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

A frighteningly-earnest young lady (aspirant Martian colonist) was being interviewed by The Humphries yesterday morning on Radio Four.

She had the monotone learnt zeal of a package tour holiday victim who, although they haven't arrived at the resort yet, they know it's going to be absolutely fine. Probably.

Her parents were initially unsupportive of her dreams, but now they 'understand'. Much of her supported soliloquy centered around the unknown practicalities associated with popping-out replacement bald/tail-less mammal alien crewmembers en route to the Red Planet. We were reminded that "nobody knows how sperm will react under the influence of radiation" (a curiously poorly-advised comment) followed by the sagely observation that, apparently, we would "have to keep reproducing once we arrived". I think the howling winds, relative lack of oxygen and the thought of spending the balance of my life in a metal tent chewing oxo cubes would be precisely the combination to send my libido through the roof. I'd be reproducing faster than a photocopier plugged into the LHC....

...But slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us
 
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Mars One, the Dutch firm hoping to colonise the Red Planet, has just a few months to decide whether it will launch its first unmanned mission to Mars in 2018. If it misses the deadline, the entire high-risk enterprise will be delayed another two years.

While national space agencies think manned missions to Mars are something for the distant future, Mars One says it can establish a permanent colony on the planet by the mid-2020s, funded by turning the whole thing into a reality TV show and selling the media rights.

In 2013 the firm announced a partnership with aerospace firm Lockheed Martin to build an unmanned Mars lander based on an old NASA probe, Phoenix, that would extract water from the surface and test solar panel technology. It also signed a separate contract with UK firm Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) to build a communications satellite to relay live video from the lander. ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...-one-to-avoid-twoyear-delay.html#.VOewL_msWug
 
While national space agencies think manned missions to Mars are something for the distant future, Mars One says it can establish a permanent colony on the planet by the mid-2020s, funded by turning the whole thing into a reality TV show and selling the media rights.

This is utter pap for the masses. It has Endemol written all over it. I refer the FMB membership to the massive transparent hoax below

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadets_(television_hoax)

It also signed a separate contract with UK firm Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) to build a communications satellite to relay live video from the lander.
What? As a DIY alternative to the DSTN? Or in Martian-stationary orbit?

This sounds like techno-babble, rather than practical intention.
 
Actually, no - Endemol turned it down.
 
Are we ever going to get to the Red Planet? If Mars One has its way, people will be living there by the mid-2020s. But the Dutch firm behind the high-profile and ambitious plan to colonise Mars came under fire this week from a candidate who had been shortlisted for the one-way trip.

Joseph Roche, a physicist at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, has spoken out about what he says are serious problems with the mission. Mars One hopes to launch its first uncrewed mission in 2018, followed by a crewed mission in 2024.

In an interview with online magazine Matter, Roche said that applicants are selected based on how many points they accumulate during the application process, and that points could be gained by donating money to Mars One or buying merchandise from the firm. High-profile candidates were simply those who had donated the most, he claimed. Roche also raised concerns over the selection procedure, which involved a Skype interview with Mars One's chief medical officer and a questionnaire. ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...s-mission-to-the-red-planet.html#.VQiQEY53O3w
 
I find the whole thing worrying, to be frank. Too many commercial interests, too many points of failure, it really is a suicide mission.
 
And they will probably make reality show out of the whole trip. Could be interesting...
 
Unclear if this is another interview from Roche, or an extended non-New Scientist reinterpretation of his previous allegations.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/whats-going-mars-one

Mars One Finalist Announces That It's All A Scam

Earlier this week, a colonist candidate for the one-way mission to Mars broke his silence and spoke out against the Mars One project, calling the selection process dangerously flawed.

After filling out an application (mostly out of curiosity), former NASA researcher Joseph Roche, now of Trinity College, became one of 100 finalists to live in permanent settlement on Mars. In his interview with Elmo Keep for Medium, Roche expressed many concerns, ranging from inaccurate media coverage (there were only 2,761 applicants, not 200,000) to Mars One’s psychological or psychometric testing (or lack thereof) to how leading contenders earned their spot (he says they paid for it).

“When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points,”Roche explains. “You get points for getting through each round of the selection process (but just an arbitrary number of points, not anything to do with ranking), and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.” And if media outlets offer payment for an interview, the organization would like to see 75 percent of the profit. As a result the most high-profile hopefuls, he says, are those who brought about the most money.

So far, he’s completed a questionnaire, uploaded a video, got a medical exam, took a quick quiz over Skype, and… not too much else, it seems. Despite making the final 100, Roche has never met anyone from Mars One in person. A planned multiday, regional interview seems to have been cancelled.

There are other bad signs for Mars One. The organization’s contract with production company Endemol is no longer in place; Mars One was hoping to generate $6 billion from a reality show. And a former adviser to the project, theoretical physicist Gerard Hooft, said a realistic launch date isn’t 10 years from now -- it’s 100 years.

Now, Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp has responded in a video [transcript], where he says a lot of the bad press is untrue. “There are a lot of current round three candidates that did not make any donations to Mars One and there are also lot of people that did not make it to the third round that contributed a lot to Mars One,” he says. “The two things are not related at all and to say that they are is simply a lie.”

Lansdorp maintains that there were indeed 200,000 applications, and that criticism by the organization’s advisers is valued because it helps improve their mission. Their next step, he says, is to find out which of the candidates “have what it takes” through more thorough selection processes, team and individual challenges, and longer interviews. They’re also in talks with another production company. And as far as the delays are concerned, he says, “is it really a failure if we land our first crew two, four, six, or even eight years late?”
 
Oh, they're in trub now...
 
"Roche expressed many concerns, ranging from inaccurate media coverage (there were only 2,761 applicants, not 200,000) to Mars One’s psychological or psychometric testing (or lack thereof) to how leading contenders earned their spot (he says they paid for it)."

Is Mars One connected to Scientology? :eek:
 
Don't think I'd trust these guys for a lift down the supermarket, never mind a trip to a different planet.
 
I read this, and feel it's just a pile of profoundly-unconvincing schmaltz.

Moving, in a made-for-tv drama 'documentary' superficial sort of way.

And she's able to tell us "the first human flight won't happen until 2024". Hey, isn't that before half-past-eight in the evening? That's just swell...

Why I’m Volunteering to Die on Mars
http://time.com/3716823/mars-one-space-travel-finalist/

Sonia Van Meter is the Managing Director of Stanford Caskey, a national Democratic opposition research firm. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband.

One of the Mars One finalists, Sonia Van Meter, reveals what it's like to face leaving Earth forever


"BMI (check)
GENDER (check)
LOOKS (check)
DENTITION (check)
OCCUPATION (check)
....and we're cleared for takeoff, all systems are go, for lunch

 
Moving to Mars
Preparing for the longest, loneliest voyage ever.


... A century after the Belgica’s return, a NASA research consultant named Jack Stuster began examining the records of the trip to glean lessons for another kind of expedition: a three-year journey to Mars and back. “Future space expeditions will resemble sea voyages much more than test flights, which have served as the models for all previous space missions,” Stuster wrote in a book, “Bold Endeavors,” which was published in 1996 and quickly became a classic in the space program. A California anthropologist, Stuster had helped design U.S. space stations by studying crew productivity in cases of prolonged isolation and confinement: Antarctic research stations, submarines, the Skylab station. The study of stress in space had never been a big priority at NASA—or of much interest to the stoic astronauts, who worried that psychologists would uncover some hairline crack that might exclude them from future missions. (Russia, by contrast, became the early leader in the field, after being forced to abort several missions because of crew problems.) But in the nineteen-nineties, with planning for the International Space Station nearly complete, NASA scientists turned their attention to journeys deeper into space, and they found questions that had no answers. “That kind of challenging mission was way out of our comfortable low-earth-orbit neighborhood,” Lauren Leveton, the lead scientist of NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance program, said. Astronauts would be a hundred million miles from home, no longer in close contact with mission control. Staring into the night for eight monotonous months, how would they keep their focus? How would they avoid rancor or debilitating melancholy? ...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/20/moving-to-mars
 
Well with such plans in mind to reach mars and set up home there you`d expect training to take place on the moon. Why risk mars when your better experimenting closer to home? Weird!
 
DREAMS of a Mars landing may have to wait. No one is going there any time soon, according to leading space-agency figures on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite plans to land on the Red Planet from companies like SpaceX and Mars One, both the current head of NASA and the incoming head of the European Space Agency (ESA) say we'll be waiting decades for humans to walk on Martian soil.

"No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars," NASA administrator Charles Bolden told a hearing of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in mid-April.

But NASA itself doesn't have a firm date for landing – its loose and unfunded plan is for humans to touch down on Mars in the 2030s. The agency is planning to train for a deep-space mission by first visiting a small boulder plucked off a larger asteroid around 2025. ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...-still-be-a-faroff-prospect.html#.VTzW8yGrTIU
 
NASA annoys me. They could be using that secret technology they have, but they're still using big ol' rockets.
 
For enthusiasts of space travel, the bad news keeps coming. A new study, just published in Science Advances, finds that the smartest humans who will be chosen to go to Mars may not remain smart by the time they reach their destination (if at all they do).

We have known for a long time that leaving our cushy planet is fraught with problems. Space may be largely empty, but it’s filled up with invisible charged particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. Earth’s magnetic field deflects these particles, but space travelers will inevitably be exposed to such radiation. And the new study predicts that it will cause rapid and permanent damage to the brain.

In the study, the researchers from the University of California, Irvine and University of Nevada, Las Vegas, subjected mice to radiation similar to the gamma cosmic rays that humans will be exposed to on their way to Mars. After six weeks of exposure to the radiation, which was made up of charged oxygen and titanium atoms, mice were given cognitive tests.

When compared to mice who were not exposed to radiation, the irradiated mice performed far worse. On being shown familiar objects, these mice weren’t interested. They also lacked curiosity towards new objects. ...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/astronauts-will-get-dumber-on-their-way-to-mars/ar-BBj2yQ9
 
Why Colonize Mars? Sci-Fi Authors Weigh In

Settling Mars could help humanity escape and mitigate the problems our species is facing here on Earth, several science-fiction authors said.

Writer Tom Ligon, who publishes mostly in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact, pointed out that Mars has many hazards, but no rattlesnakes, earthquakes, terrorists or wars.

"It'shard to have forest fires over there," he said May 7 during a panel discussion at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, which was hosted by the nonprofit Explore Mars Inc. "The volcanoes are extinct, geologically pretty quiet. Mars is actually, in a lot of ways, a lot safer than Earth." [5 Manned Mission to Mars Ideas]

Further, exploring the Red Planet could help solve some of the resource problems facing our own planet, novelist Michael Swanwick added. ...

http://www.space.com/29414-mars-colony-science-fiction-authors.html
 
Six scientists who were living under a dome on the slopes of a dormant Hawaii volcano for eight months to simulate life on Mars have emerged from isolation.

The crew stepped outside the dome that's 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) up the slopes of Mauna Loa to feel fresh air on their skin Saturday. It was the first time they left without donning a space suit.

The scientists are part of a human performance study funded by NASA that tracked how they worked together as a team. They have been monitored by surveillance cameras, body movement trackers and electronic surveys.

Crew member Jocelyn Dunn said it was awesome to feel the sensation of wind on her skin.

"When we first walked out the door, it was scary not to have a suit on," said Dunn, 27, a doctoral candidate at Purdue University. "We've been pretending for so long." ...

http://phys.org/news/2015-06-scientists-emerge-isolated-dome-hawaii.html
 
Israeli technology that can protect first responders from deadly gamma radiation – the kind of radiation emitted by nuclear bombs – may one day protect astronauts who explore deep space from the high levels of radiation they are likely to encounter.

Israel’s StemRad is working with US defense giant Lockheed-Martin to develop a version of its gamma-ray shielding vest for use in deep-space missions, the companies announced this week.

“We’re going to take our extensive knowledge of human spaceflight, apply our nano-materials engineering expertise, and working closely with StemRad, evaluate the viability for this type of radiation shielding in deep-space,” said Randy Sweet, Lockheed Martin business development director for the civil space line of business. “The Lockheed Martin team believes this could result in an innovative solution to enhance crew safety on the journey to Mars.”

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor building Orion, NASA’s next-generation spacecraft designed to transport humans to destinations beyond low Earth orbit and bring them safely home. Designed for the space missions of tomorrow, Orion will, among other things, provide technology against the effects of deep-space radiation, considered one of the biggest threats and roadblocks to human exploration of the solar system beyond the moon. ...

http://www.timesofisrael.com/next-s...ection/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
 
Interesting approach they take with their shielding product.
They shield just part of the body, which shields bone marrow - allowing the body to recover naturally.
Beats me why they can't shield the whole body.
I'd have thought an electromagnetic shield might provide better all-round coverage.
 
Six new "Marstronauts" will head to Hawaii to spend a year there inside a mock Red Planet base, starting Aug. 28.

Officials with the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission announced the selection of the six scientists on July 29.

"The longer each mission becomes, the better we can understand the risks of space travel," Kim Binsted, HI-SEAS principal investigator and a professor at University of Hawaii at Mānoa, said in a statement. [HI-SEAS' 8-Month Mock Mars Mission in Pictures]

"We hope that this upcoming mission will build on our current understanding of the social and psychological factors involved in long duration space exploration and give NASA solid data on how best to select and support a flight crew that will work cohesively as a team while in space," Binsted said.

To ensure that crewmember performance is at its highest in preparation for an eventual Mars mission, each person will be monitored by several forms of technology. Researchers will use cameras, body movement trackers, electronic surveys and other tools to track cognitive and social factors that could affect team performance.

http://www.space.com/30200-mock-mars-mission-one-year-hawaii.html?cmpid=514648
 
'How We'll Live on Mars' (US 2015): Book Excerpt

How We'll Live on Mars" (Simon & Schuster, 2015) explores humankind's path so far to Mars, the industries needed to get there and thrive and the geo-engineering process that could make Mars a habitable world. According to Petranek, the seeds of all the technologies needed to colonize Mars exist, and a new private space race is what will get them into shape.

Petranek is an award-winning science journalist and currently the editor of Breakthrough Technology Alert. Throughout his 40-year career in publishing he has served as editor-in-chief of Discover magazine, editor of The Washington Post's magazine and a founding editor and editor-in-chief of This Old House magazine, among other positions. In the expert from Petranek's "How We'll Live On Mars" below, he lays out the pivotal moment when human explorers arrive on Mars, and what that historic giant leap might mean for humanity:

Nearly a decade of anticipation has come down to this moment: the spacecraft inches to the surface as the blast effect of braking rockets kicks up red dust. An Earth-bound audience waits eagerly as an announcer reminds them of a press conference that took place years earlier—a meeting that shocked the world and embarrassed NASA, which was still at least two years from testing its Mars spacecraft with humans aboard. On that day, the company behind this private effort to reach Mars revealed that it was about to build a series of huge rockets to transport people to Mars, and that within a decade it would launch one or two of them to effect the first manned landing on the Red Planet.

http://www.space.com/30318-how-we-will-live-on-mars-book-excerpt.html
 
Could the first Mars colony be called Buffettville, or Zuckerburgh?

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One aims to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet, beginning with the touchdown of the first four pioneers in 2027. The biggest challenges facing the project are financial rather than technical, so a big donation from a deep-pocketed person concerned about his or her legacy could make a huge difference, Mars One representatives said.

Mars One "is so ambitious and — I think 'crazy' is the right word — that we might actually get a phone call from a billionaire who says, 'I want to make this happen. I want the first city on Mars to be called Gatesville or Slim City," said Mars One co-founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp, presumably referring to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu. [Images of Mars One's Red Planet Colony Project]

http://www.space.com/30357-mars-one...id=636191505883860993&adbpl=tw&adbpr=15431856
 
It would immediately be called Sweaty Armpit or something similar.
 
A new Web TV series follows the efforts of five people who hope to be among the first humans to set foot on Mars.

The subjects of the new series, which is called "Citizen Mars" and airs on Engadget.com, aim to become astronauts with the Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One. That group plans to land four people on the Red Planet in 2027, kicking off a permanent colony there.

"There's a tremendous amount of interest in the Mars One project, and many are skeptical about the mission's feasibility, which is why we thought it an important story to tell, and why the subjects involved are so compelling," Engadget Editor-in-Chief Michael Gorman said in a statement.

"Citizen Mars" is billed as the first docu-drama to focus on the personal lives of Mars One contestants. It follows five astronaut hopefuls who range in age from 19 to 35 and come from diverse backgrounds. One has a Ph.D. in quantum biology, for example, while another works at a life-insurance company and also plays pro basketball in Egypt.

The series launched Tuesday (Sept. 1) and will broadcast five episodes through its run at http://www.engadget.com/citizen-mars/. ...

http://www.space.com/30464-citizen-mars-one-project-tv-series.html?cmpid=514648
 
Back in May, NASA announced their 3D Printed Habitat Challenge hoping to find some new ideas for potentially creating workable ideas to create functional and safe living spaces suitable for the surface of Mars. The challenge was issued in conjunction with America Makes, the US’ national accelerator created to explore additive manufacturing and 3D printing technologies. The first round consisting of the top thirty designs will be judged at this year’s World Maker Faire in New York and the winner will receive a $50,000 prize. The second round will require entrants to put their materials where their extruders are and actually fabricate their concept, with an eventual prize of $1.1 million going to the winners.

While the contest is open only to American design teams, that didn’t stop French design firm Fabulous from stepping up and submitting their own concept. Their idea is for a robot capable of burrowing itself into the surface of Mars in order to extract the high concentrations of iron in the soil. The iron will be used to 3D print metal domes that will be insulated with a layer of water, also extracted directly from Martian soil. The habitat called Sfero is a contraction for “Sphere,” “Iron” and “Water,” for obvious reasons. Their multidisciplinary design team includes several CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research) and Mars Society scientists, architects, image specialists, and 3D printing technologies and materials experts.

http://3dprint.com/95170/mars-3d-printed-sfero-habitats/
 
Hmmm. AFAIK, laser-sintered iron with impurities in it is more than likely to be a bit porous, with gas bubbles permeating it.
I know zilch about the composition of rock on Mars, but I'd have thought grinding it up into a fine powder and making it into a cement with some kind of binding agent (resin?) would be the way to go. Only problem with that is that increases the payload requirement.
 
A gallery of gorgeous new images shows a cone-shaped space capsule shooting like a meteor through the atmosphere of Mars, and descending quickly toward the surface before its thrusters set it down gently in the middle of a rocky, uninhabited landscape. The human crew prepares to set food on the Red Planet.

The images are only artist's renderings, of course — humans have not yet made it to Mars. The gorgeous gallery was released on the Flickr page of the private Spaceflight company SpaceX, and shows what it might look like if and when the company's Dragon crew capsule makes a trip to the Red Planet. You can see all of the new images in our full Crew Dragon photo gallery.

http://www.space.com/30563-spacex-d...id=644548900984979456&adbpl=tw&adbpr=15431856
 
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