere. Mars has just the wrong amount of each: enough to be a nuisance, not quite enough to make it really Earth-like.

A lunar space elevator might be a nice project. But in the end, the moon is a really harsh environment, the resources it has are hard to get at, and it, too, has just too much gravity. The proximity of moon to earth also means that remotely operated robots are a reasonable alternative to manned exploration. The 3s delay is annoying, but something remote operators can learn to deal with, in particular when assisted by robotics.

I still think our primary focus should be exploration of the asteroid belt, first with robotic probes, then towing asteroids into lunar orbits, creating habitats, and finally moving out there.

Re:O RLY?

[werepants]

That's entirely my point, though. Any launch vehicle that lives or dies at the whim of congress (and has design requirements forced on it to boot) is never going to be anything more than a jobs program. Space access is not the reason SLS exists. Keeping Alabamans employed is, and it is succeeding brilliantly at that task.

So, remove that aspect of control from congress. NASA offers $100M for a rocket, and buys it off the shelf when they need it vs dumping $4B on building the Senate Launch System. With the fixed launch price, industry is motivated to get cheaper because then their profit is larger. Congress doesn't get to force a vehicle to use obsolete, expensive hardware like the SRBs. If NASA has its plans upended every 8 years as presidents are wont to do, the vehicle is still there, it just flies somewhere different.

NASA should be doing fundamental research and launching missions that aren't commercially viable (no reasonable ROI) and LEO access (even heavy lift) doesn't fit - it's something we've known how to do for years. Even BLEO, do a couple small launches and do on-orbit assembly, or wait a bit for Falcon Heavy (which will likely fly before SLS anyhow). SLS is the absolutely worst place NASA could be spending money if we actually care about doing stuff in space.

Re:O RLY?

[TonyNLewis]

One of the first things we should build on the moon is a magnetic launcher. Using rocket fuel to boost from the moon on a regular basis is crazy. If we were to build a powerful magnetic launcher, we could also "throw things" at incoming objects that threaten earth to adjust their orbits.

Re:O RLY?

[Grishnakh]

Any major manned project at this point is going to involve a lot of robotic probes and preparation.

Yeah, we're already doing that. We've sent robotic probes to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt lately. Have you forgotten about all the hubbub over the bright spots they found on Ceres? We are *not* ignoring the asteroid belt.

But asteroids are a lot easier to get to and from than Mars, precisely because of their lack of gravity and lack of atmosphere.

I disagree. True, Mars has enough of an atmosphere to be a nuisance (because you need reentry shielding, but there's not enough there to be really useful for aerobraking), but it's also significantly closer than the belt. Farther = a longer journey. For a probe, a few extra months might not be that big a deal, but for humans, it is. Mars is already too far as it is (as in, "too long a journey for most people to want to sit in a spacecraft that long", plus the radiation concerns).

A lunar space elevator might be a nice project. But in the end, the moon is a really harsh environment, the resources it has are hard to get at, and it, too, has just too much gravity.

The environment isn't that harsh; it's 3 days away (super-close in celestial terms), and there's no annoying atmosphere, and just enough gravity so that we can operate on it without having to invent all-new methods for every simple little thing. But the gravity is low enough that a lunar space elevator should be quite doable, unlike Earth (where the gravity is way too high so we don't have good materials with enough strength, and we have a thick atmosphere that causes all kinds of problems with such an elevator).

The proximity of moon to earth also means that remotely operated robots are a reasonable alternative to manned exploration.

I disagree entirely. For simple probing around, sure, that'll work OK, but if you want to do any really serious work, you have to have boots on the ground. Remotely-operated vehicles are *not* going to build factories, mines, etc. We do *not* have that kind of technology yet. Some heavy-equipment stuff could definitely be converted to remote-control: dump trucks, shovels, etc. But that'll only work as long as nothing goes wrong. As soon as something breaks or gets stuck, you're going to need some people there to deal with it. So you could definitely get by with a lot less manpower on-site, by operating a lot of vehicles remotely, but you'll still need some. It's just like our UAVs ("drones") used by the US military: the planes are flown remotely, I think even by people stateside, but you still have to have real people on-site in the theater to refuel them, do maintenance work, etc., when they land. It'll be the same for heavy equipment on the Moon.

I still think our primary focus should be exploration of the asteroid belt, first with robotic probes, then towing asteroids into lunar orbits, creating habitats, and finally moving out there.

We're already exploring the asteroid belt. We could stand to do more though. But there's no reason we can't get started building habitats and industrial facilities on the Moon simultaneously. We already know there's a crapload of asteroids out there with valuable ores, so we might as well prepare for using them. And we should definitely be working right away on building the technology for capturing and towing these asteroids.

Re:O RLY?

[whopub]

The point is that since there's so much we still don't know about the moon, it makes sense to make it a priority before considering Mars. The fact that going back to the moon can also be helpful in doing the Mars thing, just adds to it. One step at a time. We haven't been to the moon for so long, everything has to be developed again, so start there. It should be a no brainer. I'm all for going to Mars, but I also wished the going back to the moon thing was done a couple of decades ago. Then going straight to Mars would make more sense.

Re:O RLY?

[ooloorie]

Any major manned project at this point is going to involve a lot of robotic probes and preparation.

Yeah, we're already doing that.

No, not really. We're sending out unmanned probes for getting data. What I'm referring to is robotic mining and fabrication facilities.

I disagree entirely. For simple probing around, sure, that'll work OK, but if you want to do any really serious work, you have to have boots on the ground. Remotely-operated vehicles are *not* going to build factories, mines, etc.

Pretty much all the technology needed for autonomous repairs and for remote operation exists. We aren't deploying it in current environments because there isn't much need to in most environments. In the one environment where they would be helpful, satellite repair, the organizations with an effective monopoly on launches have little interest in pushing the technology.

But why would you build "factories, mines, etc." on the moon anyway? The moon is a fairly deep gravity well, so getting stuff off it is not all that easy; and the stuff we're mostly interested in (metals, volatiles, organics) is much harder to get from the moon than from either earth or asteroids.

But there's no reason we can't get started building habitats and industrial facilities on the Moon simultaneously.

Depends on what you mean by "we" and "no reason". If you assume unlimited funding for governmental space agencies, they can, of course, put manned habitats on the moon while also doing other things. But for anything that survives a cost/benefit analysis and is self-sustaining long term, I don't think the moon is going to make much sense. I think that was the issue with the moon program in the first place: there just hasn't been any economic reason for going back.

I'm assuming that we need to make economic tradeoffs and that space exploration will only survive if it makes economic sense. And under those assumption, the asteroid belt is the only way to go. Building lunar and Martian colonies is technically feasible already, but very costly, and provides little economic return; I think those colonization plans will only take off once other space related activities have expanded our economy to the point that we can afford them as luxuries.

A politician didn't follow through on a promise?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the world coming to?

Common Sense

[BiggoronSword]

I've been saying this since the idea of going to Mars came up in the first place. Let's go back to the moon and figure out how to live there, before travelling an insane distance and strand someone on another planet, and leave them to die.

Re:Common Sense

[NormalVisual]

before travelling an insane distance and strand someone on another planet, and leave them to die.

Meh, just pack a few sacks of potatoes - he'll be fine!

Re:Common Sense

[110010001000]

And find him a cave to live in ASAP!

Re:Common Sense

[AmiMoJo]

Living on the moon isn't that interesting, because there is almost nothing useful up there except for solar energy. You have to take everything with you, the soil isn't good for growing stuff, there are few raw materials for you to use.

The goal should be to become self sufficient on Mars. If you can do that, you can make real progress towards colonizing the solar system because you don't have to bring everything from earth.

At most, you might go back to the moon to test some systems and perhaps establish a supply base, but that's about it.

Re:Common Sense

[gstoddart]

The goal should be to become self sufficient on Mars

Assemble a building the astronauts can remove their helmet in, and sleep overnight in, prepare meals, have a place to shit and shower.

Come back a while later and do that again.

If you can't do that on the Moon, you have no hope in hell of doing it on Mars the first time.

There is no much foundation technology required it isn't funny. Trying it out for the first time on Mars would be reckless and stupid.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for NASA to say "screw you random internet skeptics, we'll prove you wrong". They just better not shoot to prove me (and everyone else saying this) right.

Epic fail is NOT the outcome we want to see.

Re:Common Sense

[werepants]

It's only common sense to someone who doesn't understand orbital mechanics very well. Mars is many times farther in terms of distance, but in terms of Delta-V it isn't much more difficult to reach. What's more, resources on Mars are much easier to take advantage of because we can pull them right out of the atmosphere, rather than having to process regolith or solid ice.

So, stopping at the moon as a cost-saving measure is completely misguided. There's also not a lot of scientific interest there. If Mars is where we want to be, the most efficient thing to do is go straight there. Building a base on the moon to go to Mars is like building an underwater city to cross the Atlantic.

Re: Common Sense

[Type44Q]

You left out the sacks of shit.

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have a plan for living on the moon either. We don't even have a plan for living in orbit, only 300lm away. In fact, we don't have plans for living in most places.

Re: Common Sense

[NormalVisual]

Well, I figured he'd be making that himself on the way there.

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a plan to do this. It was kickstarted under President Bush and called the Constellation Program. It would have put us back on the moon first then taken on Mars. One of the first things Obama did when he came into office was kill this program off which. That should have been the first sign that something was wrong.

Re:Common Sense

[kellymcdonald78]

No, we had a fancy photo op and press release. Constellation had exactly the same problems, new President makes obligatory visit to KSC, makes a Kenneddyesque speech and never spends another second of his presidency thinking about it. We haven't had a president willing to invest political capital on space since Reagan (and even he didn't spend much)

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a small bag of rice and he'll live with it for a week. Alright, this scifi-movie/novel reference might be too tough for most..

Re:Common Sense

[Evtim]

It is not for me:)......but since I read 2010 in my native tong I have no idea how to spell the full name of the father of HAL, they called him Chandra for short...and he wore phallic Hindu symbol on a pendant.

Re:Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I never knew that President of the USA visits Kerbal Space Center!

Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Of course there is no plan, because it isn't realistic to have humans living on Mars. The radiation and differences in gravity will see to that. People always say: "oh we will *just* build underground". With what? An excavator you bought at the Home Depot on Mars? It isn't realistic to ever have humans living on Mars. You can't even have people living permanently on the Moon for the same reason. Gravity. Radiation.

Re:Mars is impossible

[butchersong]

Do it the old fashioned way. Drill holes, fill the holes with small charge, blast. Move forward and repeat. No reason it couldn't work.

Re:Mars is impossible

[gstoddart]

Honestly, if they can't tackle the problem of putting someone on the Moon for a week, or a month (or at all) ... they have no way in hell of trying to solve some of the problems with going to Mars.

Permanently living on the Moon isn't even a pipe dream, but the only way to start solving some of these problems is to actually try to do it there ... put up a structure and go back to it hasn't been achieved, establishing a "permanent" settlement anywhere? They don't have anything remotely resembling that.

Trying to even get people to Mars would be suicide at this point, let alone trying to have them live there. At least not without developing and proving an awful lot of technology under realistic conditions.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are our alternatives?

Yes, there are some incredible challenges to eventually colonizing Mars. We simply may not be up to it at this current technological level. But should we give up on it? How about Luna? Should we give up on going there too? It's pretty hard, better not try...

Our alternative to not thinking about the problems and challenges are simply not going anywhere. Ever. And while that's easy at the moment, we are back (as a species) to the "all eggs in one basket" problem. Anything ever threatens the existence of Earth, and it threatens the continued survival of the entire Human race.

The only way we have a chance of continued survival in the face of that type of cataclysm is to spread out. Colonize other planets. The first planet we can possibly colonize is Mars. It's the closest and the most like Earth (that we've encountered so far, anyways). The first step to getting there is returning to Luna.

And the first step to all of this is not giving up.

Yes, the dangers are real, the challenges are massive and it's going to take a ton of work and maybe many, many more years than we thought.

But the alternative is not really acceptable.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Gavagai80]

Nobody knows if gravity will actually be a significant problem for Mars or even the moon. We know it's an issue for micro-gravity (though we've got people living in it over a year anyway), we don't know about 1/3 or 1/6 gravity.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Drill holes with the drill and charges you brought along. And blow it up. Then you have a hole. Everyone go into the hole. Boy, sure are hungry. Do they deliver pizza to the holes on Mars? No wait, you just grow plants. And everyone eats plants. You just need to grow plants. It is so easy! Too bad you are dead from the radiation before you even get to the blowing up part.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

There are no alternatives. We have evolved to live on Earth only. It has the gravity and protection from the radiation we need. Also we cannot "colonize other planets". They are too far away. You are limited by physics from reaching the ones outside of our solar system. And the ones in our Solar System cannot sustain human life. We are stuck here.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are our alternatives?/p

Stop trying to sent bags of finicky meat which need food, water and atmosphere and shielding. Not to mention medicine, sanitary pads/tampons and ablutionary solutions.

Send, instead, tightly packed batches of hardened, semi-intelligent, robots to prepare the area. Far less radiation susceptibility, no need to waste precious propellant on shielding, water or food.

We would achieve more, in a shorter span of time, if we would just let go of our romantic need to send heroes.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

The planets in our solar system can not directly support Human life, you are correct. That's where our technology has to step in and help. As for planets outside our Solar System, at the moment we have no way to get to them with our current understanding of physics, this is true.

But the more we think about things, the more our understanding evolves, and we find ways around things. If not, we wouldn't be having this conversation over a planet spanning digital connection.

I also read from your profile that you are not a believer that we ever made it to the moon in the first place. And that's great if that's your religious belief.

But the point of arguing this any further with someone who holds a diametrically opposed religious belief is pointless.

Have a good one!

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

The radiation and differences in gravity will see to that. People always say: "oh we will *just* build underground". With what?

Initially, the way we have always done it: in caves. There are plenty of caves on Mars. The difference in gravity is a red herring.

You can't even have people living permanently on the Moon for the same reason. Gravity. Radiation.

People can never drive cars, the speed would kill them! People can never fly! People can never...! Cut the Luddite crap.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Actually in a lot of ways Mars is much easier. Plenty of water and CO2 to support growth. Sand that has been worn smooth by millenia of dust storms so that it won't destroy your equipment and especially air seals. A day length within the range of human adaptablity.

You do need a slightly larger rocket to get stuff there, but for unmanned supply ships it really is only a small difference - the Moon is already most of the way out of the Earth's gravity well, and once you're out of the gravity well you can get anywhere in the solar system essentially for free, if you're willing to take your time. Even a relatively fast Hohmann transfer orbit isn't *that* much more energetically demanding. Yes, it needs a larger rocket, but we've got SpaceX already dedicated to having the necessary rockets within a decade. It's only the manned ships that need to cross the distance in a hurry for radiation reasons, and I'm reasonably confident that Musk isn't just blowing smoke when he says his planned rockets will be up to the job.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Rei]

So your goal is to loosen up the ground with a couple (dozen? hundred?) tonnes of mining explosives? Okay, what's the next step?

Re:Mars is impossible

[sycodon]

Step one, for any of this, is to build a "permanent" for real ship.

A Ship that you can point in a direction and go.
A Ship with a rotating section for artificial gravity.
A Ship with a multi mega watt power source
A Ship with several smaller vehicles for going to and from a planet
etc.

Shooting people up there in a tin can that will burn up or be turned into a hut just isn't viable. Take the time to do it correctly.

Re:Mars is impossible

[butchersong]

It is easy to come up with reasons why something is difficult to do or to complain about the sacrifices (even in lives) involved. but that doesn't make it impossible. Are we Americans or American'ts? :)

It seems the radiation might be managable: "Astronauts could endure a long-term, roundtrip Mars mission without receiving a worryingly high radiation dose.... A mission consisting of a 180-day outbound cruise, a 600-day stay on Mars and another 180-day flight back to Earth would expose an astronaut to a total radiation dose of about 1.1 sieverts (units of radiation) - See more at: http://www.space.com/18753-mar..."

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Yeah. All you need is a "slightly larger" rocket to settle Mars. To hold the excavator. And plants. And something that can make water and Co2. And concrete. And iron. And... You will be dead from the radiation before you even get halfway there.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

There are these things called caves. Robots could go explore the viability of various cave systems as habitats. Of course that would require something more complex than a simple (hah!) wheeled rover.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

My comment about the "fake" Moon landing was sarcasm. You are a typical space nutter who handwaves "well we will just solve it with technology" and "there might be wormholes and the stuff in Star Trek" because "we don't know everything about physics". We know enough about Physics to know it isn't possible to go to other systems. Ever.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Exactly. It is actually possible to send intelligent robots. We just need to build semi-intelligent robots first. Humans isn't possible.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Exactly. We just find a cave and live in it. On Mars. No problem. They did it on on the Discovery Channel show...cut the scifi crap.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

We have literally ZERO evidence that humans need 1g to remain healthy. We know long-term microgravity causes problems, but we also know that the worst of those problems are related to the lack of exercise and impact stresses on the skeleton from walking, and any sizable fraction of Earth gravity will provide those. We won't know if there are problems with 40% until we actually do long-term experiments.

Radiation protection is an issue, but that's easy enough to provide with thick-roofed shelters. Not like there's any shortage of rock and sand on Mars. We won't be walking in the open air any time in the next many centuries, maybe never if we're unable to successfully terraform the planet (Venus would likely be a more appealing target for that anyway), but there's no reason to believe we can't survive in artificial habitats. Most people on Earth already spend most of their life cut off from nature in cities anyway, what difference does it make if the city is roofed over?

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Roundtrip? We are talking about a settlement. Space nutters have an answer for anything. Well we will "just do this" or "do that" until they start talking about genetically growing humans to withstand radiation, etc.

Re:Mars is impossible

[HelpTheNewOverlord]

This! We used to be smarter when, I don't know, 15000 years ago we had no technology to build our homes and simply used CAVES. What is so hard about that? Come on...

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Indeed. Moreover, we can reasonably extrapolate that those issues, such as muscle degradation from lack of regular exertion, and skeletal degradation from lack of impact stresses from walking, should be dramatically reduced if not eliminated by the presence of *any* significant gravity.

Re:Mars is impossible

[NEDHead]

We have evolved to live on earth, because we have not had the opportunity to evolve while living elsewhere

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Yeah. We just find a cave and live in it. Osama did it. Why can't we? On Mars.

Re:Mars is impossible

[BarbaraHudson]

The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you. So will the peroxides, which even fall as "snow" when it's cold enough.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plenty" of water is relative. There is plenty of water on Mars in the same sense that's there's plenty of water at Antarctica. It's there. But it's frozen solid and mixed in with a bunch of iron oxide and other minerals. So getting it won't be a simple matter of digging a well and pumping it out. It would probably require something akin to a large-scale industrial mining operation, which would require a lot of equipment and a LOT of energy.

"Plenty" of CO2 is also relative. Compared to earth, the CO2 on Mars is something like 1% of what you would find here. So concentrating that enough to grow plants would also require an industrial-scale operation.

Sunlight is also weak compared to earth.

And arable soil is non-existent on Mars. So hydroponics would be needed to grow anything, which would require even more water (and minerals too).

And all that isn't even taking into account the problems of radiation and atmospheric pressure.

The only practical way for humans to ever live on Mars in anything close to a self-sustaining way would require radical alterations to the human physiology, alterations far beyond the level of medical science technology for the foreseeable future.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Believe it or not, evolutionary changes in such a radical environment like Mars would not be possible because everyone would be dead before they could reproduce. Evolution doesn't work that way.

Re:Mars is impossible

[gstoddart]

Actually in a lot of ways Mars is much easier

You mean other than having the technology to get them there alive, build any settlements, feed them once they're there, and keep them alive long enough to get them back?

Sorry, but there is a stunning lack of proven technology which would be required to pull this off.

Acting like this is just a trivial extension of stuff people are already doing is pretty much wishful thinking.

Bigger rockets don't even begin to cover it.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

What was I thinking? Caves. On Mars. We just live in caves. On Mars. Just like we did on Earth. I'll notify NASA we have a plan!

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

No problem. We will just take umbrellas to keep the snow off. Add that to the list...

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.distancetomars.com/

Not just nothing on Mars, but people fail to understand the size of the Solar System.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. We just find a cave and live in it. On Mars. No problem. They did it on on the Discovery Channel show..

Not only there, NASA has been looking at potential sites as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

cut the scifi crap.

The Luddite speaks.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Rei]

I'll be long dead and buried before I let you, good sir, besmirch the honourable name of Dr. Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck! A giraffe's neck is long because of generations of neck-stretching to reach the branches of acacia trees, and I will hear no more of this prattle pretending otherwise. Good DAY, sir!

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology isn't god. It can't solve truly fundamental problems.

Barring a meteor strike of planet-destroying proportions, earth will likely always be much more survivable than any other astronomic body within our conceivable reach. Without earth, humanity as we know it is unsustainable, and almost certainly always will be.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Viol8]

Seems to me most of the people people of the "well you just do this" persuation have never even put together an Ikea chair, never mind a building. They don't seem to have a clue of the effort involved. The ONLY way it could be done is to send equipment, fuel, food & water there via autonomous lander for years prior to any humans landing possibly with (as yet not technically possible) some sort of building robots that can construct shelters and then hope the stuff is still ok when the humans eventually get there.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Those are the only possible explanations because the Earth is only 6000 years old. Darwin didn't know what he was talking about. You just plop a few people on Mars and watch their skin grow into a protective anti-radiation shell. YOU WILL SEE!

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Nice! Did they find any? How many did they go in? Problem solved then.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Osama died of kidney failure in a cave.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Mars is impossible because white boys like you are trying to keep Obama in a pen. You motherfuckers hate to see a black man succeed and you'll do anything to stop it.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

No problem. We will just send replacement kidneys on the Mars rocket. Add that to the list...

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no alternatives. We have evolved to live on Earth only. It has the gravity and protection from the radiation we need. Also we cannot "colonize other planets". They are too far away. You are limited by physics from reaching the ones outside of our solar system. And the ones in our Solar System cannot sustain human life. We are stuck here.

Always with you what cannot be done.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not *impossible* to build a machine that pumps out unicorns and dragons, just very unlikely and impractical.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Yeah. Silly me understanding basic Biology and Physics. I should watch more Star Trek.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

You'd have to take all the same stuff to the moon. And why would you ship it in the same rocket as the people? Send your equipment on ahead on a more energy-efficient path so that you can have a much larger payload on the same sized rocket, and then send the colonists after it on a high-speed path once it arrives.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Flavianoep]

We can send metallurgical robots to get iron on Mars. An miner robots to produce concrete. And farmer robots to to plow the land. And... more robots. It is all feasible within a century or two with current technology. Not saying it's easy or affordable.

Re:Mars is impossible

[LQ]

Step one, for any of this, is to build a "permanent" for real ship.

A Ship that you can point in a direction and go. A Ship with a rotating section for artificial gravity. A Ship with a multi mega watt power source A Ship with several smaller vehicles for going to and from a planet etc.

Shooting people up there in a tin can that will burn up or be turned into a hut just isn't viable. Take the time to do it correctly.

Step zero: find a trillion dollar budget.

Re:Mars is impossible

[angel'o'sphere]

Why are you always bringing up radiation?
As long as there is not a "solar storm" hitting the astronaut in space, there is nothing particular to worry about.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Flavianoep]

We won't be walking in the open air any time in the next many centuries, maybe never if we're unable to successfully terraform the planet (Venus would likely be a more appealing target for that anyway), but there's no reason to believe we can't survive in artificial habitats.

Do you happen to have any insights to provide to us about terraforming Venus? It used to be called the twin planet of Earth when I was a child, but now all I can think if it is as a living hell.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. People don't appreciate the vast SCALE of what they're talking about. Just to build a simple habitat and a garden on Mars using Martian resources would require tons of equipment and huge amounts of energy just to get at those resources. And that equipment would need to be repaired and maintained, even after you got it there. Just the food, water, and energy required for the maintenance staff alone would probably far exceed the resulting resources produced by an order of magnitude.

Mars can simply never be made self-sustainable for humans in their current form. You would have to create a radically different form of "human" to make that even remotely possible.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

I like you. You're hilarious and your dry humor in dealing with these software clowns and their sci-fi fantasies is heart-warming.

-QA

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Sure. Radiation isn't harmful to humans or anything. Why would I bring it up?

Re:Mars is impossible

[angel'o'sphere]

We know enough about Physics to know it isn't possible to go to other systems. Ever.
A la contrair. We know enough that we know it is possible. You simply seem to lack that knowledge.
Alpha Centauri is just 4 ly away. In a 30 ly radius we have over 100 systems.
We know how to build ships that can reach 0.2c

Problematic is it to scale that for humans ... however I'm pretty sure most of us will witness the first probe going to an other solar system.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Memo to NASA: Be on the lookout for any Martian caves with food, water, oxygen, and earth-like atmospheric pressure.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Sure. I'll just order a metallurgical robot and a miner robot and a farmer robot from Amazons "current technology" department. The iron robot creates iron from the iron in the air right? Or the soil? Does it need a mixer attachment? And does the farmer robot need overalls and a tractor? Let me know, I'll add them to my Amazon "wish list".

Re:Mars is impossible

[Grishnakh]

-1 Stupid. Why is this modded "Insightful"? It's dumb.

It's absolutely realistic to have humans living on Mars, or the Moon. It's easy: you build underground.

The problem is, you have to have a lot of technology and capabilities in place to do that. You'll need excavators, and you're not going to do that with one little mission. That's why we need to go back to the Moon, and start working on our construction capabilities there first, before heading all the way to Mars. The Moon is only a few days away, so it's a great place to get started working on this stuff, plus there's still plenty of scientifically interesting stuff to do there. Don't forget how many people would pay a handsome sum to take a vacation on the Moon. Once we have the capabilities of building underground habitats on the Moon, building large ships in space for interplanetary missions, etc., **then** we can head over to Mars and start building there.

As for gravity, we don't know what the long-term effects of 1/3g or 1/6g are on humans. It's surely not as bad as zero-g, which the guys in the ISS put up with. Building on the Moon will help us find this out, and in a safe manner since it's only a few days' journey back home to Earth. Having people spend a month or two at a time on the Moon is probably fairly safe, once we deal with the radiation problem. Mars is more of a problem because it's so far away, so you can't just come home if the low gravity is affecting you. However, it's also double the gravity of the Moon, so it likely won't be such a problem.

Anyway, these things are all challenges which can be overcome, in time. Which is why your post is stupid, because you assert that these challenges can **never** be overcome.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

So you need TWO "slightly larger" rockets? Or three? How many "slightly larger" rockets do you need? Remember you need to pack everything you need, including the pizza oven. I thought you only needed a cave. But now it sounds like it is getting complicated.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment about the "fake" Moon landing was sarcasm. You are a typical space nutter who handwaves "well we will just solve it with technology" and "there might be wormholes and the stuff in Star Trek" because "we don't know everything about physics". We know enough about Physics to know it isn't possible to go to other systems. Ever.

That is a pretty pessimistic outlook there.
"However far modern science and techniques have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson; nothing is impossible."
Lewis Mumford

Re:Mars is impossible

[MachineShedFred]

You are acting like the surface of Mars is Plutonium dust or something. It is not. And, it turns out we've spent a lot of time figuring out how to shield spacecraft from radiation.

I mean, we all know that every astronaut that has spent time in space is a cancer-riddled miserable person. Wait... no, they're healthier than you or me.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

It's true that water would likely require ice-mining, but that's not exactly high-tech, we've been doing it on Earth for centuries. And it wouldn't need to be a large scale operation unless you're growing quickly - it's not like you're using up water while your sealed ecosystem is in steady-state. The only real issue would be if it contains toxic contaminants that cause problems for simple a simple thawing and distillation process (assuming distillation is even necessary).

And you're way off on CO2 levels. On Earth we have a partial pressure of 101,300Pa*0.04% = 40.5Pa CO2. On Mars we have 600Pa * 96% = 576Pa. So Mars actually has over 14x the CO2 density as Earth.

Yes, the sunlight is less than half as bright, which makes solar power less viable, but you probably want to take a nuclear power source anyway if you're planning on industrial activity.

Radiation is easily blocked by sand. And atmospheric pressure is largely solved by the same process - the weight of radiation shielding will more than counteract the pressure differential. Think big Mars-crete dome with an airtight liner on the inner surface. Obviously you won't be walking on the surface without a pressure suit, but most people spend most of their lives indoors and in cities on Earth anyway. What difference does it make if there's usually a roof overhead instead of open sky? Paint it a cheerful sky blue if you're so inclined.

Massive reengineering of humans is only necessary if you wanted to live outside of artificial habitats without technological aids, and I don't think anyone is suggesting that. Honestly, I'm not sure there's any credible metabolic pathways for that, short of turning us into plants. Though perhaps some minor terraforming could be done to make things more viable - find or engineer an algae that can thrive on the surface and eventually you'd have enough free oxygen that you only need to concentrate it and separate out the CO2 to make it breathable.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Lewis Mumford was a literary critic. He didn't know nuttin about Science or Physics.
"Reality is not pessimism. It just is reality". -- Me

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Not easy, just easier than the Moon. We don't quite have the rockets to credibly do either yet, but once we do the only difference is transportation times, and that's really only relevant to the ships actually carrying colonists.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

"A la contrair". That pretty much sums it up for your base of knowledge. Once you master French you can build your 0.2c space ship.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Report#1: Found a cave. Unfortunately it was occupied already by little green men. Mission continues...

P.S. are you guys going to send pizza soon? We are getting hungry up here.

Re:Mars is impossible

[wikdwarlock]

Plants make water and CO2. They've already optimized the volume storage of all the machinery and data needed to do so. Fire also makes water and CO2, and that's just an idea, so it's easy to fit in one's pocket, even in a tight-fitting space suit.

Re:Mars is impossible

[MachineShedFred]

Oh, it would be hard? Well I guess we'd better all give up and go home. There's no point in even studying how it could be done, because a guy on Slashdot says that we can't do it in the next 10 minutes.

People once said it would be hard to sail across oceans too.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

You are right. It looks like a beach to me. Bring the flip flops and sunblock!

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Living hell only exists here on Earth. Venus is most definitely a dead hell.

As for terraforming Venus, it is simple really. All we have to do is move the planet to a larger orbit and increase its rotational speed. Then, we wait a few thousand years for the atmosphere to bleed off, reducing surface temperature and pressure to something reasonable. Easy!

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Oh, and we've done plenty of sealed ecosystem research on Earth. They'll need to take plenty of supplies to support them until their ecosystem is up and running, but unless the lower gravity causes serious problems, it's proven technology.

We still need to develop a reliable Mars-crete formula, preferably one that can set in ambient atmospheric conditions, but with that all you need to do is inflate a dome-bubble with and airlock and cover it in enough concrete to support being buried in sand. Bam, airtight, radiation shelter ready to be converted into something more homey. Takes a day or two to when we make them here on Earth. Call it a few weeks on Mars assuming we take scaled-down versions of the equipment.

Or, to start out, just bury your landing module in a couple meters of sand. You're not going home without future supply ships or years of industrial development anyway. In fact most of the plans don't call for a return at all - live a few years on Mars and returning to Earth's gravity might kill you.

Re:Mars is impossible

[gstoddart]

No, now you're just being an idiot.

I'm saying unless they build some of this technology on a smaller scale (ie the Moon), doing it with real live humans on a trip of that scale would be moronic.

You don't go from not possessing the current technology to put someone into low Earth orbit to landing them on Mars and keeping them alive both in transit and once they arrive in one step.

Of course it's fucking hard, and they should be working towards it. But they're sure as hell not going to do it successfully in one step.

Unless they plan on just killing off some astronauts until they get it right, they need to be solving some of these problems long before they try to send people to Mars.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

We create routinely create concrete domes on Earth in a day or two. Increase that by a factor of 10 on Mars to account for unknowns. We do still need a reliable Mars-crete formulation, but there's several groups working on that now, I'm sure they can come up with something in the decade plus before we actually attempt a colony.

And to start out, just bury your landing module in sand. What sort of idiot doesn't bring a shovel (or preferably a carbon-fiber backhoe) on an endeavor like this?

Re:Mars is impossible

[GuB-42]

There are no alternatives. We have evolved to live on Earth only. It has the gravity and protection from the radiation we need. Also we cannot "colonize other planets". They are too far away. You are limited by physics from reaching the ones outside of our solar system. And the ones in our Solar System cannot sustain human life. We are stuck here.

Venus has 1g, protection from radiation, and a surface so hellish that even demons refuse to live there. But believe it or not, flying cities in the atmosphere of Venus are considered and may be a better choice than Mars for long term colonization, if such a thing is possible.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Maybe you should look into existing technologies before you start throwing around misguided personal attacks. We can make airtight concrete domes in a day or two here (including site preparation). And to start out you can bury your landing module. A bit crowded perhaps, but you only have to live there until the first domes are ready.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Flavianoep]

No. When I say current technology, I mean something that engineers could project and have built within a decade.

Re:Mars is impossible

[MachineShedFred]

Well, then we agree on that. I apologize for the snark, but it's hard to tell some comments where the poster is in favor of human space flight from the other posters that just call everyone "space nutters" and think that human space flight is a total waste, even though Hubble would have actually been a total waste if it wasn't for human space flight to go and fix the fucking thing.

We didn't go to the moon in one easy step either - that's what Mercury and Gemini were for. A similar approach can and should be used for interplanetary exploration. This is, of course, massively over-simplified. Much like Apollo, getting to Mars would take materials and technology that haven't been invented yet. The good news is that in creating a need for something to do the job, it might actually get invented.

Re:Mars is impossible

[RKThoadan]

While the risks can sometimes be overblown you seem to be swinging in the opposite extreme. The ISS and all shuttle flights have all been well within the Earth's magnetic field, which is our biggest radiation shield. The Apollo program is the only time we've sent humans beyond this shield.

Mars has a minimal magnetic field compared to Earth. Just about every plan for long-term habitation of Mars has involved spending the majority of the time underground due to the radiation exposure. As others have pointed out, digging this out and living in it is not going to be very easy.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

"Space nutters" is a harsh, indeed irrationally harsh, caricaturisation of what is at most naive enthusiasm, there may be some genuinely crazy people at the fringe but, at worst, the majority are ignorant and irritating, and just because the more ignorant among the keen are wrong does not make you right.

In the end almost no one here has the qualifications to even enumerate the actual challenges that we need to beat to put a permanent colony on any planet, but we do know that you can do it without violating physics, the rest is just a question of the costs VS worth you assign to such a project.

You seem to assign very low worth to the goal of multi-planetary civilisation, combined with a high cost and a low assessment our ability to develop technical solutions to the problems. Simply by assigning any one of, a higher value, lower cost, or more favourable analysis of our long term technological outlook, a very different picture will emerge. You have no right to claim that I must share your assessment of value, and nor do you have any more clairvoyance into the unpredictable progress of technology than any one of the other predictors paid or otherwise that get things wrong more often than right. It is this strident tone you take, especially on the value of such endeavours, which probably drives even some of the knowingly uninformed to try and argue with you.

I think it is possible, and given the possibility of a nuclear game of catch, is important, but intend to reserve my full judgement on how hard/ risky such a colony will be for a while. More specifically until after the successors of the currently yet uncompleted falcon heavy, or its rivals, have flown. More realistic and up to date technical analysis will only be forthcoming from the more grounded of the experts when the ability to actually lift capable vessels is imminent.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

There's lots of suggestions floating around, none within reach of current technology. The closest and most efficient is probably the idea of seeding the atmosphere with an engineered airborne algae or diatom that would convert the atmospheric carbon into a stable form that would precipitate to the surface as they died. Get rid of the CO2 and the planet will cool over the course of many centuries to something we can work with - without greenhouse gasses Venus would be colder than Earth. Lingering CO2 and water vapor would prevent that, but probably even a fair fraction of the water vapor would condense out as the atmosphere cools.

Of course there's still that ~117 earth-day day to deal with. And probably a fairly extreme air pressure even after we've removed around 1/3+ of its mass (presumably it's not just pure carbon that precipitates out). That's going to take some real creative genetic engineering if you want complex surface life to thrive, but hey maybe by the time the planet cools off enough to work with we'll be up to the challenge.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

It would be hellaciously complicated. Modern technology always is. And nobody is suggesting that it could be done in a single launch, unless maybe you just wanted to support one or two people, which would be kind of pointless. We couldn't even colonize the Americas with only one ship, and several colonies died out before we managed to pull it off. Why would you expect Mars to be easier?

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

Facts, man, you should try them: http://www.space.com/23875-mar...

A mission consisting of a 180-day cruise to Mars, a 500-day stay on the Red Planet and a 180-day return flight to Earth would expose astronauts to a cumulative radiation dose of about 1.01 sieverts, measurements by Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument indicate. To put that in perspective: The European Space Agency generally limits its astronauts to a total career radiation dose of 1 sievert, which is associated with a 5-percent increase in lifetime fatal cancer risk

That's with little shielding on Mars. A permanent colony could get equivalent shielding to that on earth by being under about 10-20 ft of water or rock. If you send older astronauts, radiation becomes even less of an issue.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

After I prepare the hole, I like to stick it in.... Lord have mercy. I am feeling arousal.

Re:Mars is impossible

[HelpTheNewOverlord]

1: "We would have to bring tons of equipment to make a place to live"
2: "Use caves"
1: "Oh look, there is another problem too!!"

If you hadn't said so, I was just buying a ticket!! Thank you!

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you.

Perchlorate isn't all that toxic, it is water soluble, it's easy to counteract its effects, and the exposure would be limited (since you couldn't go outside without a suit anyway). It's also not very corrosive. http://smt.sandvik.com/en/mate... http://mykin.com/rubber-chemic...

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

We've got no evidence to suggest that low gravity will be a dealbreaker, and there are easy ways to deal with it if there are prolonged problems (centrifuges, etc).

Radiation is a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. Very advanced technology, known as a hole in the ground, would be suitable to address risk from solar events, and outside of those events there is acceptably low risk from the background radiation - the risk is lower than that of smoking, for instance, or the risk of the launches that we freely send astronauts on.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that? Have we learned all there is to know? Doesn't technology advance anymore?

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

There are no alternatives. We have evolved to live on Earth only.

Our bodies evolved to live in warm, humid African climates. Then most of us got a functioning brain and managed to create things like houses, fire, air conditioning, clothes, etc. Now we can live in deserts, on ice sheets, at the top of mountains, and even under water.

Also we cannot "colonize other planets". They are too far away. You are limited by physics from reaching the ones outside of our solar system.

Even with current technologies, we could build a rocket to reach Alpha Centauri in 100 years. Things only get better from there.

And the ones in our Solar System cannot sustain human life. We are stuck here.

"Sustaining human life" is relative to available technology. Many of the places people live today couldn't have sustained human life a few centuries ago.

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

Yeah. All you need is a "slightly larger" rocket to settle Mars. To hold the excavator. And plants. And something that can make water and Co2. And concrete. And iron. And...

You will be dead from the radiation before you even get halfway there.

Don't be so dramatic. The cancer risk from radiation is lower than that of smoking. Making CO2 is unnecessary because it's already in the Martian atmosphere. For the same reason, you can bring a ton of Hydrogen and make yourself 13 tons of rocket fuel (and/or water if you want) using the oxygen and carbon from the CO2. In many ways, Mars is actually an easier challenge.

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

We haven't evolved to live outside of tropical climates by your argument, because we can't live in Northern latitudes without artificial clothing and shelter.

Technology is evolution. We now direct our own adaptation to the environment and use technology to live in places that couldn't otherwise sustain us. Living on another planet is no different.

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

The things preventing us from reaching other star systems isn't physics. It's economics, psychology, and sociology. Given the money and the will, generation ships are perfectly viable. That's not to say that they are likely, but to say interstellar travel is impossible due to physics is flat out wrong. Hell, use something like Project Orion and you might not even need a generation ship.

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

You are right. We just build thick-roofed shelters out of rock and sand. What was I thinking? Hey Charlie, go dig up some rock and sand and build a roof ok? Did you bring the shovel?

You are trying to be facetious, but it is really no more complicated than that. Send a structure (inflatable or whatever) and then through good-old elbow grease bury it with rock and sand. What's the problem?

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

Seems to me most of the people people of the "well you just do this" persuation have never even put together an Ikea chair, never mind a building.

I've built quite a few structures. Ikea chairs and buildings are a lot of work and take a lot of resources because of the constraints on them: they need to be cheap, easy to ship, and easy to put together with no tools or skills. If you're willing to spend more money on materials and have skilled users, structures can become much lighter and stronger. Conversely, if you need to build structures just from dirt, you can do that too, but it takes more power and equipment.

A Mars habitat would probably start out with ultra-lightweight high tech shelters that are easy to set up (probably inflatable, possibly in caves), and then people would switch to something more like compressed earth blocks for additional structures.

(Sending a lot of equipment up first with unmanned trips is, of course, a good idea. I also think Mars is not such a good target anyway. But I think it is feasible.)

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Hubble would have actually been a total waste if...

Do you think it might ever be possible to develop a robot capable of performing remote repairs in space?

Re:Mars is impossible

[ColdWetDog]

Go back and read 'Red Mars'. Before he goes all political KSR describes a pretty rational plan to get to Mars. For that matter, so does Andy Weir in 'The Martian'. It just takes money. Lots and lots of money.

Something that NASA never manages to get. Kinda pointless coming up with detailed plans when you know you won't get funding for it. Might as well just make a movie....

Re:Mars is impossible

[VAXcat]

Don't need an excavator - it's one of those "shovel ready jobs" we heard so much about.

Re:Mars is impossible

[gstoddart]

Oh, and we've done plenty of sealed ecosystem research on Earth

Which we can set up at our leisure under ideal circumstances. Now prove we can do it on another planet under less ideal conditions.

but unless the lower gravity causes serious problems, it's proven technology

Which means, it's not yet proven technology for where it needs to be used.

We still need to develop a reliable Mars-crete formula

Based on what technology and empirical data? Just make shit up and hope it works?

Or, to start out, just bury your landing module in a couple meters of sand.

Not once have we dug a hole on another planet/moon of any consequence. If your first dry run is on Mars itself, you're probably going find out you have missed something.

You list these things so glibly, as if they're small challenges easily overcome.

Until such time as someone has done any of these things on the Moon, assuming you can do them successfully on Mars would be utterly moronic.

Any small failure in a plan which assumes perfect success under conditions you've never actually tested in is going to have catastrophic outcomes. Instead of doing that, prove you can do any of those things on the Moon, where you have a chance to get back alive if things don't go perfectly.

The engineering required to survive on Mars will be epic ... the testing and refinement of that technology needs to happen FAR closer to home, and under as realistic circumstances as possible. Most notably where you don't take off your helmet and go to the debriefing to figure out what went wrong.

Saying "oh, well, you just bury your module" is kind of understating what all has to happen to get there.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Gavagai80]

Perhaps for a 300 lb person the Mars gravity would healthier than Earth. They'd instantly be a slim 100 lbs with reduced stresses. Time to recruit overweight astronauts?

Re:Mars is impossible

[BarbaraHudson]

Not when the doses of perchlorates and peroxides is 10,000 times higher than earth - and do you have any idea of how hard it will be to get that dust off suits?

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

We won't ever evolve to tolerate a vacuum, or do away with our need to consume food and water, if that's all you mean. However, we would certainly evolve to better adapt to a different day/night cycle, or to increased or decreased gravity. If we terraform the atmosphere of a planet like Venus to the point where we don't immediately die, it may not have to move all the way to exactly match the composition of Earth's atmosphere. We could, for example, adapt to living with a significantly different atmospheric pressure (think of Sherpas in the Himalayas).

Re:Mars is impossible

[Kjella]

Nobody knows if gravity will actually be a significant problem for Mars or even the moon. We know it's an issue for micro-gravity (though we've got people living in it over a year anyway), we don't know about 1/3 or 1/6 gravity.

Well, even 1/6th should have the cardiovascular system working much more normally with fluids flowing in the right direction and things hanging like they normally do. And since you got gravity you could add weight vests/bracelets/anklets to add another 80 + 2x20 (wrist and ankles) lbs = 55 kg, if you're normally say 85 kg you're now effectively (85+55)/3 = 47 kg on Mars and you still got 140 kg of momentum to counteract. Maybe more if NASA designs a special suit for you. When we know the enormous differences between couch potatoes and athletes here at home, a good training regiment should keep the body in pretty okay shape unless some of your internal organs take long term damage from sleeping at 1/3rd gravity.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Dan East]

What would be awesome is if high speed objects would have ever struck the surface of the Mars, thus already carving out holes all over the surface.

Re:Mars is impossible

[sycodon]

Shooting people up there in a tin can that will burn up or be turned into a hut just isn't viable. Take the time and money to do it correctly.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Step one, for any of this, is to build a "permanent" for real ship.

A Ship that you can point in a direction and go.
A Ship with a rotating section for artificial gravity.
A Ship with a multi mega watt power source
A Ship with several smaller vehicles for going to and from a planet
etc.

Shooting people up there in a tin can that will burn up or be turned into a hut just isn't viable. Take the time to do it correctly.

Step zero: find a trillion dollar budget.

Step -1: Don't invade Iraq or Afghanistan
Step 0: Collect saved 2 trillion dollars
Step 1: Go to Mars

Re:Mars is impossible

[DerekLyons]

Honestly, if they can't tackle the problem of putting someone on the Moon for a week, or a month (or at all) ... they have no way in hell of trying to solve some of the problems with going to Mars.

Yes.... and no. That's kinda like saying " if they can't tackle the problem of putting someone in the middle of the Sahara Desert for a week, or a month (or at all) ... they have no way in hell of trying to solve some of the problems with going to Antarctica".
 
It sounds reasonable to simplistic analysis - after all, the Sahara Desert is much closer to civilization than Antarctica, right? But the environments of the two are so radically different that it doesn't actually work that way. On the Moon, you can use a simple water boiler for cooling - on Mars, there's too much atmosphere for that. You can land on the Moon with a simple rocket engine - Mars has too much gravity for that. (But not enough atmosphere to rely solely on parachutes.) Etc.. etc... They're different not only in the details, but in the gross conditions as well. Practically no problems that you'll need to solve to stay on the Moon have solutions that transfer to staying on Mars. The ones that do, like long term ECLSS or logistics managment, are just as easily tested in LEO or even in an environment chamber here on the ground.

You want to go back to the Moon, that's cool. It's a goal I'm sympathetic to. But don't fool yourself for an instant that it's in any way useful as a precursor to Mars.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Kjella]

Don't forget how many people would pay a handsome sum to take a vacation on the Moon.

Look, NASA is looking to pay something like $20 million/seat for a ride to the ISS with SpaceX. Not only is it much shorter, from there gravity does pretty much all the work of getting home. An Apollo-style mission would take two Falcon Heavys for $200 million launch cost to carry two people to the surface. Considering that you also need the command module, landing module and all that I think $500 million or $250 million/seat would be extremely optimistic. And I'm already projecting into the future about a low cost rocket that hasn't flown yet. But assuming it does and SpaceX works out reusable rockets and you get economics of scale both in rockets and people I'm thinking you'd still have a hard time getting down to $20 million/seat. And no, the market for that is pretty limited. It's easy to lose perspective when Musk says the fuel is 3% of a Falcon 9 launch it costs $60-70 million so like $200,000. I'm guessing Blue Origin will take the tourist market, you get to (barely) be in space and zero-g for the cool effect, a cramped moon base in a rock desert that you can only experience through a space suit sounds like it could get old real quick. Most billionaires are not Musk, if they're not single you can multiply those prices and if they are they're probably going to a place with more babes.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously our bodies evolved beyond that. I don't live in Africa. The point is you can't "evolve" to live on Mars, because you would be DEAD before you had a baby.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

We get it, your family name is "defeatist" and your family motto is "why try?". We get it, now will you please shut up and go else where.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

"we've been doing it on Earth for centuries"
Key words there are "ON EARTH". Mars is not like a sandy Earth. You are not going to be able to do the same things on Mars like you do on Earth. Christ.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is Physics. You cannot make a REAL spacecraft that approaches any significant fraction of the speed of light. You would be dead before you got anywhere. You can talk about "Orion" or "generational spacecraft" but that is just scifi. You can't build one and launch one. All the money in the world isn't going to get humans out of our solar system.

Re:Mars is impossible

[110010001000]

" probably the idea of seeding the atmosphere with an engineered airborne algae or diatom" Oh right. Why not just dump some ice cubes to cool it off. It is just as productive.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, with your understanding of basic biology, aren't you going to be surprised when you learn about extremophiles which exist now on earth, and have already proven to survive quite well in the harshest environments in space we've put them in. And to the best of our knowledge, they only evolved here on earth to survive on earth only.

Not only do you come across as an idiot, but an arrogant idiot at that. You've said we know enough about physics to know it can't be done. Well, I remind you in the 19th century there was a fear in physics that everything had been discovered. Then came along relativity and quantum mechanics and particle physics and we're now starting to discover that we barely understand the world around us. You're problem seem to be that you don't understand the phrase "we don't know what we don't know".

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

>Now prove we can do it on another planet under less ideal conditions.
That's kind of the point of attempting it, is it not? There's no other way to prove it.

I haven't heard any reason to believe ecosystem maintenance would be substantially different in low gravity. And it's not like we haven't done lots of biology research in microgravity on the ISS, which can cause certain problems but they should be non-issues with a gravitational field. We won't know for sure until we try it.

Mars-crete data - have you missed the point where we currently have several rovers doing soil analysis on Mars?

Yes, we'll likely miss some things in our plans for Mars. But we won't know what until we actually attempt it. Early attempts will likely plan on regular supplies from Earth to compensate for difficulties. And yes they may not survive at all. Substantial risk of an early death has always been a big part of colonization, why do you think it would be any different with Mars? If you don't have the stomach for the risk, I recommend you stay home and let those more adventurous take the risks.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Slim nothing, and they'd still be suffering from all the metabolic issues associated with obesity. Not to mention the expense of shipping all their useless fat to Mars. If more weight is important then I'm sure weighted vests will be no big deal.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

I'm pretty sure hitting a glacier with an ice-axe is not going to have a dramatically different effect on Mars.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Hey, it worked on Earth. All it takes is introducing one microbe capable of thriving to remake an ecosystem. On Earth it was the first blue-green algae to develop photosynthesis a couple billion years ago. It took over a billion years to saturate the oceans with oxygen, and another half-billion before the atmospheric oxygen built up to current levels, but it did the job. And heck - there's the evolution of cellulose as well. That wasn't microbes, but the 80(?) million years between the evolution of cellulose and the evolution of something capable of digesting it locked gigatons of carbon into woody materials that eventually became planet-wide coal deposits, in the process interrupting a runaway greenhouse effect that would likely have left Earth in a state not so very different than Venus.

Start with an intelligently designed microbe without any competition or predators and I'm willing to bet we could see similarly dramatic effects within only a few millenia. Not exactly fast in human terms, but we're talking about rebuilding an entire planet - patience is going to be required.

Well, either patience, or the application of godlike power, which is also not completely out of the question when we're talking about looking many centuries into the future.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Just that statement shows how delusional you are. It isn't as easy as getting an axe out and melting ice.

Re:Mars is impossible

[pr0fessor]

Or, to start out, just bury your landing module in a couple meters of sand.
Not once have we dug a hole on another planet/moon of any consequence. If your first dry run is on Mars itself, you're probably going find out you have missed something.

Didn't we already bury a rover on mars... Oh wait we crashed it into mars, my bad.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

", it worked on Earth"

There is that phrase again...again: MARS IS NOT EARTH.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick: name me one extremophile that can live on Mars. THERE AREN'T ANY.
Quick: name one law that says you can build spaceships that approach the speed of light. THERE AREN'T ANY. In fact there are laws that say the complete opposite: that you can't. If you don't believe in Physics then you believe in scifi. You might as well believe in God.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that is significantly different.

When I go live in another climate I still have food, water, air, protection from radiation, gravity..

You know, pretty much *everything that's needed to sustain life*.

That's what I don't get about Mars proponents. Half of the ones I see online think we can just throw concrete domes up and suddenly there's an Arby's. Sci-fi does great things to inspire people but inspired people have to educate themselves beyond the Star Trek to see what the real trek would even be like. They just hand-wave and say things like "technology is evolution" like somehow that makes a Mars base happen because reasons.

If you want a Mars base then you pour billions of dollars into specific research and wait a long time for what might turn out to be utterly unfeasible. That's science. That gets us to Mars (maybe).

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Oh really? Care to give an example or are you just being contrary? Because I'm really not seeing anything that's going to stop my axe from chopping a block of ice off a glacier just because I'm on Mars. We know the glaciers are there, ice isn't going to be magically stronger, and water melts the same everywhere. You may need to distill it to remove toxins before use, but distillation should work the same on Mars as well. The only question is whether there's anything dangerous in the water that would prove more difficult to remove.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

We're talking about Venus, not Mars. Do try to keep up, there's not much sadder than an incompetent troll.

And there's nothing magical about either planet that will change the laws of physics or the degree to which biology can modify the environment. The only questions are how different life would have to be to survive there, and whether we're competent enough to find or create something suitable.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow are you naïve! Of course 40% of normal Earth gravity will cause issues, and big ones. Our physiology evolved shaped by the need to support our bodies in 1g. The entire venous pump system developed as a direct result of that.

As for the "ZERO evidence" you claim, we actually have tons of evidence. The only zero present is the zero effort you've put into finding it.

Long-term residency at MIR, the ISS and Skylab all showed dramatic muscle loss in microgravity environments. Astronauts are now put on serious and permanent exercise regimes while they stay in space. And those exercise regimes are only partly effective; astronauts routinely have trouble walking when they return to Earth. There's a whole discipline of space medicine devoted to this stuff; rather than blowing it off, perhaps you'll want to check into it.

Not enough for you? Every person confined to a wheelchair or bed, for more than a week or so, also suffers loss of muscle mass and tone. It's normal Earth gravity but they aren't using their legs to stand. The loss of muscle has a broad range of health effects and those effects are all bad.

Your dismissal of problems with indoor shelters is likewise quaint and poorly informed. Ever heard of cabin fever? It's the psychological stress induced by being confined indoors for long periods, usually by winter conditions. Now translate that to Mars.

- you cannot go outside without a suit (think of mandatory heavy winter clothing on Earth, forever);
- habitual long surface walks would have to be discouraged (think of not being allowed to go hiking on Earth);
- natural sunlight would have to be rationed and filtered (windows have insufficient radiation protection);
- you can't just go home, at least not without it being a considerable production. Earth is a 6 to 20 month spaceflight away.

Sure, most of this can be addressed through covered cities. How many centuries will it take before we'll be able to build an underground city on Mars? There will be decades where the underground shelters will be small, with few linking tunnels. Privacy will be scarce and large communal spaces will be rare.

You're jumping far forward, beyond the settler phase. However someone has to be the settler and put up with the difficult living conditions for the first few generations.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... the irony of this post in the context of all your others... I'm dumbfounded.

What was I thinking? Caves. On Mars. We just live in caves. On Mars.

You are right. We just build thick-roofed shelters out of rock and sand. What was I thinking?

You are a typical space nutter who handwaves "well we will just solve it with technology" and "there might be wormholes and the stuff in Star Trek" because "we don't know everything about physics".

Once you master French you can build your 0.2c space ship.

But especially this:

Sure. I'll just order a metallurgical robot and a miner robot and a farmer robot from Amazons "current technology" department.

And then this (emphasis added)...

Exactly. It is actually possible to send intelligent robots. We just need to build semi-intelligent robots first. Humans isn't possible.

Thank you for the entertainment.

And before you accuse me of being blinded by a love of science fiction, I just happen to be someone who makes a living researching these kinds of technologies and endeavors. I literally investigate and work with these ideas every day of my life. If you'd rather just argue with me, I'll just smile and wave casually at the Ph.D. hanging on my wall.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, you are so snarky, you've gone off the red scale on my snarkometer.

It seems to be that your principle position in all of this is that, as it's being discussed online, you can push your snarkiness to 11. There doesn't seem to be anything useful in anything you contribute. Perhaps you have nice cat you could be being nice to, rather than sitting there being a snarkotron emitter.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Another snarky useless comment from C88

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Notice what all those problems had in common - not walking or getting much exercise. There's gravity on Mars, people will walk around. What research we've been able to do suggests that at least the worst of the problems are specific to microgravity, not just lower gravity. Will there be some problems on Mars? Quite possibly. But we'll never know what they are, or whether their serious enough to be a major issue until we make the attempt.

Now, if you're talking about issues that might prevent colonists from returning to Earth, well then I'm inclined to agree, especially for native-born Martians. A skeletal system that's only ever known 0.4g will probably be severely stressed by being suddenly subjected to 2.5x as much. Not to mention it's extremely unlikely their muscles would be strong enough for them to maneuver effectively. Though in counterpoint centrifuge tests seem to suggest that people can adapt to functioning at 2g's, and a Martian would have the added advantage of a genetic heritage developed to handle a full 1g.

That's only a problem for Martians who want to return to Earth. Sucks if you decide you don't like Mars, but isn't really relevant to Martians living on Mars. All that's important there is whether low gravity causes serious health problems. And so far I'm not aware of a single study that identifies any microgravity problem that wouldn't be drastically reduced if not completely eliminated in the presence of Mars gravity. Not saying they won't exist, but they probably won't be immediately life-threatening, and there's only one way to find out.

As for buildings, perhaps I spoke too florally, your city wouldn't be one huge dome, but many smaller ones. At least at first. It's unlikely be terribly inconvenient to build concrete domes of a few hundred to several thousand square feet - we can build one in a couple days on Earth, including site preparation, using a single semi-trailer worth of equipment. Cast the foundation, inflate the form, blow the concrete. Probably want some sort of reinforcements in there too, that adds a little time. Then remove the form and repeat, With care they're typically good for at least several dozen domes on Earth. Seems like a no-brainer to ship an adapted version to Mars. You'd obviously need to develop a concrete formula using local materials, but people are already working on that, and early results are promising.

So, build clusters of domes, as many as you like, and cover the inner walls with airtight "paint". Lots of local options for that, nanocellulose being one that has lots of other applications as well (it's roughly as strong as aluminum). Then you've got a city that can grow organically - just build a new dome against existing ones and cut holes in the intersecting walls. Put in pressure doors at least occasionally so you can limit the damage from inevitable failures.

Make that the plan and you could probably have the first domes up within a year, maybe much sooner. And once you've established sources for materials, making more domes will be much faster. Of course the first wave of pioneers settlers will likely initially live in pre-fabricated buried shelters since you don't want their survival dependent on not having bad luck procuring local materials, but finding the necessary local resources to support rapid growth is likely to be an extremely high priority, both for the long-term plan and their own comfort.

Now living inside all the time - yeah, that's probably going to wear on people. I would be a hard sell. Though I doubt hiking would be a huge problem - if you can handle the radiation from a month in space, a few hours outside probably isn't going to be a big problem, though you might want to avoid it in the months leading up to conceiving a child. Especially since the planet will be blocking half of the extra-solar radiation. And cabin fever tends to be much less of an issue as size increases. Build something mall size with lots of public spaces, and I'd venture it's not a horrible problem. And hey,

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems are difficult, but not insurmountable. Of course we'd need to land a ton of supplies and construction equipment on Mars to be able to build what we need.

As for the long-term impact of reduced gravity on humans, they're studying exactly that on the ISS right now and the results are promising. The main concerns are bone and muscle mass loss, and it looks like that's able to be mitigated if not prevented by appropriate exercise (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05oOst9kZXQ). Mind you, the ISS experiments are about preventing damage over long duration stays in weightlessness, not in reduced (Mars) gravity. There's nothing I've seen that indicates that indicates that a human body would deteriorate too far to live just by being in Martian gravity. They'd be too weak to manage Earth gravity, sure, but I don't see why the gravity wouldn't prevent a person living their whole life on Mars, nor exercise and strengthen their body enough to cope with Earth gravity.

It's not easy to do at all, and anyone who says it is is kidding themselves. But we've got plenty of time, we'll get there eventually.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans will never fly, they don't have wings. We will always stay on the ground. We need the safety of not being so high up. It's too dangerous and cold up there, and besides you could never fly too high anyways because the air is too thin up there. We are stuck here.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Not nearly as useless as sci-fi daydreams from children.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, appeal to authority from someone who did nothing but read and daydream his entire life.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, we don't fly. We build machines that fly, using the vast resources and infrastructure possible on this planet. You don't ask an individual to build his own jet from the rocks lying around him, do you?
We need the safety of this atmosphere to fly in, yes, right again!
We also need the safety of being able to land in case of emergency, and in any case, the flights are usually over in under 12 hours. That's when we land the machine and go about our business on the surface of this planet.
Very glad you agree and can see reason.

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

Not when the doses of perchlorates and peroxides is 10,000 times higher than earth

That has nothing to do with it. Perchlorate just isn't very toxic or very corrosive at high concentrations, right here on earth. Its acute LD50 is roughly the same as table salt.

and do you have any idea of how hard it will be to get that dust off suits?

Yes, I do. As I was saying, perchlorates are water soluble and hygroscopic. That means they stop being dust all by themselves in a normal atmosphere.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Viol8]

"We can make airtight concrete domes in a day or two here"

How to you plan on using concrete on Mars when the water would explosively boil away in the low pressure atmosphere?

Idiot.

Re:Mars is impossible

[BarbaraHudson]

People from NASA in this interview disagree about the risks. So does NOAA, and if you look further, so does the DOT. It's not benign.

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

People from NASA in this interview [space.com] disagree about the risks.

Well, what can I say, not every NASA scientist is an expert on everything, and Peter Smith happens to be wrong on this one.

So does NOAA [noaa.gov],

That's a material safety data sheet, and the "Health Hazard' quoted there is just the generic health hazard for oxidizers. Really, try to understand what you cite.

and if you look further, so does the DOT.

The DOT classifies perchlorates as "hazardous" because they are oxidizers. That is, when mixed with combustible materials, they turn explosive. That is not an issue for a Mars mission.

It's not benign.

Neither is table salt. But it's not a significant concern for a Mars mission. Explosions are not an issue. Acute toxicity is not an issue either, because astronauts are not going to be exposed to enough of it. Long term toxicity is potentially an issue, though less so in adults. Long term toxicity is due to the effect of perchlorates on the thyroid. That's not a show-stopper, since there are several ways of dealing with it.

If anything, the widespread availability of perchlorates on Mars is useful, since they can potentially be turned into breathable oxygen and rocket propellants.

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is Physics. You cannot make a REAL spacecraft that approaches any significant fraction of the speed of light.

Carl Sagan and Freeman Dyson, for starters, disagree with you. Do you even know what Project Orion is? It uses only conventional technology, no unobtainium. Gets to 0.1c in 36 days.

All the money in the world isn't going to get humans out of our solar system.

It would cost ~$400B. A lot of money, but less than what we spent on the bank bailouts or Iraq war.

Re:Mars is impossible

[BarbaraHudson]

Everyone knows what an MSDS is. And we're simply not going to Mars. Period. Even the clouds of Venus makes more sense - room temperature at a certain height, an oxy/nitrogen mix is a lifting gas, more frequent launch windows - think of it as a modern-day spacefaring "8 Weeks In A Balloon."

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

Everyone knows what an MSDS is

So, if you know actually what it is, why do you make irrelevant references to it to support your incorrect idea that Martian perchlorates are a significant threat to astronauts? Are you saying that that you are being deliberately misleading and deceptive?

Even the clouds of Venus makes more sense

We weren't discussing whether it "makes sense" to go to Mars, we are discussing your erroneous statement "The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you."

As I have said before, I think the obvious next step is commercial, robotic asteroid mining, followed (many decades later) by constructing space habitats for humans.

And we're simply not going to Mars. Period.

You certainly aren't going anywhere given your level of scientific ignorance and your inability to make a coherent argument. Are you in marketing or HR? I certainly hope you aren't in any engineering or scientific position.

Re:Mars is impossible

[werepants]

Sci-fi does great things to inspire people but inspired people have to educate themselves beyond the Star Trek to see what the real trek would even be like. They just hand-wave and say things like "technology is evolution" like somehow that makes a Mars base happen because reasons.

Hmm. Mars enthusiasts have to "educate themselves", you say. Can you tell me what the Sabatier reaction is, and what implications it has for in-situ resource utilization on Mars? Can you tell me how the radiation risk on Mars compares to that of, say, the Apollo missions or just living in a high-radiation environment like that of Colorado? How about we discuss the Linear-No-Threshold radiation risk model and whether it's a valid assumption? How about you expound for a bit on the Oberth Effect and how it impacts Delta-V requirements?

I'm far from an expert on spaceflight, but I have read a number of technical books on the topic, taken university courses, and attended a conference devoted to the question of Mars colonization. So, please do yourself a favor and read up on the REAL technical difficulties that exist with respect to human spaceflight, and don't randomly accuse people of being pie-in-the-sky Star Trek fans with no grounding in reality. There are lots of interesting questions to discuss and nobody thinks that interplanetary colonization will be easy, but human exploration has always occurred at the very limits of our technological capability.

If you have some real technical objections to human spaceflight, it would be interesting and useful to discuss them, but at this point it sounds like you're expounding about something that you haven't really taken the time to understand. The real thing I want to find out: how does supplying air for a modern space traveler with modern technology compare, in terms of actual difficulty, to supplying food for an colonist using colonial-era technology? I would much rather put my trust in the former than the latter, and it seems clear to me that the challenge is fundamentally the same in both cases: the application of technology to sustain human life away from major social infrastructure.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Really, do I have to make *every* detail explicit?

Option 1: you apply something like "normal" concrete to the *inside* of the inflated dome form, where you're not in vacuum. Just like is currently done for much commercial dome casting.

Option 2, use a non-water based binding agent that will set in vacuum, such as epoxy. Just like is commonly done when constructing laminates in a vacuum press.

Please do at least minimal research before calling other people idiots. There's little sadder than an incompetent troll.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

> As for gravity, we don't know what the long-term effects of 1/3g or 1/6g are on humans.

Frankly, I can see gravity conditioning being used to help ward off and help people with certain diseases. I see no reason why we wouldn't have colonies specifically setup to help support people as they age with these diseases to live longer than they would otherwise live if they stayed on earth.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between a space station and a space ship? The size of the engines.

Generation ships have to work: we're already on one called Spaceship Earth.

If they don't, well as a bonus we solve the Fermi Paradox.

We already have the technology (mylar) to direct Spaceship Earth wherever we want to go: Shadov Thrusters. But deploying something on that scale would require a coordinated effort by more people than we can get to agree on anything at the moment.

All of technology beyond something done in your own backyard boils down to economics, psychology and sociology. I think a lot of the delay today is because nobody wants to lose all the people who will want to leave once it's a cheap ticket off this rock onto a different rock or a life among the stars on a ship.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

The surface of Mars is worse than plutonium dust - it is covered in perchlorate dust which is toxic and penetrates all mechanical seals.
http://www.space.com/21554-mars-toxic-perchlorate-chemicals.html

Re:Mars is impossible

[BarbaraHudson]

Like I said, NASA says you're wrong - and they're the ones doing the actual research on survival on Mars. Get over it.

Mining asteroids only sounds great in theory - until you get down to the cost/benefit equation, or if you never intend to earth. Ever. Get over that too while you're at it.

Re:Mars is impossible

[ooloorie]

Like I said, NASA says you're wrong - and they're the ones doing the actual research on survival on Mars. Get over it.

Apparently, you can't even be bothered to read your own sources: "But now that we know it's there, I am confident we will be able to design around it," he said. "I have a lot of co-workers here at Johnson Space Center who work in the human exploration side of things, and none of them seem to think perchlorate is a showstopper.

Mining asteroids only sounds great in theory - until you get down to the cost/benefit equation, or if you never intend to earth. Ever. Get over that too while you're at it.

NASA and private investors disagree with your Luddite beliefs, both spending a lot of money on making asteroid mining happen. I would point you at pages for the relevant projects, but that is pointless, since you are obviously incapable of comprehending anything longer than a headline.

Re:Mars is impossible

[BarbaraHudson]

Yes, I read that. Doesn't change the fact that it's toxic and will need to be designed around - and that they may be wrong in their ability to do so when other factors are taken into account. They were also confident in many other things that didn't work out as intended.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't change the fact that it's toxic and will need to be designed around and that they may be wrong in their ability to do so when other factors are taken into account.

Perchlorates are standard chemicals. As a kid, I used to have a pound of them on my shelf, even tasted them. They are used in pyrotechnics, chemistry experiments, and model rocketry. People take them as medical treatments. They are not particularly corrosive or dangerous. They are mass produced and their properties are extremely well understood. Long term exposure interferes with thyroid function, but that is easy to counteract. The idea that NASA "may be wrong" in anything related to handling a standard, widely used component of solid rockets is just ludicrous. Heck, the retrorockets of the Mars lander itself used ammonium perchlorates.

Really, stop babbling and learn something about science.

Re:Mars is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Moon is lot easier than Mars. Just think for a minute. People actually don't even have to be physically on the Moon to develop it due to close proximity of Moon to Earth. Moon can be developed largely by people on earth using telepresence to control robots on Moon. What's more, thanks to low gravity well, resources mined on Moon can be shot to orbit using EM rail gun. Try doing that on Mars! After all, the ultimate goal of human space exploration is to develop technology for long term presence in deep space. With current technology, it's very difficult and expensive to send more than few people to Mars, and it's also very difficult and expensive to support them on Mars. Surviving on Mars will depend on having complex equipment working all the time, and any failure or lack of continuing support from Earth due to political or financial problems could doom the colonists who already landed there. Just like Apollo program ending abruptly, there is no guarantee that there will be continued long term support for any colonists on Mars from Earth. European settlers to North America didn't need anything more than their bare hands to survive in the new world, but can Mars colonists hope to do the same?

Re:Mars is impossible

[Immerman]

Yes. Mars has the resources necessary to pull off a relatively low tech steady state and growth. There will, for a while, be a need for high-tech components and material from Earth. Maybe for as long as a century or two, almost certainly for at least a couple decades. Water and CO2 being the big ones, though sources for other trace minerals will be needed. Once you have a thriving ecosystem you have raw materials for almost everything else you need (for example google nanocellulose, very impressive stuff). Beyond that you'd mostly need power sources. I'll admit that could be a challenge. You're probably not going to make solar cells too easily without relatively sophistcated tech, but fission? Maybe. That's really relatively low tech when you strip it down to it's most basic requirements.

The moon... there's no such guarantee. From what we've seen so far it seems like some of the really important things like water are effectively missing. We could eventually make it from oxides and hydrogen deposits, but that requires much more sophisticated technology than just sucking or slicing it up, as well as more far-ranging transportation. Might be doable, but you'd be riding a lot closer to the edge.

You make a good point about telepresence for initial development, I hadn't really considered that, but I think you'd find even the 2.6+ second feedback delay to be far more difficult to compensate for than you might initially expect. There would be no direct control of robots for tricky tasks unless you could manage it very slowly. They'd have to handle all the dexterity and reflex components autonomously, and you'd have to learn to work within the constraints of their imperfect anticipation of your intentions.

Lost ability?

[gstoddart]

It seems like the technical ability to go to the moon has more or less been lost, and then someone wants them to leapfrog to Mars.

NASA spent a bunch of years putting stuff exclusively into low Earth orbit (which was always a criticism of the Shuttle), and then subsequently lost the ability to do that ... and to add insult to injury they need to rent lift capacity from Russia, or buy rocket engines from them.

How anybody could expect them to go to Mars when they've not demonstrated the ability to go to the moon in 43 years?

Of course they don't have a plan ... they have neither the budget for it, nor the technology at the moment.

Re:Lost ability?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? The technical ability to transport passengers faster than sound seems to be lost too. Who cares?

Re:Lost ability?

[gstoddart]

So what? The technical ability to transport passengers faster than sound seems to be lost too. Who cares?

Because nobody is suggesting they suddenly do that on another planet.

Having no current technology to get to the moon pretty much means anything trying to jump straight to Mars is entirely unproven.

NASA can't put people into low orbit without help, how the hell do you expect them to send people to Mars? Wingardium fucking leviosa?

Re:Lost ability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't confuse capability with ability. They have the ability to recreate the Apollo Program, all the records exist. There is just no current inventory to do it.

Re:Lost ability?

[turbidostato]

"How anybody could expect them to go to Mars when they've not demonstrated the ability to go to the moon in 43 years?"

NASA already demonstrated that *with a ton of money* and *limited political interference* can go from basically zero to the Moon in about ten years... on technology from the sixties.

It seems not such a big leap to think that NASA could send people to Mars in a decade on XXI century technology. The highlights above, on the other hand, are what seem to be lacking.

Re:Lost ability?

[sycodon]

subsequently lost the ability to do that

Well, had it taken away from them.

Re:Lost ability?

[Anonymous Coward]

and then subsequently lost the ability to do that

The nuclear arms treaties, GPS, and drones we have saw to that. If you look at what they used to goto the moon were little more than repurposed ICBMs.

It was one of the reasons LBJ and Nixon kept the programs around. It was a show and tell to the Russians. "here is how accurate our bomb delivery system is and we have several thousand of them". Everything else was public relations and NASA along for the ride. Ford, Carter, and Regan saw the writing on the wall the future was precision guided munitions delivered by aircraft that are nearly invisible on radar.

they have neither the budget for it, nor the technology at the moment.
They never really did. The Air Force did.

Re:Lost ability?

[Immerman]

The ability hasn't been lost, only the will to do so. We proved we could do it, and the thrill is gone. Meanwhile robots have advanced to the point that they can do basic science and surveying much cheaper than humans. At this point there's just not much point in sending humans to another world unless we plan to build a permanent base.

Re:Lost ability?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have the ability to recreate the Apollo Program,all the records exist

It's not like we couldn't figure all this stuff out again without the records. This isn't rocket scie....uh...never mind.

Re:Lost ability?

[sbaker]

The problem isn't "going to the moon" - the problem is staying there long enough to do something useful while you're there. What was done in the original Moon missions could be done much more efficiently with robots.

The things we need people for is much more long-term - and the Apollo technology couldn't do that.

I don't buy the argument that the moon is a good stepping stone to Mars - the difficulty of creating and maintaining all the infrastructure to manufacture rocket fuel and get it up into lunar orbit (or back to Earth orbit) is way harder than just going to Mars.

Mars has more gravity, a source of CO2 for plants, a sane day length (also for plants), water (probably) just underground rather than in the shadow of the rim of some craters that never see sunlight (which might be kinda hard to work in, don't you think?)

At the very least, I'd want to see a robot crawl across a lunar crater and take a photo of the water ice piled up there before we made any kind of a judgement as to how useful the moon is.

The main reason I see to go there is to collect Helium 4 for fusion reactors...and then the water would be a bonus. That's a commercial opportunity that a big company could actually go and exploit.

Re:Lost ability?

[dryeo]

You need a fairly flat spot to land and the craters probably aren't nice plains like the Apollo spacecraft landed on.
The Helium 3 (not 4) is very thinly spread on the Moon and it is easy to make Helium 3 on the Earth, just irradiate water to make Tritium and let it decay into He3. Of course fusing He3 is much harder then fusing Deuterium and Tritium, which we still can't do in a controlled energy positive way.

Re:Lost ability?

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon as a stepping stone is more of a playground to test new ideas and technologies. It's a step above taking your new rover design out to the desert in California and driving it around--now you've launched it, shown it has survived the trip in space, and is operable in an environment unlike Earth. Yes, the environment on the moon is also just as unlike Mars as it is Earth's, but before we invest in a scheme that may or may not work, why not test it out at the moon and show that it does in fact work before putting the time, effort, and finances into sending it further out?

Re:Lost ability?

[thinkwaitfast]

to do something useful

Such as....?

collect Helium 4 for fusion reactors

There is plenty of He4 on Earth. There are, however, no fusion reactors. Why not spend the money building fusion reactor first then use all of the profits to build a moon mining mission. I'm sure terrestrial supplies would last that long given that it takes at least ten years to build any sort of nuclear plant.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Go. To. Moon. Build. Bases. Learn. Interplanetary. Basics. Then. Go. To. Mars. Not. Other. Way. Around.

Re: Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Hopefully the lack of plans correlates with lack of waste of money. Not too hopeful though.

Re:Yeah

[Immerman]

Why? Mars is much easier. Moon is only slightly closer (energetically speaking).

Re:Yeah

[110010001000]

Space nutter detected by the statements: "The Moon is only slightly closer than Mars." And "Mars is much easier to settle than the Moon".

Re:Yeah

[Immerman]

Care to offer a counter-argument then rather than just ad hominems?

The moon is almost outside the Earth's gravity well. For non-perishable shipping purposes that's all that really matters - once you've escaped Earth the rest of the solar system can be reached for almost zero additional delta-V. More rocket just reduces the shipping times. Obviously that's a big deal for shipping radiation-sensitive humans, but they're only a small fraction of the shipping weight of an outpost, and can be sent once the supplies are already in place.

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

"The moon is almost outside the Earth's gravity well"

Um, no, no it really isn't.

www.distancetomars.com

You're totally clueless.

Re:Yeah

[avandesande]

How are humans a small fraction of the shipping weight when you include shielding, life support systems and food that lasts six months?

Re:Yeah

[Immerman]

That's physical distance, I'm talking energy distance, completely different thing. The energy difference is what's important for rocketry - as long as you're not standing still, physical distance can be crossed just by waiting to coast across it, no extra energy needed. Energy differences require the application of energy, no amount of time will cross it.

    Look at this crude drawing of gravitational potential energy around the Earth and moon for reference.
http://www.cyberphysics.co.uk/...

The Earth's surface has a specific potential energy of -62.6 MJ/kg, the moon's orbit (sans moon) only -0.5 Mj/kg (always negative, because zero energy is traditionally taken to be at infinite distance so that all calculations share the same zero). That means that once you make it from the Earth's surface to the Moon's orbit (+62.1MJ/kg), it only requires 0.8% more energy to escape from the Earth entirely. And once you're free of the Earth you can use gravitational slingshots to take you anywhere in the solar system without spending any more propellant aside from fine-tuning course corrections. The so-called Interplanetary Transport Network that most of our probes have taken advantage of. It's slow, but you don't need to spend energy except to get free of Earth.

If you want to get there faster, like if carrying astronauts who can't survive in interplanetary space for long, then you need to consider the orbital energy of the planets, in which case Earth is at about -444 MJ/kg, and Mars at about -291MJ/kg, a difference of about 152MJ/kg. So getting to Mars without gravitational slingshots takes about 3.45x as much energy as getting to the moon. Admittedly more of a challenge. On the plus side, if we start out orbiting in the opposite direction as the moon, we can at least slingshot around that to double our initial momentum, lowering the requirements to only 2.45x as much energy as needed to get to the moon.

Re:Yeah

[Immerman]

Well, if you're going to take six months then yes, that's a problem. On the other hand Musk is saying his planned super-heavy MCT rockets will be able to make the trip in a few weeks carrying, I think, a hundred colonists. Fast enough that you don't need the shielding. And he's pretty much managed to deliver on all hist claims so far.

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that changes everything. Facepalm.

Re:Yeah

[painandgreed]

Why? Mars is much easier. Moon is only slightly closer (energetically speaking).

Naw, the moon would be much easier. Energetically, there might not be a big difference, but timewise there is. Both in radiation exposure and return ability in case of an emergency, the moon is far more favorable for initial experimentation travel outside of LEO. The gravity is also less which makes it easier to land and get off of. Mars has an atmosphere which is too thin to help land and too thick to ignore. Combined with the higher gravity, the moon is much more easier once again. From there, you get trade offs. Mars has perchlorates and the moon as sharp regolith. I'd like to see a manned Mars trip, but it is by no means easier than the moon. I suspect that any serious plan for Mars will probably include moon trips to test.

Venus

[Thanshin]

Why not Venus?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Venus

[Rei]

I'm a big fan of Venus as a destination. Scientifically, it makes a lot more sense than Mars - we know far less about it, and there's a real benefit to the latency reduction provided by humans concerning Venus surface rovers (which can only tolerate the surface conditions for relatively short periods before they need to float back up) than to Mars rovers, which are fine just sitting around and letting their batteries charge while waiting for more instructions. A thorough Venus survey program requires "diving" rovers based on phase-change balloons to explore the surface, and an aerial base station to hold all of the power generation, coolant handling, sample analysis, high gain radio communication, etc hardware that you don't want to put into a vehicle repeatedly traveling into such hellish conditions. The easiest way to get a lifting gas on Venus is to split CO2 into CO and O2 (the same technology being tested on the Mars 2020 rover); O2 is a lifting gas there. And there's already N2 in the atmosphere. So if you have an N2/O2 envelope lofting your base station, you pretty much already have livable space. Combine this with how Venus is easy to get to with frequent launch windows, easy aerocapture/aerobraking, far lower dangerous ionizing radiation, dramatically more solar radiation, nearly Earthlike gravity, etc, and how the atmosphere at altitude is so earthlike that a person might even be able to step outside with nothing more than a facemask on**... it's very easy to make the case for Venus rather than Mars.

** - The known SOx and CO levels are dangerous to human eyes, but it's not certain that they rise to the point that they'd be dangerous to bare or lightly shielded skin for reasonable exposure durations. Either way, no pressure suit, cooling, or heating would be required.

I think the main thing Mars has going for it over Venus is "romance" (ironically). If people go to another planet, they want to have their feet on the ground, touching alien soil, hiking in alien canyons, etc, rather than just floating in clouds above a hellscape. Then again, I'm sure Venus has its own beauty to it.

Re:Venus

[denis-The-menace]

The best you could do at Venus is a space station.

The pressure and heat at the surface is so great that we can't keep robotic landers alive for more than minutes.

Venus also has no magnetic shield so radiation will be worst than the moon.

Re:Venus

[Immerman]

Because colonizing Venus would require one of three things:
- Massive terraforming efforts well beyond our current technological abilities, and likely to take millenia even after we start.
- Giant floating cities capable of surviving sporadic acid baths and the strong chaotic winds of the upper atmosphere, also probably beyond our current technology
- Bases capable of surviving high acidity and temperatures that melt lead, while shedding enough heat to avoid cooking the inhabitants. Lowered from orbit because there's no way we could build them in place under those conditions with current technology.

Notice a common theme?

Floating cities are probably the most viable with current technology, but to date we haven't even managed to keep a floating probe alive for more than a few days - The sudden pressure changes from strong up and down drafts wreak havoc with balloons. And even if we succeeded, what's the point? We can't get down to the surface to acquire mineral resources to fuel growth, there's only so much science you can accomplish with atmospheric sampling, most of which doesn't require human participation, and do you really want to bet the life of your children on your blimp-city never having a problem that would force it out of the sky?

And for the other two options - well then you still have to deal with the fact that Venus's day is 116.75 Earth-days long. Not a life-threatening issue, but damned inconvenient.

Re:Venus

[kwoff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (will Mars or Venus kill you first)

Re:Venus

[Convector]

Why not Venus?

Why not Zoidberg?

Re:Venus

[angel'o'sphere]

Moon has no magnetic field either.
And Venus has a suer thick atmosphere, so basically no radiation at all at heights that are interesting.

Re:Venus

[Rei]

Not a space station. A cloud station. I'm not sure how you missed that:

"and an aerial base"
" hardware that you don't want to put into a vehicle repeatedly traveling into such hellish conditions."
"an N2/O2 envelope lofting your base station"
"the atmosphere at altitude is so earthlike"
"just floating in clouds above a hellscape

The Venusian cloudtops between about 51 and 55km are the most Earthlike place in the solar system outside of Earth. They're not hellish like the surface. There's bad "smog" and no oxygen, but apart from that it's earthlike gravity, earthlike pressures, earthlike temperatures, etc, to a degree found nowhere else in the solar system except Earth.

Radiation is far lower than on the moon and on the surface of Mars because Venus has an actual atmosphere. Magnetic fields aren't the only things that shield one from radiation - an atmosphere is the other. None of the three (Mars, Venus, or the Moon) have meaningful magnetic fields, while the moon has no atmosphere and Mars a nearly irrelevant one. But Venus at "habitable altitude" has nearly as much atmosphere over it as Earth. The radiation levels a person would be exposed to there, without shielding, are high by Earth standards, but not generally dangerous. I've read a study which showed that even during the most major historical solar events known the flux in Venus's cloudtops wouldn't be enough to cause radiation sickness.

Re:Venus

[Rei]

You know very well that we're talking about floating colonies here, so why even mention the other two?

- Giant floating cities capable of surviving sporadic acid baths and the strong chaotic winds of the upper atmosphere, also probably beyond our current technology

1. They are only "giant" in the sense that blimps are giant: big, but not heavy or bulky. And weight and bulk are what matters in terms of delivery of payload.

2) There are no "sporadic acid baths". What exists in Venus's clouds is akin to bad smog on Earth - ultrafine mist droplets, each nucleated with an acid. Sulfuric acid is highly hygroscopic and self-dilutes. Most plastics (aka, what you'd make an envelope out of) are immune to attack by sulfuric acid.

Mars too has its own corrosives that are far worse with plastics - perchlorates, windblown abrasive particles and high radiation levels, to be specific.

3) There is nothing at all that prevents us from doing it with current technology. More to the point, we've already had balloons floating on Venus.

Floating cities are probably the most viable with current technology, but to date we haven't even managed to keep a floating probe alive for more than a few days - The sudden pressure changes from strong up and down drafts wreak havoc with balloons.

I'm sure that you know fully well that this isn't the reason for the Vega probes only lasting for a few days. They only lasted for a few days because they had no solar panels. They were not designed to last for more than a few days, they operated entirely on battery power.

The bobbing is A) not due to updrafts, but due to a natural cyclic effect in the balloons, B) a slow process, and C) only occurs in fully passive vehicles that do nothing to regulate their altitude.

We can't get down to the surface to acquire mineral resources to fuel growth

We most absolutely can, and have. It's not hard having a vehicle last for hours on the surface just from simple insulation and thermal inertia. Do you mean "get back up"? We can do that too, it's called a phase change balloon.

More to the point, Venus' surface minerology is probably one of the best places in the solar system to find interesting and rare minerals, due to its exotic conditions. There may even be metal snows there. And of the places we've landed and sampled, the sort of minerology we've found at most of them is associated with rare mineral deposits on Earth (we also believe that there's carbonatites there, which are likewise associated with rare minerals here).

and do you really want to bet the life of your children on your blimp-city never having a problem that would force it out of the sky?

I'd ask the same thing about a Mars colony. Except for the fact that a Venus blimp would have far more atmosphere, and be pressure-equalized with its surroundings, while a Mars habitat would contain far less air and be strongly positive-pressure relative to its surroundings. A one square meter hole in a a 10-man Venus balloon would be bad but you can probably patch it before any issues (altitude loss, oxygen loss, smog intrusion) get to serious levels. A one square meter hole in a 10-man Mars colony will have every person unconscious in under a minute.

And for the other two options - well then you still have to deal with the fact that Venus's day is 116.75 Earth-days long.

You really haven't thought this through, have you? Are you thinking that it would be tethered to the surface? It's in the atmosphere - the timeperiod that matters is Venus's superrotation period, which is about 4 days (2 bright, 2 dark). Or you could be near the poles and basically pick your day length. The moon, by contrast, has month-long days.

Re:Venus

[Rei]

Rather strange how he recommends 50km altitude. I mean, you could tolerate those temperatures, but they'd be quite uncomfortable. Might as well float several kilometers higher where temperatures are comfortable. Pressure is lower, of course, more like being on a tall mountain than like being at sea level - but who cares? It's not like you'll be breathing the atmosphere, you have to have a gas mask either way.

Also, he overplays the SOx concentration. It's actually not that high of a percentage of the atmosphere, it's not like diving in a tub of H2SO4.

Re:Venus

[Immerman]

Ah, a well informed argument. Wonderful.

Our probes have established that blowing sand is basically a non-issue on Mars. Perchlorates might present challenges, but likewise don't seem to be corroding the rovers much, so will probably be a non-issue so long as we limit the influx into our ecosystem.

Where the acid droplets are concerned - can you offer any evidence for that claim? It seems somewhat unlikely considering that the atmosphere is 150ppm sulfur dioxide and only 20ppm water vapor. Moreover, while that configuration may be stable while suspended in the atmosphere, it will almost certainly break down whenever a droplet collides with a solid object.

My understanding is that the Vega probe died while it's battery should have still had an operational charge, am I wrong? And regardless of whether it specifically dealt with much in the way of vertical drafts, they do exist in the atmosphere, and a city size blimp is going to have to not only deal with them, but deal with them only catching one side of it. Plus there's the constant lightning storms that dwarf anything on Earth.

Ballooning to/from the surface is going to be a challenge. Granted surface winds are only a few km per hour so you can potentially land and take off without too much trouble, but in the upper atmosphere winds average around 350km/h, and twice that in the midrange layers. That means that anything landing on the surface is going to be thousands of kilometers away from your city within hours, rather inefficient for the return trip, though if you can survive ~67 hours near the surface instead of only a few then you could catch the city as it comes around the planet again. The real challenge is going to be actually building a balloon capable of repeatedly navigating a 90-fold increase in pressure accompanied by a 450C increase in temperature. *Maybe* current technology could make a probe that could make the trip once, but repeatedly?

Even if we can pull it off, it's still not like you can just quickly scoop up the raw materials necessary to grow your city just lying conveniently on the surface, we'd almost certainly need permanent mining facilities on the surface, and possibly refineries and factories as well, those tend to be heavy, and the truly huge balloons needed to support them would likely have issues surviving wind shears and gusts. That's not something we're ready to do.

And if we're just drifting in the clouds, I really don't see any advantage to a cloud city floating over hell compared to an orbital facility, and a lot more risks. Do you?

Why would a Venus blimp necessarily contain more atmosphere than a Mars colony? More hydrogen for buoyancy perhaps, but atmosphere? That's going to offer minimal buoyancy. And it's not like containing a 0.5atm pressure difference is a major engineering challenge (presumably a Mars colony would not be kept at Earth-ambient pressure - it's a waste of effort when most humans can readily adapt to half that or less). And it's far less likely that you're going to get a 1m^2 hole in a multi-meter thick radiation dome than in a thin balloon skin. Anything creating such a hole would probably have already killed anyone inside, so the hole itself is not worth worrying about.

As for the long day, I specifically referred to "the other two options", aka the ones that involve living on the surface that you were so fast to dismiss.

Re:Venus

[Rei]

Our probes have established that blowing sand is basically a non-issue on Mars.

Martian dust? You mean the stuff that is believed to have killed Mars 3 through coronal discharge? That may have led to Pathfinder's battery failure? That did this to Curiosity's coin?

Nasa says:

Mars’ dust storms aren’t totally innocuous, however. Individual dust particles on Mars are very small and slightly electrostatic, so they stick to the surfaces they contact like Styrofoam packing peanuts.

“If you’ve seen pictures of Curiosity after driving, it’s just filthy,” Smith said. “The dust coats everything and it’s gritty; it gets into mechanical things that move, like gears.”

The possibility of dust settling on and in machinery is a challenge for engineers designing equipment for Mars.

This dust is an especially big problem for solar panels. Even dust devils of only a few feet across -- which are much smaller than traditional storms -- can move enough dust to cover the equipment and decrease the amount of sunlight hitting the panels. Less sunlight means less energy created.

In “The Martian,” Watney spends part of every day sweeping dust off his solar panels to ensure maximum efficiency, which could represent a real challenge faced by future astronauts on Mars. ...

“We really worry about power with the rovers; it’s a big deal,” Smith said. “The Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed in 2004, so they’ve only had one global dust storm to go through (in 2007) and they basically shut down operations and went into survival mode for a few weeks.

And the thing is, Rovers are a far kinder target than anything that humans will be working with. There are such big gaps between every little deliberate movement that they undertake, it's a very light workload.

There's no dust on Venus. There is some variation in clouds, but sunlight is constantly abundant. You even get almost as much power on the undersides of your panels as the topsides, due to reflection.

It seems somewhat unlikely considering that the atmosphere is 150ppm sulfur dioxide and only 20ppm water vapor

That's because the vast majority of the gas is present in the form of SO2 and to a lesser extent SO3 and H2S, not H2SO4. H2SO4 is only stable within a relatively narrow temperature range; it is not stable anywhere near Venus's surface (vaporizing at about 40km) far above where the vast majority of Venus's atmosphere's mass is. That said, the concentration is higher than I remember it. But:

it will almost certainly break down whenever a droplet collides with a solid object.

From the link above: "Below about 57 km, the vapor pressure of sulfuric acid and water over the cloud particles is relatively high, and therefore sulfuric acid clouds can evaporate in a relatively short period of time." So you're not going to end up with the surface sitting around with a layer of wet acid on it. And the mass loading is just so low, like 8 milligrams per cubic meter of air. That's just not much acid, that's like the concentration you find in volcanic fogs on Earth (like the one I was breathing a year ago :P). It's nothing like dunking an object in a vat of sulfuric acid. And again, most plastics are immune or at least highly resistant to sulfuric acid damage.

The biggest killer of plastics in general is UV radiation. On Mars, there's no protection from it. On Venus, there is.

My understanding is that the Vega probe died while it's battery should have still had an operational

Re:Venus

[Anonymous Coward]

Live at 50+ km above the surface....that's not a space station...that's an atmosphereic station...supported not by velocity, but buoyancy...

Re:Venus

[Rei]

I really think that there's two missions that are needed before one could contemplating sending a manned mission. One, we need a long-term atmosphere study mission, optimized for say 40-60km altitude and at least one year's duration, with some propulsion so that it can adjust its latitude. It's mission would be to get detailed characterization of the atmosphere (and how it varies), improve our surface maps, and practice maintaining a (small) breathable atmosphere in its lifting envelope (perhaps with a small lab animal payload, something with a naturally short lifespan that would be expected to die before the mission ended?). The other would be a phase-change balloon lander to demonstrate at multiple landings and ascents in different areas of interest - no sample collection capability of relevance, rather long time between dives, mostly automated actions on the surface, etc, but collecting enough data to get a better idea of exactly what is where on the surface and how hard it would be to get at.

With those things, I think a manned mission becomes quite plausible. And for a lot cheaper than Mars. The Hohmann transfer time is 2/3rds of what a Mars transfer time is, power is ridiculously abundant so you save a lot of weight there, you don't need shielding or (for the most part) structural strength in your habitat (the habitat is of course far larger, but it's a thin skin rather than a pressure shell), you can get your water locally from a gas/mist rather than a mined solid (again, generally easier and more reliable), local agriculture is far more plausible with the abundant light (although still probably not something you'd want to rely on for early missions), and so forth.

There's really only one thing that's tough about a Venus mission, and that's getting people back. Venus is a notably deeper gravity well than Mars, which is great while you're living there, but not so great when you have to leave.

Re:Venus

[Anonymous Coward]

Float with the winds (up to 95 m/s (212 mph) and of 1 Earth atmosphere of pressure)...they are mostly circular about the planet...that would also reduce the day/night disparity and reduce the relative wind speed experienced by anyone outside the structure (if the lifting bag(s) has large surface are relative to the suspended mass, it would drift along at nearly the same speed as the wind). I don't know the range of altitude that would result from vertical air currents, but surely this would have been pointed out in all of the proposals if this made it a no-go....it is buoyancy that tends to keep it at a fixed altitude. Leaks would be slow, as there would be little overpressure in the lifting bag(s).

Re:Venus

[Immerman]

I'm not sure how relevant a Hohman transfer orbit is for people, though it would doubtless be used for supplies. Either direction that's a roughly half-year journey - far too long for passengers without serious radiation shielding. So that means either you have a large mass of shielding that you have to accelerate at both ends of a Hohmann transfer, or you can make the trip much more quickly so that you don't need the shielding nor many supplies. Which is actually the more energetically attractive option would be worth investigating, but the fast route seems far better for morale.

You make some excellent points that I'm going to enjoy thinking about.

I still think Mars is more achievable with current and near-term technology, but Venus may well prove far more hospitable in the medium term (long term, I wouldn't even venture a guess). The mass constraints inherent in a buoyant city would make for some interesting social pressures.

Re:Venus

[Rei]

For cargo delivery I'd expect an Earth gravity assist - no need to rush things, it's fine if it takes a few years.

As for humans, overall, between the reduced transfer times and the natural shielding while at the planet, you do make the radiation loads on people a lot lower. You're absolutely right that it's not an issue you can just ignore - but any benefit is still a benefit, and cutting your transit times by a third, that's a real benefit.

For some hard numbers I just crunched: for simplicity I assumed a spherical habitat. At 250 meters diameter floating at 53,5km (24C outside temperature) I calculate a maximum of ~800 tonnes lift using normal Earth air as a lifting gas (if enriched in oxygen there would be more lift; also lift increases for a given diameter with decreasing altitude). I estimate a wet mass of the ascent stage to get a full crew back to orbital rendezvous at about 300-400 tonnes (a bit lighter than a Falcon 9, due to the somewhat reduced gravity and pressure vs. Earth) - all depending on the propellant combination and rocket details. However, at the very least the LOX would be made locally, and probably the fuel (H2 or methane, presumably), so what you actually have to bring to Mars (assuming local fuel) would be around 30 tonnes (again, a bit less than Falcon 9 + Dragon). I estimate the skin of the habitat (at 0,25kg/m^2) at 15 tonnes. Double that to 30 tonnes for after you add in propulsion, ballonets, stringers, etc. Add one tonne of solar panels (any more would be overkill with such a high insolation), a few tonnes of walkways/ladders (internal, external) and an airlock, a tonne or so of tankage to hold water (for local needs and surface probe cooling), a couple tonnes of air processing hardware (CO2 scrubbing, O2 generation, etc), a couple tonnes of aeroponic plant support/growth hardware if you want lots of local greenery, half a dozen tonnes of housing space and furnishings for sleep, lab environment, half a tonne of lab and communications gear, a tonne of batteries and wiring.. you get the drift, all of your normal colony stuff. You end up probably in the ballpark of 80-100 tonnes delivered (not counting surface probes, which could be launched as their own missions on much smaller craft). The rest of the lofted mass is made up of what you produce locally from the atmosphere - breathing air, return rocket propellant, water, plant mass, etc (you'd still have the potential to make use of plenty of surplus lift to hold future expansions - more people, new mineral processing equipment, etc).

The airship is basically is its own entry system, if you bring a couple tonnes of hydrogen or helium for the initial in-space inflation; inflatables are being tested for reentry here on Earth, and the test systems have far lower cross section than this (high cross section is good when it comes to reentry - the bigger the cross section, the higher up you can begin your deceleration, the greater your surface area to radiate heat from, and the further away from your craft the primary shocks are; with something this big, reentry should impart only trivial heat loads - although detailed modeling and testing would be a must!). It would settle out at very high altitude (having little mass onboard) and start to sink as it produces water, propellant and swaps out its initial atmosphere for a locally produced one. Like with (most) Mars mission proposals, humans to a Venerian habitat would be delivered on a second mission after the habitat is fully established and ready for habitation (unlike Mars, on Venus they could parachute, glide, and/or propeller to their destination).

To put these numbers in perspective, Musk's Mars Colonial Transporter concept (from what we know of it so far) is designed to deliver 100 tonnes to the surface of Mars (aka, including landing).

As a plant nut and person who loves open spaces, a Venus colony environment appeals to me more than a Mars colony environment. As much as I'd love to be able to "go on exploration walks" outside like Mars allows (al

Re:Venus

[Rei]

Whoops, I got nitrogen and oxygen backwards... correcting it adds an additional ~70% lift to what I calculated. So the structure doesn't actually need to be that big (I had already given it lift capability in excess of what would really be needed anyway).

Re:Venus

[Immerman]

An intruiging idea. I think a lot of it would apply well to Mars as well - no reason you couldn't have aeroponics everywhere there too, given nuclear power or vast solar arrays for the lighting. Create a large football-stadium style dome and you've got a great park if you want "open air", and of course there would likely eventually be large inflated (or glasslike) domes for farming radiation-resistant plants,

As for opressiveness, once a wall is opaque, you can't really perceive how thick it is. And I'm not sure how attractive Venus would be in comparison - sure, you may get a lot more windows, but if you're hovering at an altitude for Earthlike conditions, you're roughly in the middle of the cloud layer, so visibility will be limited to gaps between clouds. It would be great if you could float just above them, but at that altitude you're down to about -70C ambient temperature and less than 1/10atm. Not exactly conductive to a balloon city.

There's also those ever-present lightning storms all around you - that's going to be noisy, and a serious maintenance issue. I like a good thunderstorm probably more than most, but I don't want to live in the middle of one 24-7. And how do you plan to prevent lightning strikes through your habitat? An ion shield such as trees commonly deploy might help, but that's going to be a lot to create and maintain, and isn't 100% effective, so you'll still have to regularly patch large scorch holes and any equipment that gets hit. There's a reason aircraft strive to avoid thunderstorms.

That also brings up an issue with solar panels - not only will their conductive components tend to act as lightning rods (intercloud lightning travels horizontally as easily as vertically), but since you're in the middle of the cloud layer they won't actually be getting anywhere near as much sunlight as they would in orbit, maybe not even as much as they would on Earth or Mars, after all there's no such thing as a clear day on Venus. I don't suppose you know how opaque the Venusian cloud layers are? I imagine the probes would have offered a fairly accurate assessment. And while you could float solar panels above the clouds easily enough, the steep wind shear with altitude means you couldn't keep them tethered to your city (even if stringing miles of electrical cable through a thunderstorm wasn't a really bad idea to begin with)

Also, one other point to consider, is what would the actual radiation exposure be? If the ambient pressure is ~1atm, then you have roughly as much air above you as you would on Earth, but without a magnetosphere you're going to be counting on that air to block a lot more radiation. Especially since the solar bombardment portion will be 80% higher than on Earth, and 4.4x times higher than Mars. Of course that's mostly solar wind, whose relatively low-energy charged particles should mostly be rapidly stopped by atmospheric collisions. It's the cosmic rays that are the real issue.

Re:Venus

[Rei]

Plant cultivation is far, far harder on Mars, for many reasons.

1) Natural light: the solar constant is 1/5th as much on Mars as on Venus, and you're guaranteed to have dust clinging to your greenhouse glazing. More on this later.

2) Electricity: Same for solar power. And fission power systems (as opposed to radiothermal, which is far too weak) are 1) a rather expensive line-item to your development costs, 2) heavy to transport, and 3) complex (complexity is not good when it comes to operation in space). Beyond this, most people vastly underestimate how much power it takes to grow plants under lights - you need 1-2 orders of magnitude more area of solar panels than the area of plants you can grow. And the size of the LED lighting systems you'd need is very significant in its own right. Plants consume way more light to grow than most people give them credit for. The real world isn't The Martian where one can grow potatoes on normal room lights ;)

3) Room: Abundant, practically unlimited space comes free with a Venus colony. Space is extremely expensive on a Mars colony - it's a pressure vessel. Another downside to limited space: plants don't like it. It leads to humidity and temperature instabilities and buildups of gases like ethylene that are far more poisonous to plants than carbon monoxide is to humans. These gases break down, particularly in sunlght, so in big areas they're not a huge problem - but in confined spaces, they can deform and kill your plants readily. Pests and diseases also thrive much more in confined spaces.

(My comments on plants come from experience: I grow a small "jungle" in an indoor environment, entirely on artificial light)

So, while it is of course possible to grow plants on Mars, it's far, far easier on Venus.

As for opressiveness, once a wall is opaque, you can't really perceive how thick it is.

Indeed, I wasn't talking about wall thickness :) Just the issue of being enclosed in small spaces. Most designs call for integrating as many windows as they can, but that's always going to be limited - windows are a lot heavier for a given amount of surface area and can't be shielded for radiation exposure.

And I'm not sure how attractive Venus would be in comparison

So, you don't get a landscape, that's true - the surface isn't visible there. But at the desirable altitudes, there is still a "view", the clouds are dynamic there. A few kilometers further up and it's just a continuous haze (which may lead to rainbow effects below, there are some papers debating this ;) ), but in the "earthlike" layers clouds will come and go. Like living among the clouds on Earth.

But no, you don't get a landscape outside. Your landscape is the Garden of Eden you make inside, surrounded by clouds. :)

There's also those ever-present lightning storms all around you - that's going to be noisy, and a serious maintenance issue

The current state of research isn't "ever-present lightning". Again, unfortunately our knowledge of Venus is so poor compared to Mars, so it's hard to make definitive statements. But lightning appears to be "about" as common on Venus as it is on Earth.

Another thing that we need to learn more about is atmosphere variation. We've seen what appears to be significant variations in sulfur levels on Venus over time - it seems that the sulfur may be the result of frequent or continuous volcanic activity. So how the atmosphere will vary over time is an important question to be able to answer before we can send humans.

And how do you plan to prevent lightning strikes through your habitat?

Again, we don't know the distribution of lightning between a) different altitude layers, b) different latitudes, and c) over time. We actually don't know at this point if it's ever a risk at all -

Re:Venus

[Immerman]

Actually, high-efficiency solar panels are approaching 40% conversion efficiency, so you'd only need about 6x the area of solar panels to provide earth-equivalent lighting on Mars. And presumably shade-loving plants would be quite popular. Also, fission reactors don't have to be particularly heavy - the Russians have made a fairly efficient model designed to work equally well on in space or planetside, though I can't remember the name. Something about lots of nested metal shells if I recall correctly.

Okay, I had a feeling that it was Earth's atmosphere blocking most of the radiation, and the magnetosphere mostly protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. Which is dangerous in its own right, but isn't going to make it very far through an atmosphere. 8CT scans a year is nothing to sneeze at though. It may not kill you directly, but just two abdominal CT scans, with and without contrast, are considered to pose a moderate cancer risk. Whatever that means in real terms like expected reduction in life expectancy.

If light levels are comparable to Earth that is indeed very promising. The lightning storms though, from what I had found the little data we have suggests that ambient levels are comparable to a violent Earth thunderstorm. Perhaps we'd get lucky and they could be avoided, but it seems unlikely to be 100%. And considering the fact that we're roughly in the middle of the cloud layer, it seems naively optimistic to think the slight variations in altitude we could achieve without either freezing or cooking would somehow avoid a conveniently narrow electrically active layer.

And I'm not sure it's possible to make a faraday-caged balloon that can handle lightning-bolt amperage and still be light enough to float. At least not unless you scaled the thing up to huge levels. Though perhaps running the numbers would look more promising, especially if using something like a highly conductive graphene skin. Perhaps if coupled with an ion shield so that most of the current would flow through the ionized air rather than the conductive skin... but the skin is probably going to be a far more attractive path, at least until it vaporizes.

Still, well worth gathering more data to assess viability.

Explosive do not remove debris

[aepervius]

Explosive allows to make the stuff "shovel-able", breaking big chunk into smaller one. You still need the excavator to shovel the stuff out. You would also need something like it on the moon, but it is not that far away.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[butchersong]

That is a valid point but gravity is lower as well. You'd only need the abilty to move 38% the weight you would on earth right? It wouldn't be glamorous work but given a winch and a few men...

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[110010001000]

All you need is a winch. Oh and charges. And a drill. Keep making your list. Eventually you will need the kitchen sink. There is no Home Depot on Mars.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[sycodon]

So...we need legions of illegal aliens on Mars then?

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[Anonymous Coward]

For such a young man it is said that your imagination is already dead.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[JeffOwl]

Wouldn't we all be illegal aliens on Mars? I wouldn't even know where to get a visa if I wanted one.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[110010001000]

I have plenty of imagination. Read Kim Stanley Robinsons excellent Mars books. But it is just imagination, not realistic. People like you confuse sci-fi with science. They are two different things.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[Flavianoep]

Eventually you will need the kitchen sink.

Literally.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the idiot here.

You don't think a winch would be a standard piece of equipment for a Mars colony? Is the wheel and lever too heavy and complicated too?

Yes they are going to bring a winch. Probably a hammer and some screwdrivers as well.

Let me make your next post for you.

Hammers! Now they have to bring hammers!

I think we are done here.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[110010001000]

Of course. They just bring a winch. They can eat the winch if they get hungry. In their cave.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading someone else's stories does not make one imaginative so unless you are claiming to be KSR you still have no imagination.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[Anonymous Coward]

I can imagine more fanciful things than KSR ever did. But it is just imagination, not reality. In the real world we have constraints by real physical immutable laws. You aren't going to be living on Mars.

Re:Explosive do not remove debris

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, *nobody* would be an illegal alien on Mars, due to a treaty agreeing that no nation can lay claim to territory off of Earth.

Re: Explosive do not remove debris

[ZeroWaiteState]

The treaty was signed, but was it ratified? And who agreed to it?

Re: Explosive do not remove debris

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly no government representing Mars is among the signatories, so prepare to be arrested by Tars Tarkas on arrival

NASA has no plan

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA no plan

Thanks for informing. I didn't know that!

Realisitically, if anywhere...

[countach44]

I know many are saying we should go back to the moon first... and we probably will, if anywhere. It makes sense for all the reasons the other posters listed. But, NASA isn't 100% responsible for calling the shots... and as James Cook said, "Never underestimate the incompetence of government."

Unrealistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, unless you can manufacture the rockets directly on Moon, there is little reason to launch from there. You would not only have to create a whole new industry on the moon, you would also still have to send shipments to the moon before it gets shipped to Mars adding another logistical step. Not to mention the crew and money required to handle a moon base. They can barely handle a single large mission, what makes people think they can handle a moon base which is a greater scale then the international space station.

Lost is a tricky word

[Overzeetop]

The technical ability to go to the moon, or even low earth orbit, is at our finger tips. The practical ability to do so today does not exist in the NASA storehouses.

The mathematics required to go to the moon and return was at least half the battle. Anyone who has had to slog through Battin knows that pain. But we are, to a certain extent, beyond that now. Our ability to simulate orbital mechanics and transfers far exceeds anything imaginable back in the last 50s and early 60s. NASA didn't not land rockets back on earth like SpaceX because they didn't think it would be more convenient, they didn't do it because the entire computational infrastructure that existed couldn't handle the mechanics.

Just about everything that was done has been advanced since the Apollo era. Will we need to re-invent some things? Sure, but in many cases the materials, technologies, and capabilities we have today would make all but the lessons learned books* obsolete for new construction.

We haven't really "lost" anything but the will. And by will, I mean solid, long-term funding commitments.

*yes - they do exist. They have been written for many missions and you can browse through them at several NASA libraries.

Re:Lost is a tricky word

[Anonymous Coward]

The math was a major part, but so was the physical implementation. The design specs and component purposes of the Saturn series rockets are gone. There are groups attempting to re-create large scale rockets, but they are still in various stages of struggling with low-earth orbit levels of energy. All the museum pieces are stripped down shells, not even worth trying to start from them because the parts that make for a good museum piece are the least important to any implementation.

Much has advanced beyond what was dreamt of by the scientists and engineers of the Apollo program, but also much that was known has been lost. Improvements on one side do not negate the need to rediscover the other.

Re:Lost is a tricky word

[belthize]

What do you mean by gone ? Once somebody has the bright idea of using round things to move other things the process of re-inventing the wheel is trivial. It's definitely frustrating to watch folks re-invent it but it take progressively less effort.

You make it sound as if they couldn't build the Saturn now if they had to, what you really mean is they can't simply start manufacturing it. The design concepts are not 'lost'.

Re:Lost is a tricky word

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a great deal of real difference between a basic concept and an implementation. Especially when that implementation requires the controlled combustion of 2,160 tons of high quality kerosene and liquid oxygen. The design details have been lost, meaning that no, they cannot build a Saturn 5 today. People are rediscovering those details, and (optimistically) doing so in better modern implementations, but they still have a way to go.

Re:Lost is a tricky word

[belthize]

Ok from a pedantic view then I agree, it would be exceedingly hard to rebuild the SaturnV. But that's the wrong question because building a SaturnV is only interesting from a historic perspective. The real question is have we lost the ability to build a high mass launch vehicle and the answer is definitely no.

The SaturnV had a 140,000KG mass to LEO capability. The Block-2 will have a comparable 130,000KG mass to LEO capability. Admittedly there's not one sitting on a launch pad right now but that's because there was never a need for it. Now that there's a perceived need we're building one. It's in the design and testing phase now but that's because they are in fact bloody complicated.

The whole 'we can't build a SaturnV' meme is interesting as a testament to the failings of compartmentalized design and poor record keeping but it's not evidence of some lost technical ability. We're not any dumber now than we were 50 years ago, or smarter for that matter. About all one can say is there's more headwind now from bureaucracy than there was 50 years ago but that's a process problem not a technical problem.

Re:Lost is a tricky word

[Anonymous Coward]

Pipes, pumps, seals, lubricants, operating temperatures, vibration, materials, materials, materials...

Re:Lost is a tricky word

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the concepts are, in fact, lost. Aside from deteriorating documentation, there's also the issue of missing documentation. I am fully aware that NASA does have all the blueprints, etc., but as anyone who has struggled with Ikea furniture knows, there's a lot more to it than that, such as lab notebooks and memos. Now, much of it may just be in storage somewhere (and there's a lot of old documentation to sort through to find it), but there is also quite likely documentation that is either gone or destroyed.

The biggest issue is the hands-on expertise that we lack. You are correct that it will likely require less effort than before, assuming the funding to back it up is there, but as it stands right now, we wouldn't even be able to start building the infrastructure to manufacture.

You wouldn't have a plan either

[Overzeetop]

Imagine a project at work that will take a year. You've been commissioned to do a study and you present it with the schematics. Good, now go do it.

Oh, I can only guarantee you that I will give you time to work on it for the next month, and in a month I'll tell you if you have time. I'll need you to develop a complete spec and fixed manpower pricing. But you won't have anyone to work on that, because I need all your people to be working on my other pet project.

Fast forward 6 months:

So why haven't you worked on this? Oh, and by the way, your boss is about to retire. His replacement almost certainly doesn't care about this project.

We'll call you in in 6 more months to yell at you for not being complete.

Re:You wouldn't have a plan either

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have to imagine...well they don't actually yell for not being complete, they just re-prioritize projects and funds. Oh and the studies are for 3-5 year projects. At anytime a redflag could cause it to be put on hold and maybe resume one from last decade.

Re:A politician didn't follow through on a promise

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the world coming to?

What you think they voted 50 + times to repeal Obamacare and got anything done? You think They will let Obama get any credit for a hypothetical future landing on mars? In an Election Cycle no less? I have some ocean front property to sell you on the big island in Hawaii.. I hear it is brand spanking new!

The technology is not ready

[Anonymous Coward]

We are very, very far from having what it takes to make a travel to mars and be able to do something meaningful there. I'd risk we are at least 500 years from it. Making such a trip now is nothing short of suicidal and we would be better spending the resources learning to protect our own and only planet.

I Have A Simpler Plan

[zenlessyank]

All we really need to do is enslave the 1/3 of heaven that has been cast down here with us and make them build our shit on Mars. I think it is funny that we spend all this money on the search for alien life when we have documented evidence that the little mutherfuckers are right here on Earth. I personally would love to have a few enslaved demons to wash my car and cut the grass.

Re:I Have A Simpler Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

You've gone off your meds again.

coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

This couldn't have anything to do with announcements that Russia is building a Moon lander, could it? Nahhhhhh.

Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell.

I'm not going to point fingers, but

[backwardsposter]

Look at the budget for NASA. It's one thing to say "This is our plan sometime" and another thing to invest in it

Re:A politician didn't follow through on a promise

[bondsbw]

Obama should get about the same amount of credit for future Mars missions as either Bush, who both proposed manned missions to Mars.

"We have no plan to go to Mars..."

[davidwr]

"but we are going anyways, so please give us money."

Back of the napkin plan

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Find best spot to send around 4 people on Mars. Possibly one way. Probably early 60's-to early 70's without kids or family on Earth.
2. Launch and land some supplies ahead of their trip there.
3. Increase altitude of ISS
4. Launch components of a Mars craft to ISS to construct
5. Include radiation shielded room and components, lead vests, water storage around the central room.
6. Have a landing craft descend to Mars while the other vehicle remains in orbit.
7. Setup habitats, but quickly dig out caves or find existing caves that can be transformed to an Earth like environment.
8. Explore, do science, setup a self-sustaining base that other humans can visit someday.
9. Work on building a spacecraft to return the crew to the orbiting vehicle. Which was resupplied from Earth remotely while the crew was on the ground.
10. Reconnect to ISS and take Soyuz down to Earth.

Fill in the missing details to make it work and come up with the best time frame to launch and return. There are plenty of smart people at NASA/EAS/ROSCOMOS/JAXA/India/Canada/elsewhere that can put a plan together. It shouldn't have taken 6 years to find out we have no plan. We might not have the launch vehicle, but work on it.

America To Boldy Go

[Anonymous Coward]

Backwards!

In the meantime: Mars-One

[neilo_1701D]

I had a look at the Mars-One website today. According to their roadmap, we'll be seeing astronauts entering the habitat simulations sometime this year.

Who needs NASA anyway?

(/sarc)

it's all in the game

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gentlemen, this committee finds you derelict in your duty to come up with a trillion dollar plan to go to Mars so that we can shoot it down and laugh you out of the room and then mock your plan in the press so as to score points against our political adversaries. For shame, sirs."

Moon colonization

[sjbe]

Living on the moon isn't that interesting, because there is almost nothing useful up there except for solar energy.

Think so? The moon has no atmosphere so it is potentially awesome for astronomy. The moon could provide a useful base for deep space exploration as its gravity well is much smaller than Earth's. It could be a source of raw materials. It may be possible to produce propellant on the moon. The moon consists of more than moon dust and reflected sunlight.

The goal should be to become self sufficient on Mars.

A fine goal but how do you get there? It's not hard to make a reasonable argument that colonizing the moon (which is much closer) could be a useful stepping stone to the goal of Mars and beyond. Putting an entire infrastructure to support human habitation on another planet is a monumental undertaking and we don't even have a fraction of a percent of the technology needed to do that. The Moon could be very useful in development of some of that technology.

If you can do that, you can make real progress towards colonizing the solar system because you don't have to bring everything from earth.

I could make the same argument regarding moon colonization.

Re:Moon colonization

[Anonymous Coward]

No atmosphere is definitely better, but putting a large telescope on the moon would be at least as difficult as a space-based scope (and making one in place would be astronomically harder). But Mars only has about .6% of Earth's atmospheric pressure at best, and on Olympus Mons it's about 200 times less. Aside from the occasional dust storm, it's pretty close.

The only thing that the Moon really has going for it is time. It's faster to get to, and faster to communicate with. There are situations where this is an advantage, but not as many as you might think.

Need way more than a few strong backs

[sjbe]

That is a valid point but gravity is lower as well. You'd only need the abilty to move 38% the weight you would on earth right? It wouldn't be glamorous work but given a winch and a few men...

And space suits and food and oxygen and habitats and tools and tools to make tools and water and communications gear and construction equipment and the list goes on and on and on. You are taking SOOO many things we have here on earth for granted. I'm as big a fan of working towards colonizing other planets as you'll find but I don't think a lot of people appreciate the difficulty of the endeavor unless you intend it to be a one way suicide mission.

Fantasy versus reality

[sjbe]

We know how to build ships that can reach 0.2c

Until we actually build one and it travels that fast that is not true.

Problematic is it to scale that for humans ... however I'm pretty sure most of us will witness the first probe going to an other solar system.

Not in my lifetime. Not in yours either.

Re:Fantasy versus reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Fastest[edit] The Apollo 10 crew; Thomas Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene Cernan achieved the highest speed relative to Earth ever attained by humans; 39,896 km/h (11.1082222 km/s, 24,790 mph, approximately 32 x speed of sound, approximately 0.0037 percent of the speed of light). The record was set 26 May 1969.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Unfortunately it seems he was off by a couple decimal points. Either that or there's some X-project we don't know about?

Asteroid Redirect Mission

[green is the enemy]

The congresscritters also heavily criticized the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM):

"This is a misguided mission without a mission, without a launch date, and without ties to exploration goals," concluded Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). "It's just a time-wasting distraction."

From the looks of it, this mission will probably not receive funding. It's a bit of a shame. It would have been a good opportunity to start developing asteroid mining technology. Perhaps no one is ready for that yet.

Enough of Mars!

[k6mfw]

Here we go again... NASA is doomed to keep a single course to Mars.

I think only reason they talk about Mars is if talk about the Moon, then need to put up some real money now to build transfer stage and lander. But talk about Mars because you can always defer those costs of hardware 20 years into the future for some other smucks to deal with. Also why colonize Mars? I don't see a huge land rush to Gobi Desert even though that place is 1000 times easier to settle. Reason is that place is a terrible place to live, we only fantasize about Mars because it is so far away.

Matula posted this on NASAwatch:

I blame most of the destination argument on the creation of the Mars underground in the 1980's. Prior to that NASA was focused on using the Shuttle for industrialization in LEO with projects like demonstrating the repair and return of satellites, building structural items in orbit, tethers, etc., all logical starting points for building a Cislunar industrial capability that would have given us the Solar System. NASA didn't even have plans to send robots to Mars. By advocating that we needed to skip the Moon and go rushing off to Mars they started this entire useless destination debate that has paralyzed space policy ever since.

Although their arguments made no rational or economic sense, falling back on outdated ideas like "manifest destiny" and painting Mars like a second Earth, they struck some cord among a very vocal hard core group that has shouted down any rational space strategy ever since. We see it now with Senators force feeding the SLS with money it doesn't need while starving commercial crew because the SLS would, in theory, be able to take astronauts to Mars. As a result the ISS is only one Soyuz failure away from being abandoned.

We need to give Mars a rest and once again spend the limited budget on building capabilities in space, space tugs, orbital refueling, lunar LOX, that would serve for going to all the interesting destinations beyond Earth, not keep wasting money on plans to go to a single one that is already well mapped and explored.

end quote

Re:Enough of Mars!

[djconsultingmeister]

Well said!

Re:Enough of Mars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also why colonize Mars? I don't see a huge land rush to Gobi Desert even though that place is 1000 times easier to settle.

That's a good point. Cost-effective basic technology for living in relatively extreme conditions is lacking because of there is still no need to design and build it. Earth is still too easy place to live in (fortunately) for us to create the necessary infrastructure for colonization beyond Earth.

Re:Enough of Mars!

[thinkwaitfast]

Depending on where you live, the Gobi Desert can pretty far away too. And while I do like to travel to distant and exotic places, it would personally take me a few years to execute such a trip (funds et al.).

I'm a big bag of water.

[duckintheface]

And so are you. Humans are delicate blobs of protein, fat, and carbs in aqueous solution or suspension. Not the right stuff for space. The only good reason for humans to leave the Earth is to travel to another hospitable planetary surface to establish a permanent colony. All else is engineering ego.

There is little that a human can do in space that can't be done faster and cheaper (when you count life support costs) by an AI controlling robots. But NASA has become a very conservative and bureaucratic organization that feels more comfortable doing what it has already done. For engineers this may be fun but it's not very productive. Once you've expended the boost energy to get out of Earth's gravity well, Mars is not much further away, energy wise, than the Moon.

And there IS a very good reason to establish a self-supporting colony on Mars. Survival of the species.

Re: I'm a big bag of water.

[Anonymous Coward]

we reproduce. so any use of us waterbags in space travel improves waterbag transport technology. that improves ability to relocate people offworld for colonization.(oneil habs or mars)

barely occupying earth orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

We're barely occupying earth orbit and haven't civilized the moon yet, than means mars is just delusional. There are several steps to reaching Mars.

Step one is to vote all that anti-science assholes out of Congress.

Step two increase funding for the space program.

Step three continue funding it even at the expense things like oil subsidies and tax breaks for investment bankers.

It is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

In SLS/Orion NASA has the basic lauch architecture George Bush envisioned to return us to the moon. Thanks to the foresight of congress fully funding SLS development, NASA will return to that goal after the limp-wristed dandy, Obama is gone.

At least sponsor this contest

[istartedi]

I'd at least like to see them doing something like this contest that I suggested here a while ago.. As it stands, getting to Mars is hard enough; but unlike the Moon I don't think it's practical without a robotic "advance team" to prepare the way.

Re:At least sponsor this contest

[Rei]

I kind of like the idea, with some variations:

It shouldn't be Nevada, nor Antarctica like someone else mentioned. It should be somewhere with near-surface permafrost, with good road access to keep costs down. Mars isn't a dry desert, nor is it a glacier, it's ice mixed in with sand, dust, muck... honestly, I think the Icelandic highlands would be perfect. The last time I was out there I actually ran into some geologists who were studying a new volcano there to help better understand Mars ;)

The contest should be NASA funded - it'd be a (relatively) low cost way for them to retire a lot of risk. They should solicit plans from a wide range of sources and fund half a dozen or more. It shouldn't just be "a rover". They should be given a standard cylinder that all of their hardware has to fit in (representing the landing craft), and a weight limit. The teams should be required to build their proposal and put it into a shipping crate, which would then be delivered and transported to the test site. They would then be powered on and left to their own devices, tasked to build the best "shelter" that they can.

If they could do it on Earth, they could (with some modifications) probably do it on Mars.

Re:At least sponsor this contest

[thinkwaitfast]

ran into some geologists

A long time ago, I used to develop science instruments for geologists who did field trips like that to understand Mars. Do you remember if one was from New Zealand and named Nick (don't remember his last name)?

Re:At least sponsor this contest

[Rei]

Honestly I don't remember the names, or recall any recognizable accent from the team lead (which would probably mean "American" since I'm most used to American English). I remember there was one guy who was from Germany, but he wasn't himself a scientist, he was just supporting the expedition. They were there last summer on the western edge of the lava flow from Bárðarbunga on Holuhraun.

Re:At least sponsor this contest

[thinkwaitfast]

haha. There a lot of them. On a related note, I did see an article in National Geographic maybe 15 years ago that had a large section devoted to him. I was just in the right place at the right time and got to work with many of the top experts on Mars and PIs for a couple of missions.

Re:At least sponsor this contest

[thinkwaitfast]

Found him..Nick Lancaster

Re:At least sponsor this contest

[thinkwaitfast]

http://www.academia.edu/783278... wow. he is old now. I knew him as a postdoc. Getting old sucks ;)

Re:Bernie sanders is a muslim

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little known fact that he was the offspring of a weathy South American landowner and a prostitute of kings. His birth certificate isn't even real.

Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

So your goal is to loosen up the ground with a couple (dozen? hundred?) tonnes of mining explosives? Okay, what's the next step?

Profit!

Re:Mars is impossible - obvious solution

[fahrbot-bot]

People always say: "oh we will *just* build underground". With what? An excavator you bought at the Home Depot on Mars?

Obviously we first need to build a Home Depot on Mars - problems solved.

Elon Musk knows why we must go to Mars and a plan

[frank249]

Elon Musk knows that the only way to ensure the long term survival of mankind is to start a colony off Earth. While NASA is constrained by the whims of Congress, Musk said the hell with waiting and started SpaceX so he could build his own rockets. SpaceX announced in May 2015 that they are positioning Dragon V2 spacecraft variants—in conjunction with the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle—to transport science payloads across much of the solar system, in cislunar and inner solar system regions such as the Moon and Mars as well as to outer solar system destinations such as Jupiter's moon Europa. Details include that SpaceX expects to be able to transport 2,000–4,000 kg (4,400–8,800 lb) to the surface of Mars, including a soft retropropulsive landing using SuperDraco thrusters following a limited atmospheric deceleration. When the destination has no atmosphere, the Dragon variant would dispense with the parachute and heat shield and add additional propellant.

SpaceX began development of the large Raptor rocket engine for the Mars Colonial Transport[MCT] before 2014, but the MCT will not be operational earlier than the mid-2020s. SpaceX have not yet publicly released details of the space mission architecture nor all the system components of the MCT, nor a timeline for earliest MCT missions to Mars. Elon Musk hopes to unveil the space mission architecture at the International Astronautical Congress in September 2016.

We know a few basic things about the SpaceX Mars architecture:

Two stages to orbit. First stage is a single booster with many Raptor engines which returns to launch site for reuse. Second stage is the Mars Colonial Transport, comprising a pressurized cabin section and a propulsion section, also powered by multiple Raptor engines.

MCT is refueled in earth orbit by multiple propellant tankers after expending its initial propellant load during launch. After refueling, MCT departs for Mars and performs a propulsive entry, descent, and landing on Mars. MCT is refueled for the return trip using methane and oxygen produced on Mars. It returns to Earth and lands propulsively. Both stages are 100% reusable. Nothing is jettisoned.

We also know that SpaceX will send Dragon spacecraft to Mars (using Falcon Heavy) before sending the first MCTs, which will be unmanned cargo ships for landing habitation modules and other surface hardware in preparation for the arrival of the first humans.

We don't yet know some of the technical details, including the number of Raptor engines on each stage and the precise stage diameter. We don't know how many distinct variants of the MCT will be produced (cargo, tanker, etc.) and exactly how they will be configured.

But mostly, we don't know the business model: Is this a hobby project funded by their commercial launch business, or is there a profit-making opportunity inherent to the Mars plan? To what extent is SpaceX banking on substantial funding from NASA, who might be able to buy rides from SpaceX long before they are able to send astronauts to Mars using their own equipment?

I don't know if the business model will be clarified as well as the technical architecture when Elon does the reveal in September. That's the part that has space enthusiasts genuinely scratching our heads.

President Obama is too busy

[Anonymous Coward]

Our nation's priorities at the moment:

#1: Hating on white people.
#2: Importing as many brown skinned foreign invaders as possible to make rich white people even richer
#3: Selling secretes and national sovereignty to the good folks in China, and Russia so that rich white folks have the money to buy lots of underaged hookers in Dubai
#4: Solving Man Made Global intergalactic Climate Change
#5: Disarming the USAian public so that they are less threatening
#6: Taking all the land in the United States and transferring it to the BLM to protect it from white people'
#7: Using governmental powers to force USAians to buy insurance from rich white oligarchs who will underperform and overcharge

These are our national priorities. How can we even think about going to space when there are white people with guns. We need to get our priorities str8 and solve the problems at home (white people) before we can think about tackling Mars.

Easyer and Cheaper is NOT NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Not going to happen.

NASA only has a 100,000 strong Press Corps to get to Mars and no one more.

All the money in the world

[FUD fighter]

You are correct, all the money in the world is insufficient. Which is why we need resources from other worlds/asteroids. People aren't going to leave earth unless they can make a buck or gain fame. As with royalty of old, we need government to fund exploration for future commercial development. I do not think it is a false dichotomy to say that we must expand or collapse. Certainly the Earth is not completely exploited but we will eventually tap out the easy resources. Is that the time to begin to act or now when we have resources to spare?

Trillion dollars

[FUD fighter]

For approximately 1.5 trillion dollars the world 2014 military spending. Lets use, half... nah a quarter of that directed to space. Plenty of money for maintenance and payroll. That give you $325 Billion for space development. 2014 total expenditure was about $65 billion so thats 500% more resources available. Give the engineers and scientists some money to burn.

Your country wants to opt out? No space for you! (literally)

DOH! This has OPENLY been the Obama NASA agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

Were your ears full of wax and your glasses out for repair in 2007 and 2008 when Obama openly campaigned on gutting NASA and shifting the funds to K-12 education??????????? It was in his damned policy papers!

The man's 2010 NASA budget proposal (with a very rare bi-partisan congressional majority puked-out) killed all American manned spaceflight (just keeping Americans going to ISS on Russian rockets for a few years to close-out the project).

Congress EVERY YEAR has ordered him to build the big SLS Mars-capable rocket and every year Obama's NASA administrator (Charlie Bolden) insists congress is giving him too much money for that project even as he slow-walks it and as the schedule keeps slipping says the slips are related to funding.

All the "we're going to Mars" hype on the NASA website during the Obama years is nothing but phoney PR and EVERYBODY at NASA knows it. The Congress hopes that the Obama years will not be a total loss for manned spaceflight to the moon and Mars etc because they are forcing development of the monster rocket that can enable such missions; it will be available to any future president who has a vision for NASA to actually DO something.

To know just how awful Obama is on NASA, one only need to notice that this is nearly the only thing in Congress that both Republicans and Democrats on the Hill have joined together to do over the objections of Obama. When Ted Cruz and Nancy Pelosi are on the same page and with so little friction that it does not generate any national news stories, you KNOW the situation is severe

This is not Star Trek

[Tenebrousedge]

A Ship that you can point in a direction and go.

This is not Star Trek. We do not have reactionless drives and unless there's a wild loophole in thermodynamics, we likely will. You are always going to be held back by the rocket equation.

A Ship with a multi mega watt power source

Ludicrous. Why would you even want to try to dissipate that much heat?

A Ship with several smaller vehicles for going to and from a planet

This is not Star Trek. There isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all solution for descending a gravity well. Hence why Curiosity's descent was so complicated -- and again, you run up against the rocket equation.

whittington remains an idiot

[WindBourne]

Seriously, this guy is an idiot.
Ok, he does not like ARM. Yet, he claims that it does not have any scientific or engineering merit. Neither are accurate, or even close to accurate.
To move part of an asteroid will require a new tug. This will require new engineering that will then be used for asteroid mining. it can also be used to save the earth from an inbound asteroid.
Then you have several astronauts in space around the moon for several weeks. We have not sent anybody beyond LEO since the 70s and none for several weeks. This will require new engineering to protect the crew and will provide a great deal of science about radiation.

finally, we have the boulder itself. The astronauts will be able to work on it, and figure out a number of things: Namely how to deal in lowGs.
If we are going to mars, it is very likely that we will land and stay on one of the moons FIRST. They also have low G. So, this really does make sense.

Finally, NASA does not have to re-direct all of its resources to go back to the moon. NASA has been hard at work on developing new private space's capabilities. In particular, they have over 4 companies working on different re-usable lunar landers.

Sadly, ppl like whittington is too wrapped up in the past to think of what Eisenhower and Kennedy wanted for NASA, which was that they would go above and beyond, not just repeat.

TFS Should read...

[painandgreed]

"Testimony at a hearing before the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Space suggested that NASA's Journey to Mars has produced exactly what Congress has allocated funds for, almost twelve years after President Bush announced the goal on Jan 14, 2004"