Honestly I’m so used to watching NASA that my brain hasn’t fully processed that this is a SpaceX vehicle. The funny thing is the way the capsule docked yesterday you couldn’t see their logo. The meatball is too eye-catching anyway.
Tman
3673
I admire his tenacity and desire to get to Mars, but there is so much to solve here that right now it just feels impossible. How is he addressing these?
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One way you’re looking at 200+ days of travel. Just keeping a crew sane and living for that long prior to landing? That’s one long trip.
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You’re looking at 2 years before the next replenishment, so you better pack everything you’re going to need!
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Has any spacecraft ever returned from Mars? What are the logistics of THAT?
Scott Kelly spent 340 day in orbit while his twin brother Mark was studied. There have been numerous folks who’ve spent more than 200 days, and there don’t appear to be in major issues with it. Radiation and shielding still needs to be solved.
The first exploration/supply launch is schedule for 2022 and then every 26 months after that. I sort of envision a “Surviving Mars” situation where automonous drones build a lot of the infrastructure prior to humans arriving. There is pretty good book on the subject called “Packing for Mars”, which goes into depth as the requirements
Perseverance, NASA next Mars Rover, which launches in the next month or so, Is designed to send Mars soil and rock samples back to earth.
It is certainly the hardest thing mankind has ever tried to do, but you longest journey, single step and all that.
Tman
3675
I think the psychology of knowing you have help right out your window (earth orbit) is a lot different than being on a one-way trip. Also, comms in earth orbit are near instantaneous and with Mars you could be looking at anywhere from 3-22 minutes difference with Mars, so there is no realistic real-time comms, it would be videos you send back and forth.
Packing for Mars sounds interesting. I’ll have to check it out. Rations to last that long would be interesting.
This biggest thing I see with Mars is coming back. I look at all the infrastructure we have on this planet for launching/servicing rockets. It is not trivial. Have we ever landed a rocket refueled and launched again? Am very curious to see how Elon is going do that on Mars. Am also confident he will, he’s nuts.
First he has to stop the Starships from blowing up.
schurem
3678
Eating an elephant with a teaspoon, bite by bite. He’s making progress.
Not quite—the current plan is for Perseverance to take and cache samples for return by a mission later in the 2020s.
(I really want to play some Kerbal Space Program now.)
There’s a lot less atmosphere to get in the way of launching a rocket from the surface of Mars at least.
You could keep a long haul craft in orbit and use a lander. That enables sending the primary craft with enough fuel for the return trip. Logistics to be solved for sure though.
You send all the supplies needed plus extra before you send humans. But honestly, the biggest problem they’re going to have is radiation. It’ll be expensive to shield the ship and the base enough to keep them safe.
Matt_W
3682
I love Packing for Mars. Mary Roach is hilarious and the book is fascinating. Just be aware it’s a general book about the nitty gritty of space travel, not necessarily about going to Mars specifically.
Realistically, they (NASA and/or SpaceX) are going to have to deal with radiation and gravity issues by keeping people on the surface of Mars and building some shielding there. In theory, you can keep the key time where people are exposed down to 3-6 months each way and let you recover somewhat on the surface in between interplanetary transfer windows.
We know how to do this with radiation, just land enough building material beforehand or build into the ground. It’s hard, though.
Gravity is a bigger unknown. We just don’t know for certain that Mars gravity counters the health effects that the long-term ISS astronauts encountered.
I wish we were doing more aggressive gravity-related research. For example, centrifuge beds on the ISS.
Radiation is also a problem in transit. One ill-timed solar flare and, well, that’s bad. Really bad.
Pioneers are seldom safe. It’s probably in the job desc.
Matt_W
3686
We’re not great at precision targeting landing sites. Curiosity’s landing ellipse was 20km x 7km. InSight’s was 130km x 27km. Those are enormous areas. You can’t imagine humans landing surrounded by all their supplies and equipment. They could be dozens of km from anything with all the stuff scattered widely over hundreds of square kilometers.
Launch from Mars would require something like 1/3 of the launch energy for an Earth launch.
Indeed, I think the chance of surviving a Mars mission is remarkably low. It’s not just one step past the moon. If the moon is swimming across the English Channel, Mars is swimming across the Atlantic. I have no doubt there will be volunteers, but the enormous expense and likely crew death will probably sap public enthusiasm for space travel.
Menzo
3687
We also weren’t great at launching and returning booster rockets. Then SpaceX did it. Now they’re using boosters 5x times with more soon.
We’ve solved all the problems of humans on mars on paper. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make it real, but it’s not like we don’t know how it could be done.
But anyone who suggests we’re less than 20-30 years from landing someone on Mars is fooling themselves and you. Even if SpaceX somehow launched a rocket and got to Mars tomorrow, there’s still 10-15 years of perfecting the system and learning both how to land on Mars routinely and how to return to earth with a human crew.
Then of course there’s the little detail of having to live on the surface of Mars for weeks/months.
We just need a more energy dense substance than rocket fuel that also has larger peak output than radiogenic decay. 99.999% of the problems of space flight really come down to propulsion. All the other issues are more or less trivial by comparison to solve once you’ve liberated 90% of the payload weight for other things than propulsion.
Menzo
3689
We’ve taken some steps towards that as well. Clearly not “solved,” since there are lots of factors involved.
MikeJ
3690
Damn, @Menzo, you are so fast on the draw. This is a super long article on NTERs:
It’s a focus on more realistic SF stuff, but super detailed and interesting.
