Traveling to Mars

[AKKuya]

Eventually, humans will be making the trip to the 4th Rock from the Sun.  Rock, a Red Rock to be accurate, is the best word to use.  Roughly, 54 million miles from Earth when both lined up from the Sun.  Using the simple forward pass of football, we launch a space craft when Mars is behind us and time it to intercept the planet when Mars catches up taking from 6 to 9 months journey.

There are two camps at NASA.

Camp 1 : Traditional

Train the best and brightest of 25 - 45 years of age.  They are spending a minimum of 1 year on the surface plus the transit time and back taking a possible 2 more years combined.

Pros -
A) Physically fit.  They will have the exercise equipment to keep working the muscles in microgravity for the transit trips.  On surface of Mars with close to Earth gravity, fitness equipment will rebuild what was missing during trip to Mars and preparing them for trip back home.
B) Base Camp.  Proposed site will be placed near hills with caves for added protection (dust storms and solar radiation).  Access to water (craters or snow cap) possible.  Return vehicle already waiting or landing craft doubles for launch pad and separate launch vehicle.
C) Self Sustainability.  This has been thoroughly designed, built and tested.  Reclamation, oxygen production, water production, foos production, etc...)

Cons -
A) Exposure to radiation during both trips and on the surface could give the crew a high risk of cancer.
B) Dust storms unexpectedly destroying habitat.
C) Marsquake destroying habitat.
D) Olympus Mons breathing life, destroying habitat.
E) Releasing dormant bacteria and or viruses from excavation, killing the crew.
5) Annoying any Martian neighbors, destroying the habitat and coming to Earth to finish the job.

They have no problem signing up for this.  They know that everything in space and on Mars is doing one thing.  Kill them.  I salute them for their bravery.  Wish I was going with them.


Camp 2 :  Old fart Brigade

Knowing there might be the possibility of a one-way mission, NASA sends a crew 50 years of age and older.  Ultimate top spot on a person's bucket list.

Pros -
If they survive the trip and landing, no resources for return trip, they can be the builders of a permanent colony using all the above-mentioned capabilities of traditional crew.  This will allow for more missions with same type of crew to further strengthen the habitat and utilities for the first traditional type of crew to make a colony with families.

Cons - It might take 20+ of these missions to get to families.


Let's see what the private sector comes up with for colonizing Mars.

[Vulcan]

Option 3: ignore mars and go straight to mining the asteroid belt.

[zack1234]

Yes elite dangerous

[MORAY37]

Eventually, humans will be making the trip to the 4th Rock from the Sun.  Rock, a Red Rock to be accurate, is the best word to use.  Roughly, 54 million miles from Earth when both lined up from the Sun.  Using the simple forward pass of football, we launch a space craft when Mars is behind us and time it to intercept the planet when Mars catches up taking from 6 to 9 months journey.

There are two camps at NASA.

Camp 1 : Traditional

Train the best and brightest of 25 - 45 years of age.  They are spending a minimum of 1 year on the surface plus the transit time and back taking a possible 2 more years combined.

Pros -
A) Physically fit.  They will have the exercise equipment to keep working the muscles in microgravity for the transit trips.  On surface of Mars with close to Earth gravity, fitness equipment will rebuild what was missing during trip to Mars and preparing them for trip back home.
B) Base Camp.  Proposed site will be placed near hills with caves for added protection (dust storms and solar radiation).  Access to water (craters or snow cap) possible.  Return vehicle already waiting or landing craft doubles for launch pad and separate launch vehicle.
C) Self Sustainability.  This has been thoroughly designed, built and tested.  Reclamation, oxygen production, water production, foos production, etc...)

Cons -
A) Exposure to radiation during both trips and on the surface could give the crew a high risk of cancer.
B) Dust storms unexpectedly destroying habitat.
C) Marsquake destroying habitat.
D) Olympus Mons breathing life, destroying habitat.
E) Releasing dormant bacteria and or viruses from excavation, killing the crew.
5) Annoying any Martian neighbors, destroying the habitat and coming to Earth to finish the job.

They have no problem signing up for this.  They know that everything in space and on Mars is doing one thing.  Kill them.  I salute them for their bravery.  Wish I was going with them.


Camp 2 :  Old fart Brigade

Knowing there might be the possibility of a one-way mission, NASA sends a crew 50 years of age and older.  Ultimate top spot on a person's bucket list.

Pros -
If they survive the trip and landing, no resources for return trip, they can be the builders of a permanent colony using all the above-mentioned capabilities of traditional crew.  This will allow for more missions with same type of crew to further strengthen the habitat and utilities for the first traditional type of crew to make a colony with families.

Cons - It might take 20+ of these missions to get to families.


Let's see what the private sector comes up with for colonizing Mars.

The most interesting thing is that NASA is quietly starting to question the "why" aspect of sending people to Mars.  The latest long term observations of human behavior during even a "quick" trip to Mars are very disconcerting.  Human behavior being what it is, we tend to become more and more independent the further we are from perceived authority.  The latest experiments in long term mission isolation have shown that that independent streak tends to start becoming manifest within 6 months of "leaving" Earth (in the experiments, "astronauts" simulated going to Mars by isolating in a contained environment serving as a ship, then in a habitat in a remote location here to simulate Mars), and grows exponentially with the distance and perceived impact of actions. 

These experiments are showing that even highly trained astronauts start to move away from rigid mission details, and even start to simply ignore mission control, making independent decisions based on their own desires, disregarding the rest of the crew and mission parameters. 

[MORAY37]

Option 3: ignore mars and go straight to mining the asteroid belt.

I don't disagree, but it won't happen for a very long time when there just aren't any rare earth metals left here.  A single small asteroid, mined, would decimate the world's economy by suddenly devaluing multiple precious metals. 

[Devil 505]

I don't disagree, but it won't happen for a very long time when there just aren't any rare earth metals left here.  A single small asteroid, mined, would decimate the world's economy by suddenly devaluing multiple precious metals.

I'm not sure the impact would be so great once you factor in the costs needed to undertake such a plan. It would require an incredible amount of infrastructure that simply does not exist, nor could it exist in any short/medium term timeframe.

[Chris79]

Mars is geologically dead, no volcanos, mars quakes, magnetosphere, ect. The moon would make much better sense, much lower gravity, hence making it a great jumping off point for stellar exploration, and it’s a hell of a lot closer.

[Eagler]

You do realize that when all of this gets going it will be for the super rich not the rest of us

Earth will become a penal colony

Eagler

[Puma44]

Mars is geologically dead, no volcanos, mars quakes, magnetosphere, ect. The moon would make much better sense, much lower gravity, hence making it a great jumping off point for stellar exploration, and it’s a hell of a lot closer.

Yeah, but Matt Damon has already been there and figured out all the hard stuff.

[Rocco]

You do realize that when all of this gets going it will be for the super rich not the rest of us

Earth will become a penal colony

Eagler

Nah I think The Expanse has it right. The elite will stay on Earth and the off world colonies will be more working class. At least until a colony surpasses Earth in comfort and prosperity which could be a century or more.

It'll look a lot like European expansion into North America, first explorers then small outposts dedicated to mining resources then settlers supported by the outposts to build up the infrastructure.

Mars is geologically dead, no volcanos, mars quakes, magnetosphere, ect. The moon would make much better sense, much lower gravity, hence making it a great jumping off point for stellar exploration, and it’s a hell of a lot closer.

Completely agree. The moon is a much better place to test out a permanent colony. Where help is a couple days away, not 6 months or more. Going to Mars should be a quick visit and return trip at this point, we don't quite have the tech and knowledge for a permanent colony there. And a disaster of a  first colony would discourage future attempts.

[Easyscor]

snip: The elite will stay on Earth and ...

Yep.

Why would anyone with a yacht, a private airplane and multiple residences move to a primitive colony? Rarely happened in the early European settlement of other continents.

As for long-term colonies on Mars, Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R Hendrix make a compelling argument for skipping Mars and going to Titan with its Nitrogen  Methane(?) atmosphere and water ice surface. Both require faster transport than currently available but its coming fast.

Edit: Beyond Earth

[MORAY37]

I'm not sure the impact would be so great once you factor in the costs needed to undertake such a plan. It would require an incredible amount of infrastructure that simply does not exist, nor could it exist in any short/medium term timeframe.

There's some interesting research in this area.  Caltech/NASA came up with a plan to mine a known, understood asteroid that is the size of a football field and is purely platinum.  (I can forward the paper if you want.)  They came up with 1.0 billion USD to get there and extract the platinum with existing technology. Fair market value at the time of mining would be about 50.0 billion USD.  Again, this could be undertaken, effectively, in the very near term.  Basically they came up with sending un-crewed craft out to it, slowly changing the orbit and bringing it into Earth orbit, where it could be mined effectively. 

The problem is, the current world market for platinum is 7,770,000 ounces (485,625 lbs) per year. Bringing that single small asteroid back would effectively crash the market for platinum by suddenly injecting about 10-15 million pounds into circulation.  If you simply mined it constantly for lower yield (to string along the price), the operating costs would skyrocket, as well as having a host of orbital issues to attend to.  They came to the conclusion that it wouldn't pay off in either case.

So there you go.  If the world market changes..... well then that does change the calculus. If some technology that we don't have a handle on comes to the foreground.... that's when you'll see the first attempts.

[zack1234]

People will NOT get to Mars they are too busy bleaching their bum holes and getting their eye brows sculptured….fact

And the women are more concerned about polar bears and lines on their faces….fact

What a fantastic modern age we live in.

I would write ten paragraphs about said demise of Western culture but the lines above cover the topic.

[AKKuya]

Technology is rapidly expanding especially on computer software and integration with hardware.  That ensures advanced safety protocols with multiple backups.  After all, going into space has one underlying truth.  Space wants to kill you.

The human race is still using the primitive method of Goddard rocket technology.  As the above-mentioned statement, very advanced Goddard rockets.

Until there is a breakthrough in creating unlimited energy that can be housed within an engine tied to a controllable propulsion system, we're in the same category as the first sailing vessels travelling from Europe to the New World.

Atomic energy was the first real direction forward to escaping rocket engines that placed a lot of fuel into a tank then ignite for release out of one end.  Financially, nuclear powered engines would be cheaper in the long run after the advancements in learned applications of technology.  That didn't happen.

The two most powerful forces that we can observe in the universe is gravity and electro-magnetism.  That would be the best approach concept of merging the two together.  Each one feeding off each other at the same time both repelling each other in a stable environment.  Gravity is density.  EM is metallic.  Polarity will be the key. 

The discovery of a new super element that can be fused with other elements and metal properties.  This core can be charged with electricity powered by a super engine source attracting more core particles growing to a larger physical state.  These particles become packed tightly at the atomic level creating a super dense core.  Polarity keeps the core moving between negative and positive states.  That kinetic energy is fed back into the engine and propulsion systems.

In layman's terms, this might be the best approach.  Let the scientists figure out the details.  Or, the rest of the community here.

[Shuffler]

I have been there. Not impressed.