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Mars Exploration 2: Manned Missions (Concepts; Preparations; etc.)

eburacum said:
It would really be little different from the first white settlers of the North American continent, who left Europe with little expectation of return,
The colony of Roanoke springs to mind, as does the Darien venture. A non-return colony would need to be very well planned and provisioned. Launch windows for supply missions would be two years apart...

...but unlike Roanoke there would be constant radio contact. If we can keep in constant contact with Spirit and Opportunty, then communication with a manned colony would be relatively easy. We'd get to hear about every equipment failure and every death twenty minutes after it happened.

You are quite the optimist. :D
But yes, you're right - I think it's unrealistic, a lot like trying to run before learning how to walk...
There are so many things that could go wrong on a manned mission anywhere, let alone to Mars.
The only way to do it properly is to spend lots of money, and I don't think we'll ever be able to get anybody in power to take it seriously enough to do what it takes.
 
Looks like the idea is getting traction...

The Hundred Year Starship: The Nasa mission that will take astronauts to Mars and leave them there forever
By Niall Firth
Last updated at 8:26 AM on 28th October 2010

The mission is to boldly go where no man has gone before – on a flight to Mars.

The snag is that you’d never come back.

The U.S. space agency Nasa is actively investigating the possibility of humans colonising other worlds such as the Red Planet in an ambitious project named the Hundred Years Starship.

The settlers would be sent supplies from Earth, but would go on the understanding that it would be too costly to make the return trip.

NASA Ames Director Pete Worden revealed that one of NASA’s main research centres, Ames Research Centre, has received £1million funding to start work on the project.
The research team has also received an additional $100,000 from Nasa.

‘You heard it here,” Worden said at ‘Long Conversation,’ an event in San Francisco. ‘We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund.’
He added: ‘The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds. Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired.’

Worden said he has discussed the potential price tag for one-way trips to Mars with Google co-founder Larry Page, telling him such a mission could be done for $10 billion.
He said: ‘His response was, “Can you get it down to $1 [billion] or $2billion?” So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price.’

Depending on the position of Mars in its orbit around the sun, its distance from Earth varies between 34million and 250million miles.

The most recent unmanned mission there was Nasa’s Phoenix lander, which launched in August 2007 and landed on the planet’s north polar cap in May the following year.
Experts say a nuclear-fuelled rocket could shorten the journey to about four months.

Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is the most likely to have substantial quantities of water, making it the best bet for sustaining life. But it is a forbidding place to set up home.

Temperatures plummet way below freezing in some parts. The thin atmosphere would be a problem as it is mostly carbon dioxide, so oxygen supplies are a must.

Worden also suggested that new technologies such as synthetic biology and alterations to the human genome could also be explored ahead of the mission.
And he said that he believed the mission should visit Mars’ moons first, where scientists can do extensive telerobotics exploration of the planet. He claims that humans could be on Mars' moons by 2030.

News of the Hundred Years Starship comes as new research found that a one-way human mission to Mars is technologically feasible and would be a cheaper option than bringing astronauts back.
Writing in the Journal of Cosmology, scientists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, say that the envision sending four volunteer astronauts on the first mission to permanently colonise Mars.
They write: ‘A one-way human mission to Mars would not be a fixed duration project as in the Apollo program, but the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet.’

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z13dxhLvSq
 
Vid at link.

Humans on Mars by 2023?
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-humans-mars.html
June 7th, 2012 in Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Artist concept of the Mars One lander, a variant on the SpaceX Dragon. Credit: Mars One

Reality TV goes to Mars! Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp is leading a group visionaries and businesspeople who want to send four humans to Mars by 2023, and they say they can achieve their goal at an estimated cost of $6 billion USD. How can they do it? By building it into a global media spectacle. And oh, by the way, this will be a one-way trip.

“Who would be able to look away from an adventure such as this one?” asks Lansdorp in his bio on the Mars One website. “Who wouldn’t be compelled to watch, talk about, get involved in the biggest undertaking mankind has ever made? The entire world will be able to follow this giant leap from the start; from the very first astronaut selections to the established, independent village years later. The media focus that comes with the public’s attention opens pathways to sponsors and investors.”

This video is not supported by your browser at this time.

As far as the one-way mission the Mars One website notes, “this is no way excludes the possibility of a return flight at some point in the future.”

The difference between this mission and the one proposed by Jim McLane back in 2008 is that McLane wanted to send just one person to Mars.
However, the Mars One group says that once the first trip is successful and Mars becomes developed, it will be “much easier to build the returning rocket there.”

In a Q&A on reddit, Lansdorp said the biggest challenge will be financing.
“We have estimated, and discussed with our suppliers that it will cost about 6 billion US$ to get the first crew of four people to Mars. We plan to organize the biggest media event ever around our mission. When we launch people to Mars and when they land, the whole world will watch. After that a lot of people will be very interested to see how ‘our people on Mars’ are doing.”

But the big challenge is that the biggest expenditures will be building the equipment before they send people to Mars. “This is why we are building a very strong technical case now. If we can convince sponsors and investors that this will really happen, then we believe that we can convince them to help us finance it,” Lansdorp said.

As far as technologies, Mars One expects to use a SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy as a launch vehicle, a transit vehicle/space habitat built by Thales Alenia Space, a variant on the SpaceX Dragon as the lander, an inflatable habitat built by ILC Dover, a rover vehicle by MDA Space Missions, and Mars spacesuits made by Paragon.

The project website says “no new technologies” will be needed, but does any space agency or company really have a good handle on providing providing ample air, oxygen, energy, food and water for extended (lifetimes?) periods of time? Instead, the website provides more details on FAQ’s like, What will the astronauts do on Mars? Why should we go to Mars? Is it safe to live on Mars? How does the Mars base communicate with Earth? And the Mars One team emphasizes that this can be done with current technology. However, no one really knows how to land large payloads on Mars yet, so at least some development will be required there.

Who will go? Later this year they will begin to take applications and eventually 40 people will take part in a rigid, decade-long training program (which sounds very expensive) where the ‘contestants” will essentially be voted off the island to get to the final four astronauts. The selection and training process will be broadcast via television and online to public, with viewers voting on the final selected four.

It’s an intriguing proposition, but one filled with technological hurdles. I’ve just finished reading Ben Bova’s “Mars,” so I’m also thinking the Mars One folks will need to be on the lookout for micrometeorite swarms.

More information: http://mars-one.com/

Source: Universe Today
 
A one-way trip?
Oh, sure they'd find volunteers, but I'd wonder how mentally stable they'd be.

Not going to happen.
 
ramonmercado said:
Vid at link.

Humans on Mars by 2023?
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-humans-mars.html
June 7th, 2012 in Space & Earth / Space Exploration

As far as technologies, Mars One expects to use a SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy as a launch vehicle, a transit vehicle/space habitat built by Thales Alenia Space, a variant on the SpaceX Dragon as the lander, an inflatable habitat built by ILC Dover, a rover vehicle by MDA Space Missions, and Mars spacesuits made by Paragon.
More information: http://mars-one.com/

Source: Universe Today
So, an unbuilt and untested rocket, followed by an unbuilt and untested transit vehicle, followed by an unbuilt and untested lander, an unbuilt and untested habitat, an unbuilt and untested rover, and an unbuilt and untested suit.

Good luck.
 
kamalktk said:
ramonmercado said:
Vid at link.

Humans on Mars by 2023?
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-humans-mars.html
June 7th, 2012 in Space & Earth / Space Exploration

As far as technologies, Mars One expects to use a SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy as a launch vehicle, a transit vehicle/space habitat built by Thales Alenia Space, a variant on the SpaceX Dragon as the lander, an inflatable habitat built by ILC Dover, a rover vehicle by MDA Space Missions, and Mars spacesuits made by Paragon.
More information: http://mars-one.com/

Source: Universe Today
So, an unbuilt and untested rocket, followed by an unbuilt and untested transit vehicle, followed by an unbuilt and untested lander, an unbuilt and untested habitat, an unbuilt and untested rover, and an unbuilt and untested suit.

Good luck.

Far too many things that could go wrong.
Plus which, they'd need a lot more suits than astronauts...because the dust will cause a high failure rate.
 
It reminds, me a bit of Gregory Benford's The Martian Race about a privately sponsored mission to Mars, in an X-Prize style competition, except that they're supposed to come back in the novel.
There's also Terry Bisson's comic novel Voyage to the Red Planet. Where NASA has been sold to Disney and a Hillywood Producer, launches a mission to make a SF movie on location on Mars.

As for not coming back, the first European colonists of America, never expected to be able to come back and the voyage was probably potentially as hazardous as a trip to Mars with 21st century technology. Similarly, there were lots of extremely nasty ways to die in the process, and while Mars has no atmosphere to speak of, it doesn't have any locals who might be upset about incomers stealing their land.
 
Mock Mission to Mars Takes Scientists to Austrian Alps
http://www.space.com/16182-mock-mars-mi ... caves.html
Charles Q. Choi, Astrobiology Magazine Contributor
Date: 18 June 2012 Time: 12:39 PM ET

The Aouda.X spacesuit tests were part of a 5-day Mars mission analog field test performed at Mammoth Cave in the Giant Ice Caves of Dachstein, Austria, by the Austrian Space Forum and international research partners in April-May 2012. Suit tester Daniel Foeger and cliffbot are seen here in the Tristan dome.
CREDIT: © OEWF/Katja Zanella-Kux

In the largest ice caves on Earth, spacesuits and remote-controlled planetary rovers were for the first time tested in a five-day odyssey in the Alps designed to mimic potential future missions on Mars.

Scientists have long wanted to investigate Martian caves for life. Temperatures within such caves are very stable, and perhaps would be friendly to life. Caverns might also provide a more hospitable level of humidity than seen on the extraordinarily dry surface of Mars, and provide shelter against radiation from space.

"They would be a natural retreat for life, if it ever arose on Mars," said astrobiologist Gernot Grömer, president of the Austrian Space Forum, the agency that led the experiments in the caves. As such, researchers wanted to investigate caverns with space exploration gear to see how it handled the varied terrain within.

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Researchers targeted the Eisriesenwelt — German for the "World of the Ice Giants" — a labyrinth of caves in the Dachstein region of Austria that stays cold enough to freeze any water inside year-round, causing gigantic ice formations to grow within. Explorers might find either conventional limestone caves or ice-covered caverns or both on the Red Planet, "so basically the Dachstein Ice Caves offered nearly every terrain type we could think of on Mars," Grömer said.

In a freezing cold cave 4,265 feet (1,300 meters) above sea level, from April 27 to May 1, the Austrian Space Forum, in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other researchers from 11 countries on three continents, ran a battery of experiments meant to test the limits of potential Martian exploration technology. [Mock Mars Mission Explores Austrian Ice Caves (Pictures)]

"The Dachstein mission gave us a glimpse of what one day could become a part of history," Grömer told Astrobiology Magazine.


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The Aouda.X spacesuit tests were part of a 5-day Mars mission analog field test performed at Mammoth Cave in the Giant Ice Caves of Dachstein, Austria, by the Austrian Space Forum and international research partners in April-May 2012. Here is the view from the cave entry to the beautiful landscape (background: Hallstaetter Lake).
CREDIT: © OEWF/Katja Zanella-Kux
View full size image
Spacesuit

To simulate how astronauts might fare on the Red Planet, volunteers donned the shiny Aouda.X suit, an outfit designed to protect its wearer from a harsh alien world and simulate work on Mars. The 100-lbs. (45-kilogram) system took two hours to put on — its outer hull is made of aluminum-coated Kevlar-Panox textile, which creates an excellent thermal and biological barrier while maintaining mechanical strength.

Exploring another world can be hazardous work, and so the suit is designed to monitor its user. The innards were equipped with a complete sensory network that monitored the suit-tester's health, including body temperature, heart rate, and carbon dioxide and oxygen levels. At the same time, a flight controller monitored the health of the suit, including computer processor temperatures.

Although the simulator was not truly airtight like a real spacesuit, it could mimic all the major limitations a real suit on Mars would have, such as diminished sensory perception and the lower atmospheric pressure on the Red Planet. However, it also offered advantages of modern human-machine interfaces, such as voice command and gesture recognition.

Astronauts are almost never really alone on missions. As such, researchers kept volunteers in the spacesuit connected over radio to researchers overseas, who, via audio and video links, directed the volunteers to desired locations to collect ice and other samples.

Rovers

In addition to potential human explorers of space, researchers also tested a small fleet of rovers destined to explore other worlds. These included:

The Asimov rover of the Part-Time Scientists team in Germany, a competitor for the Google Lunar X Prize. The contest aims to land a rover on the Moon, have the rover travel about 1,600 feet (500 meters) on the lunar surface and transmit high-definition resolution images and video back to Earth.
The Magma White rover of the Polish Mars Society. The machine was equipped with the WISDOM (Water Ice Subsurface Deposit Observation on Mars) ground-penetrating radar system developed by LATMOS in France, which is intended to provide a detailed view of the top few yards of the Martian subsurface when incorporated into the European Space Agency's 2018 ExoMars rover.
Dignity, the first rover from the Austrian Space Forum, which is equipped with solar modules, pivoting cameras and a remote-controlled robotic arm.
The Cliff Reconnaissance Vehicle (CRV) of the French Mars Society, a "cliffbot" that maneuvers up and down cliffs with the aid of a cable.
Two aerial vehicles as flying cameras. The smaller one, a Quadrocopter drone, was able to fly within the cave to scout for potentially hazardous terrain. "We got aerial reconnaissance within the larger cave systems," Grömer said. "This would be in principle also thinkable for Mars, as there is less gravity, and with engineering modifications, aerial vehicles could be possible on the Red Planet." The larger vehicle, an electrical helicopter, took aerial shots outside the cave for outreach purposes.
One lesson learned regarding rovers was the great benefit of having a wheeled vehicle on flat surfaces and the cable-climbing cliff-bot for steep surfaces. "If we could combine those into one vehicle, that'd be highly interesting," Grömer said. "In fact, we are studying this option for a future field test."

Challenges

The suit posed a number of challenges its wearers had to overcome that might otherwise have been difficult to anticipate in the laboratory. For instance, the communications headset of one of the wearers, graduate student Daniel Föger, slipped down his face while he was crouching, and his helmet had to be opened up in the cave to fix it — something not possible if on the harsh surface of Mars. Although the suit has a backup radio system independent of the headset, such a mishap is nevertheless something future researchers would like to avoid, and the crew fixed the problem by taping on the headset.

More serious challenges were posed by rough, narrow, low terrain, slippery ice and the physically and mentally exhausting nature of the work. In addition, as cold as the caves were, excessive heat often built up inside the suit, and short breaks were needed for its thermal control system to cool it down.

Moreover, in order to find alien life on distant worlds, scientists have to make sure anything they discover is not actually germs from Earth. The researchers experimented with how much potential astronauts might contaminate their surroundings using miniature luminescent beads on their gloves to simulate microbial spores that people might have brought from home.

"Every mistake we uncover during these simulations we will hopefully avoid on Mars," Grömer said.


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The Aouda.X spacesuit tests were part of a 5-day Mars mission analog field test performed at Mammoth Cave in the Giant Ice Caves of Dachstein, Austria, by the Austrian Space Forum and international research partners in April-May 2012. Suit tester Daniel Schildhammer takes samples at the Dachstein giant ice cave.
CREDIT: © OEWF/Katja Zanella-Kux
View full size image
Lessons

In general, "working with the spacesuit simulator and all the rovers and instruments in this ice-covered site was like getting a first feeling what it would be on the Red Planet if we hit an ice reservoir in a subsurface setting for the first time," Grömer said. "It would certainly be an astrobiologist's dream."

The experiments at the ice caves generated tons of data the researchers will spend the next few months analyzing. They hope to present their ice cave data at the Mars Analog Conference in Morocco in October, Grömer said.

Still, the scientists have already learned a number of valuable lessons when it comes to future missions on Mars.

"At this point, the most important lesson learned is that, yes, we can do subsurface exploration, but we need to adjust our way of conducting Mars exploration significantly," Grömer said. For example, missions to Mars will have to become far more field-oriented as opposed to directed from crews on Earth, due in part to delays experienced for communication between the planets. The long distance between Earth and Mars means there can be a lag of more than 20 minutes just for one-way messages.

"The scientific decision-making process has to be shifted towards the flight crews," Grömer said.

In addition, although human and robotic space exploration are often pitted against each other as rivals, "we realized that rovers and humans do not compete, but rather are complementary to each other," Grömer said. "Robots are great for scouting and reconnaissance, but humans are much more versatile in conducting experiments. So, send them both."

The researchers plan to next test space exploration gear in the northern Sahara in Morocco in February 2013. The deadline for submissions for those experiments is June 15.

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.
 
Full text at link.

The Last Manned Mars Plan (1971)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... plan-1971/
By David S. F. PortreeEmail Author June 25, 2012 | 12:45 am |

As early as 1961, some within NASA proposed that a Mars expedition be made the space agency’s next goal after Apollo. NASA Administrator James Webb was loath to promote such a goal until after Apollo had achieved its politically motivated purpose of placing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. In Oct. 1968, Webb retired, leaving his inexperienced deputy Thomas Paine in charge. In Jan. 1969, as Apollo neared culmination, Richard Nixon entered the Oval Office. Nixon appointed the Space Task Group (STG), but otherwise placed a low priority on setting NASA’s future course.

In Oct. 1969, Mars supporters within NASA found comfort when the STG endorsed – with reservations – NASA’s own proposed blueprint for its future. The NASA plan was based on the Integrated Program Plan (IPP) developed by the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF). NASA’s plan culminated in a Mars expedition in 1981, 1983, or 1986, while the STG report only called for a Mars expedition by the end of the 20th century.


NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George E. Mueller. Image: NASA.

Nevertheless, many hoped that Nixon would follow the STG’s advice and declare a Mars expedition to be NASA’s next major goal. This optimism led OMSF to establish the Manned Planetary Missions Requirements Group (PMRG), which included representatives from NASA Headquarters and several NASA field centers. The PMRG can be seen as the successor to the Planetary Joint Action Group, which studied Mars landings and piloted Mars/Venus flybys between 1965 and 1967.

The PMRG first met formally in Dec. 1969. Not insignificantly, that same month OMSF chief George Mueller, the driving force behind the IPP, left NASA for private industry. Hoped-for White House support for Mars exploration never materialized, though the Nixon Administration paid lip service to a piloted Mars expedition by the end of the 20th century. At the same time, it slashed NASA’s budget, leading Paine to cut three manned lunar landings from the Apollo Program and cancel the Saturn V, the largest and most powerful rocket ever launched. By the end of 1970, Paine also departed NASA, which subsequently shifted most of its efforts to reusable winged spacecraft development. Nixon made the Earth-orbital Space Shuttle NASA’s post-Apollo piloted program in Jan. 1972.

NASA’s Mars aspirations died with a whimper – a call to NASA centers participating in the PMRG for reports summing up their Mars study activities. PMRG work at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas, resided in the Advanced Studies Office, Engineering and Development Directorate, under leadership of Morris Jenkins. The chief guiding principle of MSC PMRG work was “austerity.” According to Jenkins,

to improve the probability of a future [Mars] program. . .an austere version should be considered. . .uch a concept would be consistent with an initial expedition. . .[E]verything has been done to make [this study] a useful point of departure when national priorities and economic considerations encourage the mounting of a manned Mars expedition.



A manned Earth Orbit Shuttle Booster releases a Chemical Propulsion Stage with attached manned Mars spacecraft module. Image: NASA.
MSC called for an 11-year development and test period leading to a 570-day initial Mars expedition in 1987-1988. It assumed the existence by that time of a reusable Earth Orbit Shuttle (EOS) consisting of a winged piloted Booster and winged piloted Orbiter with a cylindrical payload bay 15 feet in diameter. The study rejected the notion of launching Mars spacecraft components in the EOS Orbiter payload bay because as many as 30 modules would have to be launched separately and brought together in orbit, yielding a “complex and lengthy assembly and checkout process.”


Fully reusable Earth Orbit Shuttle with manned Booster and manned Orbiter. Image: NASA.
MSC proposed instead to launch 24-foot-diameter Mars ship modules on the back of the EOS Booster with help from a Chemical Propulsion System (CPS) upper stage. The CPS, which would have a mass of 60,000 pounds empty, would hold up to 540,000 pounds of liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen propellants, and would use the same rocket engine and propellant tank designs as the EOS Booster and Orbiter. The EOS Booster would carry the CPS and Mars ship module partway to orbit, then would separate to return to its launch site. The CPS would then ignite to place itself and its payload into assembly orbit. The CPS stages would be refueled in orbit by EOS Orbiters acting as tankers and reused as the Mars ship’s propulsion stages.

Mars ship assembly would require 71 EOS launches. Launch 1 would place CPS #5 and the 110,000-pound Mission Module (MM) into Earth orbit. The MM, the Mars crew’s living quarters, would also serve as the Earth-orbital construction base during Mars ship assembly. Launch 2 would place in orbit CPS #6 and the 33,000-pound Electrical Power System (EPS) module, and launch 3 would place into orbit CPS #4 and the 12,000-pound payload hangar. Launches 4, 5, and 6 would place into orbit CPS modules #3, #2, and #1, respectively. Launches 7 through 71 would see EOS Orbiters pump three million pounds of liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen propellants into the six CPS modules from tanks in their payload bays.
 
Returning to the subject of dust and spacesuits, I've heard that somebody has thought further about the issue. The new proposal is for the suit to dock to the exterior of the spaceship, and for the astronaut to climb through an airlock into the back of the suit.
This way, the suit is never brought into the ship and doesn't trail dust everywhere. Clever thinking!
 
Vid at link.

Private Manned Mars Mission Gets First Sponsors
http://www.space.com/17360-private-mars ... nsors.html
by SPACE.com StaffDate: 31 August 2012 Time: 02:30 PM ET

If all goes according to plan, the first Mars One astronauts will touch down on the Red Planet in 2023.
CREDIT: Mars One / Bryan Versteeg

A Dutch company that aims to land humans on Mars in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent Red Planet colony has received its first funding from sponsors, officials announced this week.

Mars One plans to fund most of its ambitious activities via a global reality-TV media event, which will follow the mission from the selection of astronauts through their first years on the Red Planet. But the sponsorship money is important, helping the company — which had been self-funded for the last 18 months — get to that point, officials said Wednesday (Aug. 29).

"Receipt of initial sponsorship marks the next step to humans setting foot on Mars," Mars One founder and president Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "A little more than a year ago we embarked down this path, calling upon industry experts to share in our bold dream. Today, we have moved from a technical plan into the first stage of funding, giving our dream a foundation in reality."


"Mars One is not just a daring project, but the core of what drives human spirit towards exploration of the unknown. We are privileged to be a supporter of this incredible project," said Dan Petrovic, general director of Dejan SEO.


Mars One aims to launch a series of robotic missions between 2016 and 2020 that will build a habitable outpost on the Red Planet. The first four astronauts will set foot on Mars in 2023, and more will arrive every two years after that. There are no plans to return these pioneers to Earth.

Company officials say they've talked to a variety of private spaceflight firms around the world and have secured at least one supplier for every major piece of the Mars colony mission. The corporate sponsorship money will be used mostly to fund the conceptual design studies provided by the aerospace suppliers, each of which require 500 to 2,500 man-hours to complete, officials said.

Mars One estimates that it will cost about $6 billion to put the first four humans on the Red Planet. The company hopes the "Big Brother"-style reality show will pay most of these costs. The televised action is slated to begin in 2013, when Mars One begins the process of selecting its 40-person astronaut corps.
 
Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony
By Adam MannEmail AuthorNovember 26, 2012 | 8:31 pm | Categories: Space



Elon Musk doesn’t just want to send a person to Mars — he wants to send 80,000. According to Space.com, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX spilled details about his hopes for a future Mars colony during a talk at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Nov. 16.

Earlier this year, SpaceX became the first private U.S. company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Musk has never been shy about his ambitions to take human colonists to another planet, mentioning in the past that he wants to provide flights to Mars for about $500,000 a person. But now he’s talking about building a small-city-sized settlement on the Red Planet, starting with a 10-person crew in the coming decades to begin establishing and building infrastructure.

That first flight would be expensive and risky but “once there are regular Mars flights, you can get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to move to Mars,” Musk told Space.com. ”Then I think there are enough people who would buy that to have it be a reasonable business case.” Musk added that he sees the future 80,000-person colony as a public-private enterprise costing roughly $36 billion.

Science-fiction inspired plans are one thing. Musk still has many challenges ahead of him before such a scheme could become reality, including figuring out exactly how to deal with radiation on the way to Mars, how to land humans on the planet’s surface, and how to keep them alive once there. Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson interviewed Musk in the November issue, where he outlines a few ways that could help us get there:

Chris Anderson: How were you drawn to space as your next venture?

Elon Musk: In 2002, once it became clear that PayPal was going to get sold, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, the entrepreneur Adeo Ressi, who was actually my college housemate. I’d been staying at his home for the weekend, and we were coming back on a rainy day, stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. He was asking me what I would do after PayPal. And I said, well, I’d always been really interested in space, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do as an individual. But, I went on, it seemed clear that we would send people to Mars. Suddenly I began to wonder why it hadn’t happened already. Later I went to the NASA website so I could see the schedule of when we’re supposed to go. [Laughs.]

Anderson: And of course there was nothing.

Musk: At first I thought, jeez, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place! Why was there no plan, no schedule? There was nothing. It seemed crazy.

Anderson: NASA doesn’t have the budget for that anymore.

Musk: Since 1989, when a study estimated that a manned mission would cost $500 billion, the subject has been toxic. Politicians didn’t want a high-priced federal program like that to be used as a political weapon against them.

Anderson: Their opponents would call it a boondoggle.

Musk: But the United States is a nation of explorers. America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

Anderson: We all leaped into the unknown to get here.

Musk: So I started with a crazy idea to spur the national will. I called it the Mars Oasis missions. The idea was to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars, packed with dehydrated nutrient gel that could be hydrated on landing. You’d wind up with this great photograph of green plants and red background—the first life on Mars, as far as we know, and the farthest that life’s ever traveled. It would be a great money shot, plus you’d get a lot of engineering data about what it takes to maintain a little greenhouse and keep plants alive on Mars. If I could afford it, I figured it would be a worthy expenditure of money, with no expectation of financial return.

Read the rest of the interview. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... n-musk-qa/
 
Sleep problems could jeopardise future missions to Mars
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20937729
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

The Mars500 crew - pictured here before the mission - were to experience isolation and depression during their simulated journey

Some of the first results from a simulation of a mission to Mars show that some of the crew experienced isolation and mild depression.

Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests differences in the sleep patterns of the crew caused problems.

The findings suggest that not all current astronauts will be suited to interplanetary travel.

The Mars500 project investigated how crews would cope on a real mission.

Prof Mathias Basner, of the University of Pennsylvania - who was involved in the sleep study - says that the findings show that astronauts for any future Mars missions should be tested for their ability to cope without a natural day/night cycle.

"This illustrates that there are huge differences between individuals and what we need to do is select the right crew, people with the right stuff, and train them properly and once they are on the real mission to Mars," he told BBC News.

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"This illustrates that there are huge differences between individuals and what we need to do is select the right crew, people with the right stuff”

Prof Mathias Basner
University of Pennsylvania
Currently, no astronaut is in space for longer than six months on the International Space Station (ISS). The aim of the 17 month-long Mars500 project was to study the physical and psychological effects that the much longer journey to Mars might have on future astronauts.

The simulation involved six crew members: three Russians, two Europeans and one Chinese volunteer.

For much of the time, the men had only limited contact with the outside world. Their spaceship had no windows, and the protocols demanded their communications endured a similar time lag to that encountered by real messages as they travel the vast distance between Earth and Mars.

Nearly 100 different experiments were carried out to assess the impact of the journey on the men, and it is only now that the first results are emerging.

The sleep experiment is among the first to show what each crew member went through during their simulated mission.

The researchers found that one crew member lost his natural day/night rhythm completely. Instead of a 24-hour cycle, he slipped into a 25-hour day so after 12 days he was completely out of sync with his fellow crew mates. It was the middle of the night for him while his colleagues were working on the mission.

"You can imagine that that would be good during a real Mars mission when there are mission critical tasks planned during the day," said Prof Basner.

"He became somewhat isolated. For 20% of the time this crew member was either the only crew member awake or the only person sleeping which could potentially be a problem for team cohesion," he said.


Most of the crew members began to sleep more and become less active as the mission wore on, but one crew member did the opposite. He slept less and less during the mission until he became chronically sleep deprived.

All the crew had to carry out performance tests once a week. The sleep deprived member was responsible for the majority of the errors in the tests.

Another crew member developed a mild depression.

"Two crew members coped really well with this prolonged confinement and isolation," according to Prof Basner.

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Sleep deprivation is likely to be a real problem on future Mars missions. ”

Dr Kevin Fong
Space medicine expert
"But four of them had a problem where you would think you don't want to send someone like this on the mission or if you do, you want to know that this subject is vulnerable and train him or her properly."

Problems manifested themselves at between two and four months and so, the research team suggests, potential interplanetary astronauts could be screened for their suitability by being put through a much shorter simulation than the Mars500 project.

Another problem identified by the researchers was the dim fluorescent lighting which was not bright enough to simulate daylight and no protocol for differentiating between day and night in the simulated spacecraft. It was up to the crew members when to turn the light on and off.


The experiment even simulates surface operations at the Red Planet
"This is one of the take home messages," according to Prof Basner. "There has to be adequate lighting and it has to be strong enough to get the day/night cycle going and the time that the crew exposes itself to the light also has to be optimal."

Dr Kevin Fong, who is an expert on space medicine said that the research confirms that sleep deprivation is likely to be a real problem on future Mars missions.

"It needs to be taken seriously," he said. "Sleep deprivation is going to happen with crews and has the potential to affect mission safety."

Dr Iya Whiteley who is the deputy director at the Centre for Space Medicine, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said that there were also lessons to be learned for shift workers on Earth.

"Any individual undertaking accurate detailed work without normal day/night cycle will be affected, whether it is the air traffic controller on shift work, or nuclear power workers."

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Help Wanted: Astronauts Needed for Mars Colony (vid)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/ ... uirements/
BY NADIA DRAKE01.08.133:04 PM

Mars One, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands, intends to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023.

They need astronauts.

Anyone on planet Earth can apply if they meet the basic requirements. But obviously, the job isn’t for just anyone.

Today, Mars One released its application criteria. Among other virtues, astronaut candidates must have “a deep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust. They must be resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful.” And be at least 18 years old (no maximum age has been set).

The selection process will begin during the first half of 2013. Mars One experts and viewers of a “global, televised program” — think reality TV where the prize could be a trip to a dry, dusty world — will choose from among the applications. Those ultimately selected will be assembled into teams of four. At least six teams are supposed to be ready to launch in September 2022. But only one team will make the first trip to the Red Planet, and that team will be decided democratically.

“The people of Earth will have a vote which group of four will be the first Earth ambassadors on Mars,” the Mars One website says. Subsequent teams will be sent in two-year intervals.

At least eight years of training will be provided before launch, including simulated missions, practice in a restricted mobility environment, and lessons in electronics, equipment repair, basic and critical medical care. In 2016, the company plans to begin rocketing supplies to Mars, including spare parts, two rovers, and living units that can be assembled into a base once humans arrive.

But it’s a one-way trip for all involved: Once on Mars, there’s no coming back.
 
The last two articles cover the Mars500 and the MarsOne.

Clearly the Mars 500 is superior by 499. ;)
 
Nuclear-Powered Rocket Could Reach Mars for Less
http://www.space.com/19451-nuclear-ther ... ition.html
Francie Diep, TechNewsDaily Staff Writer
Date: 25 January 2013 Time: 04:59 PM ET

Illustration of a nuclear thermal rocket. Such rockets could be a major part of manned missions to other planets in the solar system.
CREDIT: NASA

A new online petition seeks to send people into space sooner, using a Kennedy-era technology that never had the chance to take flight. At We the People, a website that lets users submit petitions to the Obama Administration, one petition urges officials to "harness the full intellectual and industrial strength of our universities, national laboratories and private enterprise to rapidly develop and deploy a nuclear thermal rocket."

What does that mean? And should you sign the petition? Well, nuclear thermal rockets could play a major role in sending people to other planets in the future. The rockets are at least twice as efficient as current chemical rockets, which means they could carry more supplies, support heavier shields against cosmic radiation and take astronauts to other planets more quickly.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say we couldn't do Mars without nuclear thermal," NASA nuclear engineer Mike Houts said, referring to manned missions. "What it does is it opens up very attractive options for doing those missions."


Because of their increased carrying capability, nuclear rockets may ultimately offer a more cost-effective option for a manned Mars mission than chemical rockets do, Houts thinks.

NASA currently performs some research, led by Houts, into nuclear thermal rockets. However, in spite of the petition-signers' interest, the project is small. Its budget for hardware and contractors this year is just under $3 million. "It's really in the early stages," Houts told TechNewsDaily. "There are no definite plans to use the engine."

How it works

Nuclear thermal engines use a nuclear reaction to heat pure hydrogen, ideally to 2,800 degrees Kelvin (4,580 degrees Fahrenheit). This rapidly expands the hydrogen, which shoots out a nozzle to generate thrust.

Houts' team, based at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, is now focused on testing different fuel elements. For this work, they don't need to split uranium and start a nuclear reaction. Instead, they use radio-frequency heating to bring uranium-based fuel elements to sizzling temperatures, then flow hydrogen over the elements.

The researchers test coatings and the fuel elements' resiliency to rapid changes in temperature — repeatedly turning the heat turned off and on, which is likely to happen in a real-life rocket. Once they finish this non-nuclear testing, the researchers will move onto tests with a true nuclear reaction, Houts said.

Nuclear thermal engines don't pose the same danger of meltdown as nuclear power plants such as Chernobyl or Fukushima, Houts said. The operation of power plants creates fission products that accumulate. During a meltdown, those materials undergo radioactive decay, creating heat. A nuclear propulsion system, on the other hand, doesn't operate at high power before a launch and doesn't accumulate fission products that could cause a meltdown, Houts explained.

Nevertheless, he said his team will have to develop a system that won't accidentally turn on when it's not supposed to, which would expose nearby people to high doses of radiation.

Plenty of work already done

Houts' team's work builds on advances made at NASA between 1955 and 1973. The We the People petition mentions that President John F. Kennedy attended one of those tests. (He wore Ray-Bans.)

"That work progressed to a very advanced stage. They'd done 20 full-engine tests on the ground. It really was ready to go into the flight-development stage," Houts said.

After 1973, however, the Nixon Administration decided to focus on the space shuttle instead of sending humans to Mars. So research into nuclear thermal rockets was shuttered.

"What we're doing right now is using 21st century technologies or 21st century manufacturing materials and going back and recapturing what was done in the '60s and early '70s," Houts said. Should President Obama or a future president decide to use the technology to go to Mars or another planet, "we have a very good, very logical development path" to ready rockets for liftoff, Houts said.

He says he's glad people have enough interest in the technology to start a petition. "Any time people are expressing interest in those subjects, personally, I think it's great," he said.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, sister site to SPACE.com. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook.
 
Mars trip to use astronaut poo as radiation shield
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... hield.html
18:45 01 March 2013 by Jacob Aron and Lisa Grossman

For similar stories, visit the Spaceflight and Exploring Mars Topic Guides
The man and woman aboard the Inspiration Mars mission set to fly-by the Red Planet in 2018 will face cramped conditions, muscle atrophy and potential boredom. But their greatest health risk comes from exposure to the radiation from cosmic rays. The solution? Line the spacecraft's walls with water, food and their own faeces.

"It's a little queasy sounding, but there's no place for that material to go, and it makes great radiation shielding," says Taber MacCallum, a member of the team funded by multimillionaire Dennis Tito, who announced the audacious plan earlier this week.

McCallum told New Scientist that solid and liquid human waste products would get put into bags and used as a radiation shield – as well as being dehydrated so that any water can be recycled for drinking. "Dehydrate them as much as possible, because we need to get the water back," he said. "Those solid waste products get put into a bag, put right back against the wall."

Food too, could be used as a shield, he said. "Food is going to be stored all around the walls of the spacecraft, because food is good radiation shielding," he said. This wouldn't be dangerous as the food would merely be blocking the radiation, it wouldn't become a radioactive source.

Water 1 – Metals 0

The details of Inspiration Mars's plans have yet to be clarified, but the team has said it will be using "state-of-the-art technologies derived from NASA and the International Space Station".

One idea that is already under consideration by the agency's Innovative Advanced Concepts programme, which funds research into futuristic space technology, is a project called Water Walls, which combines life-support and waste-processing systems with radiation shielding.

Water has long been suggested as a shielding material for interplanetary space missions. "Water is better than metals for protection," says Marco Durante of the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany. That's because nuclei are the things that block cosmic rays, and water molecules, made of three small atoms, contain more nuclei per volume than a metal.

Water shielding also has another benefit – you can drink it. Such dual use is essential aboard a spacecraft, where space is at a premium. Applying this rationale, the Water Walls concept involves polyethylene bags that use osmosis to process clean drinking water from urine and faeces.

Sights and smells

Lining the walls of a spacecraft with layers of these bags creates a 40-centimetre-thick liquid shield. All of the bags would initially be filled with drinking water. The crew would then fill other bags with waste during the trip to Mars and swap them out for the now-empty water bags.

The osmosis-based processing is much simpler than the automated life-support systems aboard the International Space Station, making it less likely to fail during the long ride to Mars.

However, there are problems to be ironed out. The urine-to-water processing bags were tested in orbit on the last ever flight of the space shuttle in 2011 and found to be 50 per cent less efficient in microgravity than in ground-based tests.

Besides testing that the various bags work properly, the Water Walls team points out the more basic worry of dealing with the residual sights and smells. MacCallum made a similar point about the system to be used on Inspiration Mars: "Hopefully they're not clear bags," he said.

Solar danger

Not all bags need be equally unpleasant, though. The Water Walls concept also includes bags that scrub carbon dioxide from air, regulate temperature and grow algae for food – although NASA hasn't yet taken those to space.

Inspiration Mars also plans to have an external water tank and the aluminium skin of the spacecraft itself for extra protection. This kind of shielding should keep astronauts safe from lower energy cosmic rays, says Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, UK, who is working on creating magnetic "deflector shields" for spacecraft.

Organic material or aluminium is no defence against the burst of particles that occasionally spew out from the sun during a solar storm, however. "For this, putting three metres of concrete may not be enough to protect the astronauts," says Bamford. Inspiration Mars say they should be able to keep the upper rocket stage of their launch vehicle attached to the spacecraft for the whole of the trip, and point that towards the sun in the event of a flare.
 
David Shukman Science editor

Prospect of one-way Mars trip captures the imagination

Twenty years ago when scientists at CERN created the first page for the World Wide Web no one could have imagined how easily it would transform the ability of humankind to have conversations around the globe.

Nor could they have predicted that a web-based debate would have explored the apparently outlandish idea of volunteers travelling on a one-way ticket to Mars and setting up a colony with no prospect of return - all on live television.
The technology for that kind of space travel didn't exist back then. The TV show Big Brother hadn't been invented. And the three letters 'www' were known to only a handful of people.

But on Tuesday afternoon, in a Google 'hangout' - the first of this type of web-based dialogue to be hosted by BBC News - contributors from as far afield as Arizona, Paris and Mumbai shared their thoughts with us in London on a plan for an outpost where people would live - and die - beyond Earth.

A Dutch organisation, Mars One, is seeking volunteers for a flight that would take them to the Red Planet and leave them there. The costs would be covered, it's hoped, by TV rights and corporate sponsorship.

There is something about Mars that catches the imagination - its bloody colour, its role in mythology, the terrible track record of attempts to land on its distant and dusty surface, and the prospects of finding forms of alien life.

I checked with Bas Lansdorp, boss of Mars One, for the latest number of people to sign up so far: 30,000 people had paid the 30 euro deposit by the end of last week - and that number is probably far higher now.

Applicants' videos on his website capture an extraordinary level of excitement about the chance of making the journey. So what is it that drives people to want to leave this planet and risk everything on another?

We discussed that question with Melissa Ede, who describes herself as a transgender woman, and has signed up as a contender to be selected for the Mars One mission - "failure isn't in my vocabulary," she told us before the webcast.
For her, it was about excitement and the need to explore. "How do we know it's not possible?" she asked.

That was in response to comments I'd made about the very high number of very large obstacles that need to be overcome before anyone's boots will scuff the soils of Mars.
For a start, space is difficult and expensive. There aren't colonies on the Moon or Mars right now for a reason: the challenges and costs are huge.

The preferred rocket, Falcon Heavy, has to yet to be tested by its makers, SpaceX, even though the Mars One plan calls for the first demonstration flight to land on Mars in 2016.

A satellite is due to be parked above Mars in the same year to act as a relay for live TV pictures. A British firm, Surrey Satellites, confirms to me that it has been approached by Mars One but says it needs to be paid before researching the proposal.

The Mars One plan has incredibly tight timings - possibly unrealistically tight. Various contributors agreed on the sheer scale of the technological difficulties, including Rajat Agrawal, a technology writer in Mumbai and Amy Shira Teitel, a space historian in Phoenix.

Ms Shira Teital said: "What if one of their supplies ships doesn't make it and they lose food? What's going to happen when vital parts don't make it or survive the trip? Is the crew going to eat each other? How much are we willing to make it a 'Lord of the Flies'-type situation if it all goes terribly wrong?"

Meanwhile, another communications system only made possible by the Web - Twitter - focused on the apparently appealing notion of using Mars One to rid the Earth of various people - usually politicians. One said, "you would never have to hear Justin Bieber again". :twisted:

Others asked about the practicalities, often the grim ones. "What happens to the corpses?" asked one woman in a Tweet. Fair question, and thought-provoking: colonies need cemeteries.

There's always massive interest in NASA's rovers on Mars - and robots like Curiosity are a very efficient way to explore the solar system. But there's nothing like the prospect of humans venturing there to spark excitement.

The half hour hangout passed incredibly quickly. I was reminded - by an email - of an earlier venture, Mars Express, the European Space Agency's spacecraft sent to orbit Mars.
I witnessed its launch from Baikonur in Central Asia in June 2003 - almost ten years ago. It was an uplifting sight watching the rocket blaze its way through space and the mission was a success.

But the craft was also carrying a tiny lander, the British Beagle-2, which was designed to touch down and search for signs of life. On Christmas Day, 2003, we waited for a signal - and waited and waited. The Beagle had crashed.

Imagine the risks of a manned mission to Mars, and the tension of a landing. If it gets off the ground - and it's a very big if - Mars One would provide irresistible viewing. And a lot more for us all to talk about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22360228
 
I hear they're sending the 'B' ark before the 'A' ark... ;)
 
How Electric Spacecraft Could Fly NASA to Mars
by Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Assistant Managing EditorDate: 17 May 2013 Time: 01:45 PM ET
http://www.space.com/21199-space-electr ... gines.html

An Aerojet Hall thruster is shown in operation.
CREDIT: Aerojet

Electric vehicles aren't just popular on the ground — it turns out they're all the rage in space these days, too. While still not as common as traditional chemical spacecraft engines, electric engines are growing in popularity for both Earth-orbiting satellites and scientific spacecraft on missions to deep space. And electric engines could turn out to be a key element in NASA's goal of sending people to Mars, experts say.

"The maturity of the various technologies that make up electric propulsion is getting there," said Vlad Hruby, president of the Busek spacecraft engine company. Hruby said he's been waiting for a renaissance in electric spacecraft for about 20 years. "Now it's finally coming to fruition."

In 2012, Boeing introduced an all-electric communications satellite design called the 702SP, which officials say has been popular with commercial clients. In April of this year, satellite builder Orbital Sciences said it's developing its own all-electric model to compete. [Electric Vehicles to Explore Deep Space (Photo Gallery)]

There are two main ways to power an electric spacecraft engine: via solar energy absorbed from the sun, or via nuclear fission. Both have been tested successfully, though solar electric propulsion is the most commonly used.

"The solar array power is getting cheaper per watt, getting more efficient," Hruby told SPACE.com. "A bunch of factors are converging to finally make it the preferred method."

Electric spacecraft engines have been flying in various forms for decades. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union pioneered Hall thruster technology, which remains the most common type of electric spacecraft engine. Hall thrusters use electric and magnetic fields to convert neutral atoms in a propellant into charged atoms, called ions, and then accelerate the ions to produce thrust.

"You have an electrical grid held at a certain voltage," explained Nathaniel Fisch, head of the Hall Thruster Experiment project at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. "You form a plasma and accelerate the ions in the plasma. Then the ions would be ejected at the voltage you put between the grid and the plasma."

Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft, which launched in 2003 to rendezvous with the asteroid Itokawa, used electric propulsion, as did NASA's asteroid-visiting Dawn spacecraft, which lifted off in 2007.


This type of engine tends to be much more fuel-efficient than a typical chemical rocket engine, which uses the energy created by chemical reactions between two chemicals — a fuel and an oxidizer — to create thrust.

"Electric propulsion is the most efficient propulsion approach that we know about right now," said Christian Carpenter, a space architect in the Exploration Systems department of the rocket engine company Aerojet. "It generally has two or more times savings in propellant — that's demonstrated."

Saving all that propellant means that electric spacecraft can weigh a lot less than chemical spacecraft. That mass savings means the same satellite can be launched on a smaller, cheaper rocket, or that the extra mass could be used to add more instruments to the spacecraft, such as adding extra transponders to communications satellites.

The downside is that this fuel efficiency comes often comes at the expense of thrust power, so electrically propelled spacecraft accelerate slower and take longer to reach the same destination. (They could be designed to produce the same thrust as chemical engines, but would then require more power than current solar arrays are able to provide.)

"The way we think about it is that your fuel efficiency works on getting your vehicle mass down at the expense of your thrust dropping, which means longer trip times," Carpenter said. "There's a balance between reducing the mass and increasing the trip time. It's up to the architect of the system to figure out the right balance."

Missions to Mars

A Hall Thruster propulsion system made by Aerojet is shown here.
CREDIT: Aerojet
View full size image
This balance is one of the key questions NASA is facing in contemplating sending people to an asteroid and then on to Mars by the mid 2030s — a goal laid out by President Barack Obama. [NASA's Space & Tech Goals for 2014 (Photos)]

Carpenter and others recently advocated a combination of chemical and electric propulsion for a manned Mars mission at the Humans 2 Mars Summit May 7 in Washington, D.C. Chemical engines could be used to propel a crew to the Red Planet in about six months, Carpenter said, but the habitat, supplies and equipment they need could be sent on an electric cargo craft ahead of time, in a trip that would probably take about two and a half years.

"People need to be able to get to their destination in a reasonable amount of time," he said. "They want to be out doing their mission, not riding to it. Chemical engines provide high thrusts, but it's not the most fuel-efficient way to do it."

In contrast, solar electric propulsion, for instance, might be perfect for the unmanned cargo mission. "For cargo, you can take your time and you can do things efficiently," Carpenter said. "We're interested in all the options. There's really not one silver bullet technology for going to Mars — it's a portfolio."

In the long run, he said, nuclear-powered electric engines may prove among the best options for getting to Mars, but that technology isn't ready yet. Currently, the equipment to conduct nuclear fission is too massive, and requires hydrogen fuel, which is difficult to store for long periods, Carpenter said. A viable nuclear-powered spacecraft has not yet been flown.

"Longer term, the nuclear rockets provide about twice the fuel economy of a chemical engine but the same or higher thrust," Carpenter said. "You can still get there fast, but use half as much fuel. We think out on the horizon, nuclear will ultimately be the best crew delivery system."

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.
 
Private Mars Flyby Mission Ponders NASA & Commercial Rockets
by Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Assistant Managing EditorDate: 16 May 2013 Time: 01:00 PM ET
http://www.space.com/21158-inspiration- ... ckets.html

An artist's illustration of the Inspiration Mars Foundation's spacecraft for a 2018 mission to Mars by a two-person crew. The private Mars mission would be a flyby trip around the Red Planet.
CREDIT: Inspiration Mars Foundation

The organizers of a private plan to send two people on a round-trip flyby of Mars in 2018 are choosing between a variety of commercial rockets and a NASA booster for the mission.

The nonprofit Inspiration Mars foundation was founded by entrepreneur and space tourist Dennis Tito, who flew to the International Space Station in 2001 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Tito said the flyby mission is aimed at inspiring the public about space exploration and accelerating humanity's quest to visit Mars by taking advantage of a rare launch opportunity that allows for a relatively brief 501-day round trip.

"The way we're going, we'll never get started," Tito said of the government's approach to manned missions to Mars Wednesday (May 8) at the Humans 2 Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. "It's time for us to take the first step." [Private Mission to Mars Explained (Infographic)]



At the summit, Tito and his Inspiration Mars colleagues laid out some of the details of their plan, which will send a married male-female couple within about 93 miles (150 kilometers) of the Martian surface. The team hasn't yet chosen a launch vehicle for the mission, but said there are three main options.

The first option is to use the Falcon 9 Heavy rocket being designed by commercial firm SpaceX. The booster is still in development, but it should be able to launch about 10 metric tons of mass into low-Earth orbit, which is enough to send the Mars-bound capsule and crew in one go. The vehicle is due for its first test launch next year. "Then we'll find out if that is an option," said John Carrico, vice president of space systems for Applied Defense Solutions, a contractor for Inspiration Mars.

The Dutch nonprofit Mars One aims to land four colonists on the Red Planet in 2023. Do you want to be one of them?
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A second option is to launch the Inspiration Mars crew separately from the fuel that will send them out to Mars and back. This scenario would use an Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance (ULA) to lift off the fuel for the mission, and a Delta 4 Heavy booster from the same company to carry the crew to Earth orbit. There, the propellant tank would rendezvous and dock with the crew capsule to transfer over the fuel. While this plan requires two launches and an orbital rendezvous, it has the advantage of using well-tried ULA rockets, which are routinely launched to carry unmanned commercial and government payloads.

Finally, Carrico said Inspiration Mars team members have been in touch with NASA about its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which is being developed to send astronauts to an asteroid and Mars in the next decades.

"The nice thing about the SLS is this mission closes with a single launch," Carrico said. The rocket should be able to launch more mass than Inspiration Mars requires, potentially offering extra energy that could be used to add more mass to the life support system or other equipment onboard the spacecraft, or to slow down the rather speedy planned Earth re-entry.

Space.com Exclusive T-shirt. Available to Populate Mars. Buy Now
CREDIT: Space.com Store
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Inspiration Mars calculates its crew will plummet back to Earth at 14.2 kilometers per second, which is quicker, and therefore hotter, than the Apollo crews' re-entries coming home from the moon. With the extra launch ability from SLS, this speed could be slowed to 14.0 or 13.9 km/s, Carrico estimated.

However, SLS is not scheduled to make its first test launch until 2017.

Despite the challenges and uncertainties, the mission has sparked the interest of many. Apollo moonwalker Buzz Aldrin praised the plan Wednesday at the Humans 2 Mars Summit, saying, "I think this should be supported to the maximum degree possible."

Indeed, interest has been stronger from around the world than the Inspiration Mars team anticipated.

"It's been interesting to see the international response we've gotten," said Taber MacCallum, co-founder of Paragon Space Solutions, which has been hired by Inspiration Mars to develop its life-support system. "When we proposed this mission, we called this a mission for America. We're really being almost forced to rethink this as a mission for Earth with American leadership."

Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.
 
Rover radiation data poses manned Mars mission dilemma
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22718672
COMMENTS (202)

A single mission to Mars is going to take the astronauts close to or beyond their current career limits for radiation exposure. Scientists say getting to Mars as quickly as possible would lower the risks


Nasa's Curiosity rover has confirmed what everyone has long suspected - that astronauts on a Mars mission would get a big dose of damaging radiation.

The robot counted the number of high-energy space particles striking it on its eight-month journey to the planet.

Based on this data, scientists say a human travelling to and from Mars could well be exposed to a radiation dose that breached current safety limits.

This calculation does not even include time spent on the planet's surface.

When the time devoted to exploring the world is taken into account, the dose rises further still.

This would increase the chances of developing a fatal cancer beyond what is presently deemed acceptable for a career astronaut.

Cary Zeitlin from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and colleagues report the Curiosity findings in the latest edition of Science magazine.


They say engineers will have to give careful consideration to the type of shielding that is built into a Mars-bound crew ship. However, they concede that for some of the most damaging radiation particles, there may be little that can be done to shelter the crew other than to get them to Mars and the partial protection of its thin atmosphere and rocky mass as quickly as possible.

At the moment, given existing chemical propulsion technology, Mars transits take months.

"The situation would be greatly improved if we could only get there quite a bit faster," Dr Zeitlin told BBC News.

"It is not just the dose rate that is the problem; it is the number of days that one accumulates that dose that drives the total towards or beyond the career limits. Improved propulsion would really be the ticket if someone could make that work."

New types of propulsion, such as plasma and nuclear thermal rockets, are in development. These could bring the journey time down to a number of weeks.

Curiosity travelled to Mars inside a capsule similar in size to the one now being developed to take astronauts beyond the space station to destinations such as asteroids and even Mars.


The rover travelled to Mars tucked inside a protective capsule. Its RAD instrument was turned on for most of the journey
For most of its 253-day, 560-million-km journey in 2011/2012, the robot had its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument switched on inside the cruise vessel, which gave a degree of protection.

RAD counts the numbers of energetic particles - mostly protons - hitting its sensors.

The particles of concern fall into two categories - those that are accelerated away from our dynamic Sun; and those that arrive at high velocity from outside of the Solar System.

This latter category originates from exploded stars and the environs of black holes.

These galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) impart a lot of energy when they strike the human body and will damage DNA in cells. They are also the most difficult to shield against.

Earth's thick atmosphere, its magnetic field and its huge rock bulk provide protection to people living on its surface, but for astronauts in deep space even an aluminium hull 30cm thick is not going to change their exposure to GCRs very much.

The RAD data revealed an average GCR dose equivalent rate of 1.84 milliSieverts (mSv) per day during the rover's cruise to Mars. (The Sievert is a standard measure of the biological impacts of radiation.) This dose rate is about the same as having a full-body CT scan in a hospital every five days or so.

Number reassessment
Dr Zeitlin and his team used this measurement as a guide to work out what an astronaut could expect on a Mars mission, assuming he or she had a similarly shielded spacecraft, travelled at a time when the Sun's activity was broadly the same and completed the journey in just 180 days - Nasa's "design reference" transit time for a manned mission to Mars. They calculated the total dose just for the cruise phases to and from Mars to be 660mSv. The team promises to come back with the additional number from surface exposure once Curiosity has taken more measurements at its landing location on the planet's equator.

Radiation exposures comparison
Annual average (all sources, UK) - 2.7mSv
Whole-body CT scan - 10mSv
Nuclear power worker (annual, UK) - 20mSv
6 months on the space station - 100mSv
6 months in deep space - 320mSv
Source: UK HPA / Nasa

But even this 660mSv figure represents a large proportion of the 1,000mSv for career exposure that several space agencies work to keep their astronauts from approaching. Reaching 1,000mSv is associated with a 5% increase in the risk of developing a fatal cancer. There would likely be neurological impairment and eyesight damage as well. Nasa actually works to keep its astronauts below a 3% excess risk.

"If you extrapolate the daily measurements that were made by RAD to a 500-day mission you would incur exposures that would cause most individuals to exceed that 3% limit," explained Dr Eddie Semones, the spaceflight radiation health officer at Nasa's Johnson Space Center, who added that experts were reviewing the restriction.

"Currently, we're looking at that 3% standard and its applicability for exploration-type missions, and those discussions are going forward on how to handle that and what steps need to be taken to protect the crew."

All this should be set against the dangers associated with space travel in general, such as launching on a rocket or trying to land on another planet. It is a dangerous business.

It also needs to be considered in the context of the risks of contracting cancer during a "normal" lifetime on Earth, which is 26% (for a UK citizen).

Complex calculation
The space agencies have quite deliberately set conservative limits for their astronauts but it seems clear they would have to relax their rules somewhat or mitigate the risks in some other way to authorise a Mars mission.

However, the scenario for commercial ventures could be very different. Two initiatives - Inspiration Mars and Mars One - have been announced recently that propose getting people to Mars in the next 10 years using existing technologies.

Privateer astronauts that participate in these projects may regard the extra risks associated with radiation to be an acceptable gamble given the extraordinary prize of walking on the Red Planet.

Dr Kevin Fong is director of the Centre for Space Medicine at University College London, UK, and has written about the dangers associated with space exploration. He said that what Dr Zeitlin and colleagues had done was help remove some of the uncertainty in the risk assessment.

"Radiobiology is actually really tricky because how the body will respond to exposure will depend on many factors, such as whether you're old or young, male or female," he told BBC News.

"What's important about this study is that it characterises the deep space radiation environment for the first time in a vehicle whose shielding is not orders of magnitude different from that which you would expect to put a human crew inside."


The RAD instrument continues to gather data on the surface of Mars
Your comments (202)
Article written by Jonathan Amos
Jonathan Amos
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Would you go? Curiosity radiation measurments pose a dilemma for manned Mars missions http://t.co/4zvMoX7AzL
 
It's not impossible.

Probably the best way to do it is to snag a passing asteroid and turn it into a spaceship.
Other ways to do it are to use electromagnetic shielding or have a double-walled hull filled with water or highly-charged ozone.

Perhaps the biggest problem with radiation is when the astronauts are outside in their suits.
 
What's for dinner on Mars?
August 22nd, 2013 in Space & Earth / Space Exploration

What’s for dinner on Mars?

Crew member Kate Greene outside the HI-SEAS habitat on the slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. Credit: Sian Proctor

Crew member Kate Greene outside the HI-SEAS habitat on the slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. Credit: Sian Proctor

Imagine finding freeze-dried meats and fruits, dehydrated vegetables, egg crystals, ghee-like anhydrous butter, powdered milk and chipotle peppers in your kitchen, but not a morsel of fresh food.

That's what happened to six "astronauts" who lived in a simulated Martian base on the slopes of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano from April 16 to Aug. 13 as part of a HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) mission.

The study compared crew-cooked foods and pre-prepared meals and examined menu fatigue; when astronauts tire of foods they eat less and can lose bone and muscle mass. The study also tested whether nutrition, calorie intake and food satisfaction can be improved if crews cooked their own food, and examined the costs of cooking in terms of water, power and workload.

Cornell and the University of Hawai at Manoa led the project, funded by NASA's Human Research Program.

Data on how the research participants liked their food, how much they ate and the amount of nutrients they took in could be made public later this year, and those findings may eventually influence which foods are taken on deep-space journeys and how they are prepared.

What’s for dinner on Mars?

Crew members organize food items inside the simulated Martian base in Hawaii. Credit: Sian Proctor

"The crew were very busy – in addition to maintenance, workouts, outreach activities and detailed measurements for the food study, they completed several research projects," said Jean Hunter, Cornell associate professor of biological and environmental engineering. Hunter worked on the project with Cornell researchers Bruce Halpern, professor of psychology and of neurobiology and behavior; postdoctoral associate Bryan Caldwell; and Rupert Spies, chef and senior lecturer at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration.

Crew members worked on a study of robot pets and a collaboration with NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center on whether antimicrobial workout clothes could reduce laundering (astronauts exercise daily to maintain physical fitness and bone and muscle mass). A thermal study, mapping temperature differences within the habitat, will be used to improve energy efficiency and crew comfort on future missions. During outdoor activities performed in space suits and helmets, the crew investigated local geological features and evaluated space suit performance.

Kim Binsted, co-investigator of the HI-SEAS project and a faculty member at the University of Hawaii, has received ongoing NASA funding to answer new questions on team roles and leadership with three new crews at the HI-SEAS habitat site. Cornell researchers will remain involved with the project, collecting additional data on food preparation and resource use, and crew members from the current mission will participate as research collaborators.

Provided by Cornell University

"What's for dinner on Mars?." August 22nd, 2013.

http://phys.org/news/2013-08-dinner-mars.html
 
Bid to colonize Mars wins high-profile backing
December 10th, 2013 in Astronomy & Space / Space Exploration

Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp holds a press conference in New York on April 22, 2013

A Dutch entrepreneur's bold quest to colonize Mars won high-profile support Tuesday from a US aerospace giant, although the timetable for putting humans on the red planet has been pushed back two years.

Mars One chief executive Bas Lansdorp said Lockheed Martin would, for $250,000, produce a "mission concept study" for an unmanned Martian lander that would precede the $6 billion manned mission.

Britain's Surrey Satellite Technology will meanwhile turn out a similar study, for 60,000 euros ($80,000), for a satellite that would hover in orbit over the lander and relay data and images back to Earth.

Plans call for the unmanned lander to reach Mars in 2018.

But as for the ultimate goal of putting humans on Mars, Lansdorp told reporters in Washington that "our first humans will land in 2025"—two years later than he announced earlier this year.

The first four earthlings-turned-Martians would be joined every two years by additional groups of four or more astronauts—all on one-way tickets to space's next frontier, he said.

Some 200,000 people have already applied to go to Mars, Lansdorp said, and they will learn by the end of this year whether they have passed the first-round selection process.

Lockheed Martin, which made $2.65 billion in fiscal 2011, mostly from defense contracts, built NASA's Phoenix robotic spacecraft that landed on Mars in 2008 in search of evidence of water.

Ed Sedivy, the company's chief engineer for civilian space projects, said the Mars One lander would likely look like Phoenix on the outside, albeit with a carpet of thin solar paneling running off its side.

Inside, however, it would be fitted with the latest space electronics, said Sedivy, who was previously Lockheed Martin's point man for the Phoenix mission.

Although Lansdorp opened his press conference by saying "Lockheed Martin will build the first Mars lander" for Mars One, Sedivy said it had been contracted so far only for the concept study.

Besides conducting experiments, including a search for possible ways of creating water on Mars' surface, the lander will carry letters from youngsters on Earth to welcome the first Martian colonists, Lansdorp said.

He also envisioned a camera dangling from a balloon several hundred meters above the lander that would beam images back to Earth in real time.
Lansdorp expects it will cost $6 billion to put the first humans on Mars, where they will be expected to star in the galaxy's first interplanetary reality TV show.

He expects a big chunk of funding to come from "sponsors and partners" such as universities with experiments they'd like to see piggy-backing onto the mission.

A range of potential pitfalls might prevent Mars One from becoming a reality, including an inability to return to Earth, the small living quarters and the lack of food and water on Mars.

That assumes, of course, that radiation endured by its astronauts during the trip is not lethal, and that their spacecraft will be able to negotiate a volatile landing onto the harsh Martian landscape.

The project has garnered plenty of skeptics, but its supporters include Dutch Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft, who won the 1999 prize for physics and appears in a video for Mars One on the Indiegogo crowd-funding website.

The world's space agencies have only managed to send unmanned robotic rovers to Mars so far, the latest being NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover, which touched down in August 2012.

If it succeeds, Mars One would be the first private-sector initiative, manned or unmanned, to explore another planet.

© 2013 AFP

"Bid to colonize Mars wins high-profile backing." December 10th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-12-colonize-m ... ofile.html
 
ramonmercado said:
... Lansdorp expects it will cost $6 billion to put the first humans on Mars, where they will be expected to star in the galaxy's first interplanetary reality TV show.

...


"Bid to colonize Mars wins high-profile backing." December 10th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-12-colonize-m ... ofile.html
FFS! Trapped forever on an alien planet, between four and twenty four light minutes from Earth. The focus of a distant Big Brother TV show that cost a large chunk of $6 billion to put together. At the mercy of a fickle Global viewing Public's vanishing attention span and the TV ratings.

What could possibly go wrong? :(
 
We'll find out when someone gets evicted. It is a shame that someone sees the majesty of another planet and thinks "Ker-ching! That'll be make profitable junk TV". Although if there was no financial profit, I don't imagine there would be any missions.
 
How will they evict someone? Push them out of an airlock with no suit on?
I can see this getting grim, fast.
 
Potential Martians: Mars One selects 1,058 hopefuls among 200,000 applicants
Published time: December 31, 2013 19:50
http://rt.com/news/mars-one-applicants-selected-039/

Image from mars-one.comImage from mars-one.com

The Mars One project has announced the selection of 1,058 hopefuls from over 200,000 applicants to become potential “human ambassadors” on the Red Planet. Eventually, no more than 40 people will be selected to go Mars to never return.

“We’re extremely appreciative and impressed with the sheer number of people who submitted their applications,” Mars One Co-Founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp said, putting an end to the second round of the application process.

“However, the challenge with 200,000 applicants is separating those who we feel are physically and mentally adept to become human ambassadors on Mars from those who are obviously taking the mission much less seriously.”

According to The Popular science magazine report, there are 55 per cent male and 45 per cent female among 1,058 chosen. Some 63 per cent of them hold a bachelor's degree and 3 percent hold a medical degree.

The majority of the applicants are aged between 26 and 55 - 65 per cent of all selected hopefuls- and 2 per cent are older than 55.

Those who did not receive emails, notifying of their application status, should not become despondent. There is a chance they can reapply later. But the date has not been set yet.

“US astronaut Clayton Anderson was rejected by NASA for its astronaut training program 15 times, yet in 2007 he boarded the Space Shuttle Atlantis for a trip to the International Space Station. He proved anything can happen and the door is never completely closed,” Lansdorp recalled.

The first round of the Mars One Astronaut Selection Program saw applications from 202,586 people from around the world. Initially Lansdorp expected one million applications.

The whole Selection Program includes four rounds and is planned to last till 2015. During this time, the applicant pool will be narrowed to dozens of people - six to ten teams of four individuals will be selected for seven years of full-time training before heading to Mars.

“The next several selection phases in 2014 and 2015 will include rigorous simulations, many in team settings, with focus on testing the physical and emotional capabilities of our remaining candidates,” Dr. Norbert Kraft, Chief Medical Officer for Mars One said.

But the details of the further selection phases have not been agreed yet as negotiations for the rights to broadcast the process are still ongoing. Lansdorp said the next phase of the Mars One project should be televised starting in 2014.

"We fully anticipate our remaining candidates to become celebrities in their towns, cities, and in many cases, countries. It's about to get very interesting," he said.

Mars One, a Dutch not-for-profit organization, is relying on donations, which it directs to the human mission to Mars. It is currently trying to raise money to send a satellite and lander to Mars in 2018, which will allow them to live-stream events straight from the red planet.

On December, Mars One contracted Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) to develop mission concept studies.

Before people will be able to colonize Mars there is a demonstration mission planned for 2018. It will provide proof of concept for some of the technologies that are important for a permanent human settlement on Mars.
 
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