Manned missions to Mars

[damienpaul]

Here is a copy of a digest that i received from the Australian Mars Society:


MARSDAILY

Aurora Charts Plan For Europe On Mars By 2033. Highlights of the Aurora
roadmap include:

2007: an entry vehicle demonstrator mission to validate and demonstrate
high-speed re-entry technology.
2009: ExoMars, an exobiology mission to send a rover to Mars in order to
search for traces of life -- past or present -- and characterise the
nature of the surface environment.
2011/2014: Mars sample return, a split mission to bring back to Earth
the first samples of Martian material.
2014: Human mission technologies demonstrator(s) to validate
technologies for orbital assembly and docking, life support and human
habitation.
2018: a technology precursor mission to demonstrate
aerobraking/aerocapture, solar electric propulsion and soft landing
(formerly envisaged as a smaller Arrow-class mission to be launched in
2010)
2024: a human mission to the Moon to demonstrate key life support and
habitation technologies, as well as aspects of crew performance and
adaptation and in situ resources utilisation technologies.
2026: an automatic mission to Mars to test the main phases of a human
mission to Mars.
2030/2033: a split mission that will culminate in the first human
landing on Mars.

The story is also carried on the ESA's Aurora web site with some
different images at
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Aurora/...XZY274OD_0.html (http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Aurora/SEMXZY274OD_0.html)

sounds good!!!

[Littlemews]

:( :( :( Time is really our biggest enemy....

[damienpaul]

that it is, iw ill be 57 years old when the final stage is worked on! - and I am already having trouble adjusting to being 27!

[JoeCrash]

Space travel for man is a myth.

On a trip to Mars, every cell of a persons body would be hit by a very high energy cosmic particle by the time they got to Mars. Without the magnetic field of Earth there is absolutely no protection against these rays. Also, any Solar flare would kill anyone in space.

Even when on Mars there would be no protection unless the people can dig down hundreds of feet into Martian soil.

Space flight beyond the Earth's magnetic field is suicide. The Moon missions worked because the Astronauts were only out of the magntic field's protection for a few days. During the moon landings a watch was kept on the Sun so that if a Solar flare occured, the astronauts would immediately come back to Earth to avoid the radiation. To say out of the Earth's protection for weeks or years is fatal. There is no known technolgy that can protect us from these particles. This will delay a manned mission beyond the Moon for decades if not centuries.

I am open to and wecome any comments to the contrary. I was a big advocate of manned space flight, but have entirely altered my position because of this problem.

Joe Crash

[tycho1981]

I readed elsewhere that water can protect us against flare. can maybe do water in the buffer between outer and innerwall?
dig under the marsground for manned marsmission is no need, Earth can send alert to astronauts that sun flare is coming then they can hide in their compound.
only the problem is that sometime can take more than a month.

[rtl5]

so, let them send an animal first, to see if it can survive the journey.

Not because I see animals as beneath me and worth sacrificing, but just that, if I said 'yes, please send me', then they would say 'no, too risky for humans at this time, maybe 2040'.

Plus, there would be 1000 people ahead of me, prepared to risk themselves.

maybe animals have no chance anyway because of needed 'designed excercise' etc which would keep a living-thing alive and stop bone depreciation.

[jimmy]

JPL scientists said we have at least 10-15 years robotic exploration before manned missions are needed.

[Littlemews]

Usually most of those guy are from Air Force.....

[tycho1981]

or send robot for research of human fits in mars or not and find a minerals that is useful for manned mission. robot must have life of 1 year on mars.
viking and rovers is for search for life and water so is a lot different.
animals is no need, robots can do their work with electronic organs.

[ironpirate]

I think we need to discover the problems we are having with our descents into the Martian Atmosphere first.

[dshan]

Well, president Bush is supposed to be announcing a new program of manned flights to the Moon and Mars (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=693&e=1&u=%2Fap%2F20040109%2Fap_on_go_pr_wh%2Fbush_space) next week. It's an election year in the US and words are cheap when the deficit is ballooning like it is there but at least it's a step in the right direction after decades of stuffing about and no commitment.

The radiation issue is much exaggerated - see this (http://www.marssociety.org/news/2003/1210.asp) from Robert Zubrin in response to that nonsense in the NYT about it a while back. It's an issue but not a showstopper. Another good reason to use missions to (and bases on) the Moon to test things like life support, radiation shielding, propulsion systems, etc. out first.

[JoeCrash]

Originally posted by tycho1981@Jan 8 2004, 04:21 PM
I readed elsewhere that water can protect us against flare. can maybe do water in the buffer between outer and innerwall?
dig under the marsground for manned marsmission is no need, Earth can send alert to astronauts that sun flare is coming then they can hide in their compound.
only the problem is that sometime can take more than a month.

Water will not protect us. In the early days of life on this planet, water protected life until the ozone layer formed screening out the UV. The magnetic field of the Earth has always protected life from the high energy cosmic particles. Water is not enough. You need thousands of miles of magnetic field to stop these particles.

The moon cause tidal movement in the core of the Earth causing the magnetic field which is added to by the Van Allen belt. Mars has no large moon and therefore does not have a strong enough magnetic field to protect life.

Protection of the Astronauts to Mars would require many Hundreds of tons of lead or magnetic field generating equipment, which is impossible with the energy sources we have today.

A base on the Moon would have a similar problem. This will come out as we return to the moon. I hope we do not find out the hard way.

Joe Crash.

[damienpaul]

perhaps lead glass may be used in the domes or in aspects of contruction.

[jce1975]

Originally posted by JoeCrash+Jan 10 2004, 02:52 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (JoeCrash @ Jan 10 2004, 02:52 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-tycho1981@Jan 8 2004, 04:21 PM
I readed elsewhere that water can protect us against flare. can maybe do water in the buffer between outer and innerwall?
dig under the marsground for manned marsmission is no need, Earth can send alert to astronauts that sun flare is coming then they can hide in their compound.
only the problem is that sometime can take more than a month.

"Water will not protect us. "


JoeCrash [/b][/quote]
Actually Joe,

There is an article on Space.com that just spoke about the problem of radiation in space (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_dangers_040120.html). It is definitely a serious threat and something that has to be dealt with. There are several ways to reduce the amount of exposure and water is mentioned as one of the best. Here is the quote from the article mentioned above, "(Interestingly, the best way to protect spacefarers aboard a Mars transport ship might be to surround them with the water they&#39;d need for their journey. The hydrogen in water, scientists have learned, is one of the best absorbers of particle radiation.)"
The problem of radiation is much worse on a spacecraft than on the surface of the moon or another planet like Mars. Radiation comes from all directions in space, but only from above while on the surface of a planet or a moon. However, technology will be developed to completely shield astronauts from this threat someday. It is true that the astronauts that went to the moon during the Apollo missions were lucky to have survived. A major solar flare would have killed them. However, like it was mentioned earlier, their short stay reduced the odds of this occuring.

James

[JoeCrash]

NASA is working on the "water" idea. The idea is to put as much Hydrogen into plastic so a high energy particle will hit the Hydrogen and the H will hit the Astronauts. Instead of one particle an atomic weight in the hundreds, he would be hit with hundreds of particles with an atomic weight of one. This could work but is untested. It has to be tested in deep space on animals which has not been done. Are the hundreds of Htydrogen particles safe? No one knows the long term effects and the effects on the Astronaut&#39;s kids. My own opinion is that it will not work. The total damage to cells eventually will be the same. The magnetic field is the answer but would require enormous weights of material to get it strong enough. Some sort of pulsed Superconductor would be ideal. You do not need the field to be "on" all the time.

A solar flare will kill anyone outside the Earth&#39;s magnetic field. There is no protection that we can put out there. The only defense is to reduce the time of travel to Mars to reduce the probability of death. A very unnerving thought. On Mars, the Astronauts would have to dig in and have a cave ready as soon as possible. I do not think that life of any sort will be found on Mars. It has been sterilized by flares and high energy cosmic rays for its entire existance. It makes life on Earth seem like a spectacular miracle.

I think we can put a pernament base on the Moon and should. An astronomical observatory on the opposite side of the Moon would be perfect. Radio Telescopes on Earth will soon be obsolete because of all the man made radio noise that increases each year. Arrays of optical telescopes would function with no atmospheric aberation. Solar Flares could be avoided in under-moon caves.

The second biggest problem is finance. The space station/shuttle failed because it was based on the idea that there would be hundreds of companies making money out there. The design was for a mammoth space effort which never happened. We were to have 50 shuttle flights a year and a station with hundred or thousands of people.

Any one care to speculate on what a Martian Space Station might produce commercially? I think it would reduce to, put the guy there to make the step for Mankind, And never return.

[jce1975]

One question I have for the "water" idea for protection from radiation is ... what happens to the water? Are the astronauts supposed to drink it? Wouldn&#39;t it be contaminated somehow?


On another note, enormous solar panels on the moon would be able to supply all the power we need on the earth someday. The problem is how to beam the energy to earth by microwaves ...

As for Mars, I truly think that it will be where another human civilization starts in the future. Maybe not soon, but definitely in a couple hundred years.

Never say never ... technology will be there in the future.

[soyuz]

Originally posted by JoeCrash@Jan 23 2004, 08:40 PM
The magnetic field is the answer but would require enormous weights of material to get it strong enough. Some sort of pulsed Superconductor would be ideal. You do not need the field to be "on" all the time.


Where can you find information on this technology? It sounds like the ideal solution to the radition problem.

[Galaxy dweller]

Joe, any manned exploration, even here on Earth, faces problems, often life threatening. The most untenable position in discussing future exploration is saying that something is impossible. Several years before the Wright brothers flight a famous physicist proclaimed that human flight in machines heavier than air was impossible and would never take place; at the end of the 19th century serious physicists asserted that flying to other planets was impossible because in the vacuum of outer space there is nothing to support the flying machine, but at the end of the century the Russian scientist Tsiolkovsky elaborated his theory of rocket propulsion; examples like that are innumerable. Protecting astronauts from radiation is one of the serious but at the same time easiest to resolve problems - protective covers have already been researched long ago, invented, and tested.
Finally - be optimistic, that&#39;s the attitude that moves any exploration.

[tycho1981]

I agree with you galaxy dweller :D
that is what I call Technology evulotion. what we imagine what is impossible now, next (many) years it&#39;s possible.

[jce1975]

I ran across some interesting information regarding radiation exposure and how water along with other possible materials can possibly be used to protect humans in space. The link is here:

http://www.nuclearspace.com/A_nukrocsafeastro2.htm

The article talks about the earth&#39;s atmosphere and how is protects humans. It compares the earth&#39;s atmosphere to a wall of water 10 meters thick&#33; Here is that part of the article:

"Space Exposure Limits

The Earth’s protective atmosphere is a massive 1 kg/cm2 or equivalent mass of ten meters of water. There is little wonder that the cosmic ray levels are low on the surface and still modest at aircraft altitudes where only 25 percent of the atmosphere remains to protect subsonic aircraft and only 5 percent remains to shield the HSCT. Even so, 5 percent is equivalent to 50 cm of water. Even if one is above the atmosphere, there is still the geomagnetic field which provides protection from extraterrestrial radiations near the equator (low inclination orbits) but also poses a new hazard from those particles trapped in the geomagnetic field itself (see figure 2). In addition to the greater intensities of the space radiation environment, the astronaut is committed to 24 hours of exposure time for each work day unlike any other occupational exposure. For these reasons, astronaut exposure limits have always been considered outside the realm of other radiation related occupations.9"

[steva]

My oppinion is that it&#39;s too early to send man on Mars. Bush made some annoucements that I don&#39;t think that they will be realised until 2020. We need to study long travel effects, to develope new way of propulsion systems that can take us there in far less time.
My general oppinion is that we will not be able to reach Mars until 2020.

Steve from Romania

[Tom2Mars]

I have just got to respond to this...

[One question I have for the "water" idea for protection from radiation is ... what happens to the water? Are the astronauts supposed to drink it? Wouldn&#39;t it be contaminated somehow?]

>I believe the energy is absorbed without changing the water (saw it in a Popular Science article 6 months ago). Still worried, use it for flushing the toilet(which you&#39;ll be able to do on my station design which will have artificial gravity).


[On another note, enormous solar panels on the moon would be able to supply all the power we need on the earth someday. The problem is how to beam the energy to earth by microwaves ...]

>Hmmm...Any spot on the moon is in darkness half the month. Would they go to the expense and complexity to track the panels to follow the sun, if not you lose half again(angle of incidence losses). Then, even if the microwave conversion is very efficient, we now lose about half the energy through the electrical grid, from transformer and resistance losses. So, you end up with about 1/8th of the energy originally available at the moon. Probably cheaper to locate the panels within 30 feet of the house where the energy will be used. And track that panel&#33; Now if you were to start with an energy-efficient house, and it&#39;s very easy to to do, that saves 80% to 90% of the energy a conventional house uses, your solar array will be 1/10 size and 1/10th the cost. For a conventional house, do things to increase efficiency.

New topic at:
Be a Millionaire (http://www.universetoday.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2425&st=0&#entry19106)


The other problem with beaming in energy from the moon, or space, is that energy cannot be destroyed. Most of it, from resistance losses, running motors, airconditioning and refrigerator compressors, lightbulbs...ends up as heat. If you believe that humans are contributing to global warming, is it a good idea to set up giant energy collectors and add that heat to what we already are experiencing.

Your Quote:
[As for Mars, I truly think that it will be where another human civilization starts in the future. Maybe not soon, but definitely in a couple hundred years.]

If we act efficiently, we can do it a lot sooner.

[Never say never ... technology will be there in the future.]

And, if we don&#39;t act efficiently, we won&#39;t be around any more. Look at right now. Big plans for a 6 to 10 person space station, and now just 2 guys who can barely help each other into their space suits(coolant line kink). And, the U.S. currently has no flying launch system to get there, the space program looks like it is winding down already.

But, I&#39;m full of optomism, really&#33; Keep up the search for information and solutions.

-Tom

:lol:

[Tom2Mars]

Oops, just above I was quoting and responding to jce1975. :wacko:

[GOURDHEAD]

My oppinion is that it&#39;s too early to send man on Mars. Bush made some annoucements that I don&#39;t think that they will be realised until 2020. We need to study long travel effects, to develope new way of propulsion systems that can take us there in far less time. My general oppinion is that we will not be able to reach Mars until 2020.

Steve from Romania

Steve&#39;
I&#39;m a hyperzealot for Mars terraforming and colonization; however, we need much more robustness in systems for transporting people and machinery both within and beyond the solar system. We should not go to Mars until systems like (or better than) the ones presented in Huntsville, Al. in July of 2003 at the AIAA conference are available.


Interstellar transportation (http://www.andrews-space.com/en/news/Pub-InterstellarTransportation(200307).pdf)

Interstellar/Intrasolar (http://hometown.aol.com/malcolmbmcneill/InterstellarTransportationExplo.html)

The second referenced paper was actually a smoother version of the material contained in the referenced webpage.

[Xeven]

Gosh I love the idea of man gointg to mars yet I can&#39;t see why its next in humanities goals for space. We should be exploiting the asteroids (using them for resources, colonies and even platforms to build ships out of *some are small as footballs and football fields*). Also we should be investing NASA resources into propulsion, exotic power sources and gravity research. Mars should be visited but only after we have built solar exploration ships out of asteroids and turned asteroid mining into a lucrative buisness so we can finance future tech research.

Finaly learning more about asteroids and how to move them through space could save earth someday. Imagine using an asteroid to deflect a comet comming toward earth.. etc..

Mars yes but lets invest in things we need and get our tech up there a bit so we can explore our entire solar system and not just a shot at one planet.

Building something along the lines of USS Enterpirse (scaled down to solar system exploration) should be were we invest in not just a one way trip to one planet.

Build space ships like we do earth ships and submarines. Can go many places not just one..

Apollo achived its objective but wasted a ton of money as is the shuttle.

[Mettalica1]

I think it is to dangroes to send man to mars now but later we can as soon as we can deal with the weather :huh: ;)

[Planetwatcher]

It isn&#39;t hard to recycle water from our own human waste products, it&#39;s just gross, but very doable. :rolleyes:

[KeiZka]

I think manned mission is possible already: it just needs awful lot of time and awful many shuttle launches. What i mean? i mean that we should build a system ship just in the orbit of earth, thus we could save all that gasoline we would otherwise need to launch, what, maybe several 10* bigger ship than shuttle is from earth&#39;s soil. it&#39;s very uneconomic to launch almost anything bigger than current shuttles from earth, because of gravity. (i&#39;m replying myself, eek&#33;) So. let&#39;s build that ship in orbit someday, huh?

[antoniseb]

There is a CNN article about a private Russian effort to send six people to Mars by 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/04/12/r...s.ap/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/04/12/russia.mars.ap/index.html)

To me this seems unrealistic, but I haven&#39;t examined the plan. Maybe there&#39;s something here.

[setiman]

;) Good sense rules. That is how I would summarize what I have read here. 2030 would be a reasonable early date, but that presumes we have found a way to totally shield our astronauts from radiation and micrometeorites (small as dust particles, but moving at very high speed).

:) dshan is right that a lot of the talk is just that, talk by politicians seeking re-election. The plans that call for more and more sophisticated robotics is a clear and reasonable answer. Consider too, that if there are other beings out there, and they are as smart or smarter than we are, most likely their emissaries will be robotic.

:ph34r: If we are not careful we will let our over eagerness and political hacks drive us to take steps that gain us nothing but failure. It could very well be that this next level of exploration is also the next test of our maturity. Can we build and launch really, really smartbots to learn more and maybe see an answer out there that will let us go ourselves someday?

By the way, most of the radiation studies can be done right here, we just need to spend the money on it, NOW, if we really want to go into deep space someday.
We also can do lots of the work on protection from other perils (microids) right here. I had the opportunity to exhange correspondence over several weeks with Maj John Paul Stapp, who at the time was the fastest man alive through his tests in the rocket sled to determine ejection impacts on jet pilots. He is an example of the type of research we can do here before we step out into deep space. For certain I would think we want to step in to deep space and not deep yogurt :rolleyes:

:) Go to the moon, yeah, that is a possibility because it would be fairly easy to construct a safe moon base, but again we need to do the homework here first.

B) Meanwhile, we can scratch the itch with robotics and keep on learning without losing a bunch of brave astronauts and then have the politicians cancel the program like they often do.

:D Let&#39;s do it right, the first time.

[setiman]

Well Antoniseb, wont matter what our nationality is, if we don&#39;t solve the rad problem it all ends the same way: zzzzzzzzzzzzzztttt&#33;&#33;

[daddy]

if we were looking for water, wouldn&#39;t have made more sense to go check out the polar caps for water content instead of a hole in the ground?

[Hoore500]

The Moon and Mars are for everybody not only for the Americans. I had a negative reaction against the American base on my Moon board, and a contra reaction from the American that Europeans are only trash. What to do to against it? Mister Dennis Hope promised us our contributions would be for infrastructure on the Moon. I tought about GSM and so on, but in his last proposal for updating the galactic law he even talks about weapons for attack.

I&#39;m not scared for the Americans, but I propose they from now on fight with their fists, especially against Europe. I&#39;m intended to open a museum on the moon to put my bullets in.

:lol: In any case I&#39;ll have my air planes for free&#33;&#33;&#33; Waw :rolleyes:

[Hoore500]

Already seen ESA&#39;s next space monster (http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html)?

[setiman]

:unsure: To All:

There is a very interesting op-ed piece in today&#39;s New York Times about Martian life and the dangers of bringing samples back to Earth. You can read it on line here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/opinion/.../19JUDS.html?th (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/opinion/19JUDS.html?th)

The author is an experienced and knowledgeable biologist. Very interesting reading.

Cheers :D

[Tom2Mars]

An important early element for a possible 10 year human-to-mars timeline is shaping up nicely.

Also, I agree with setiman about the radiation hazard. I tried to contact the B612 group by email and they didn&#39;t ping me back. I wanted to see if they&#39;d like to help "tag and bag" a small asteroid for use as radiation shield material for my Earth-to Mars rotating habitat. Setiman, do you know these folks? I believe you referenced them before.

If we can get a few folks and orgs to coordinate and cooperate, we can make a Mars mission happen. And, pretty soon&#33; ;)

[Galaxy dweller]

Tom2Mars. thank you for your personal message. I appreciate it a lot.

[setiman]

Tom2Mars, the two key people at B612 are astronaut Rusty Schweickart who is Chairman, and astronaut Ed Lu who is President. To my knowledge they have both been in Florida at the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Try then again via email. Ed Lu is an active astronaut and is in Houston most of the time. Rusty is retired, but very busy. You can call the number for B612 and get info on how to reach Ed or Rusty. At this point in time B612 is an advocacy effort, getting NASA and space scientists to listen and begin planning what to do when a flying QE2 heads our way.

Cheers.

P.S. Don&#39;t be put off by their shyness, just take into consideration how much email astronauts get. They are necessarily guarded, but not unfriendly.

[RalfRotten]

Hey, Joe Crash, Tom2mars

Check out these sites on what NASA, and others think about the van allen belt and the earths magnetic field&#33; etc ;)

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/17...b_radiation.htm (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/17feb_radiation.htm)

http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/askmag.html#list

http://www.astronomycafe.net/

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae254.cfm

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cosm...ays_011112.html (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cosmic_rays_011112.html)
(watch out for pop-ups)

[Manchurian Taikonaut]

I&#39;m not sure if it&#39;s possible, people are now more concerned with finances, scandals and security and the cost of rebuilding Iraq, the Bush space plan for putting people on Mars has seen much criticism people ask what&#39;s with the finance and Steven Weinberg criticises the Bush "New Vision for Space Exploration" Many have called the Bush plan an election stunt
for Mars then we need to look at the space program entirely differently