Scientists calls for Base-Camp Out-Post on Mars

[American Horse]

in just twenty years time.
During the more than 40 years since the last Apollo mission, no human has set foot on a planetary body beyond Earth.

Among those who were witnesses to the first and last moon landings, there is skepticism that we will ever step onto another planet sized body again.

“ - President Obama informed NASA last April that he "believed by the mid-2030s that we could send humans to orbit Mars and safely return them to Earth. And that a landing would soon follow - ” said agency spokesman Michael Braukus.”

The following news appeared in Yahoo! News the first of this week, and the only comment it got here at USMB was in a thread about healthcare, perhaps likening sending “senior” astronauts to Mars as the ultimate in “death panels,” with the tag-line: “I knew the Healthcare Bill was bad, but come on.... do we really want to just ship the elderly to Mars?”

The thrust of the proposal was that if a mission to Mars was only in one direction, and manned by people (4-on two separate vehicles) who would willingly go with the understanding that their return was not planned for, that the costs would be a fraction of one with a plan to return. The crew could best spend their time setting up infrastructure for a permanent colony with the equipment that had been sent by earlier unmanned missions.

“ - The first colonists to Mars wouldn’t go in "cold." Robotic probes sent on ahead would establish necessities such as an energy source (such as a small nuclear reactor augmented by solar panels), enough food for two years, the basics for creating home-grown agriculture, one or more rover vehicles and a tool-kit for carrying out essential engineering and maintenance work. - ”

The paradigm of the proposal is comparable to that of the settlement of the “New World." Those who arrived from Europe aboard the Mayflower in 1620 had no plans of returning to their former homeland.

Their journey took 66 days. A trip to Mars requires 6-months in the best orbital situation. This is about two-and-a-half times the Mayflower transit for a one way journey. In this plan, fuel could be used more extravagantly; so If a return was planned, a trip which used fuel out and back most efficiently would require about 44 months, with 26 months spent on planet.

A large part of those 26-months would be spent logistically, partly preparing fuels for the return mission. During the trip, about 18 months would be spent in zero gravity, and the 26 months on planet would be spent in gravity only 38% of earth’s. Undoubtedly there would need to be an intense rehabilitation program after being exposed to a long period of zero gravity and for an extended period, Mar's gravity.

If the trip was only one way, the time spent on preparing for the return could be spent in making their habitation permanent, and laying the foundation for future permanent habitants, which would recruited on an ongoing basis.

The pioneers suggested by the two scientists who make this proposal would be people who “were a bit older, around 60 or something like that.” Consider the people who explored Antarctica a century ago; since they saw that many of those who had gone before never returned they understood the risks. They were up to a challenge even though they went less prepared than our hypothetical Mars pioneers.

This kind of a mission will never come from the NASA agency. I suggest that is because it would be politically incorrect to consider such a plan. As the colonization of North America was economically driven, this will be too. The people who landed at Plymouth Rock, had no expectation of becoming rich. Only their “sponsors” did; by investing in the passengers, they were after a stake in relatively unknown possibilities for future trade, and as yet undefined opportunities.

An optimistic take on this one-direction-colonization would be that technology would catch up with the reality of the pursuit, and in a few decades some would be able to return; but to what purpose? They would have been transformed by their experience in ways that would make their return to earth a hazardous proposition.


Here's the TEXT OF PAPER by the two scientists

TITLED: To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission to Mars
Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Ph.D.1, and Paul Davies, Ph.D.2,
1School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Washington State University
2Beyond Center, Arizona State University

Davies is a physicist whose research focuses on cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He was an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.

Schulze-Makuch works in the Earth Sciences department at WSU and is the author of two books about life on other planets. His focus is eco-hydrogeology, which includes the study of water on planets and moons of our solar system and how those could serve as a potential habitat for microbial life.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Davies is a physicist whose research focuses on cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He was an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.

And how did life get to Mars?

Why is it any more likely that it spontaneously developed on Mars than on Earth? What good is such a theory besides having something else to talk about?

Why not set up a robot base on the Moon? It is close enough so that the robots could be tele-operated. Explore the Moon. NASA could even let people rent robot time on the Moon. I would pay $50 to operate a robot on the Moon for 30 minutes. They found water near the pole. Where is the iron and aluminum? How much could be built in preparation for people.

We need better rockets for Mars.

Trip to Mars in 39 Days | International Space Fellowship

psik

 

[American Horse]

Davies is a physicist whose research focuses on cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He was an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.

And how did life get to Mars?

Why is it any more likely that it spontaneously developed on Mars than on Earth? What good is such a theory besides having something else to talk about?

I too find that implausible, but seeming to be implausible doesn't necessarily make it less likely it began there than on earth.

There is a theory that the kind of matter (organic molecules) that is common to life exists in cooler conditions, Saturn's moon Titan, comets, asteroids
since the outer solar system cooled first
Matter in the outer solar-system - the Oort Cloud where the above mentioned matter is relatively common
Is periodically perturbed to fall toward the sun
into collisions with more inward planetary objects
The Earth was hotter later,
It was as a more hostile environment for the beginning life in the early solar system
Mars cooled earlier, and was ready earlier for the introduction of life

and

We know it is almost common for planets like Mars, or Earth, Earth's moon, and Martian moons to be struck by space debris which might carry primitive living matter into space which would fall on a planet further in: I.e, Mars to Earth

Could any kind of life or proto-living matter survive in the cold of space? It is theorized by scientist who study that possibility (Davies is one) who believe that can be proven - I don't know how.

Paul Davies is no schlub; HERE'S A LINK to 98-scientific papers he either authored or collaborated with other scientist on. These titles can be clicked and followed to the full documents.

 

[American Horse]

Why not set up a robot base on the Moon? It is close enough so that the robots could be tele-operated. Explore the Moon. NASA could even let people rent robot time on the Moon. I would pay $50 to operate a robot on the Moon for 30 minutes. They found water near the pole. Where is the iron and aluminum? How much could be built in preparation for people.

We need better rockets for Mars.

Trip to Mars in 39 Days | International Space Fellowship

psik

We are not investing in such an advanced transport system. There is no incentive to do so because a trip to Mars, as has been shown, is just something a few people really want.

The equipment the two scientists proposed using is pretty much off the shelf, right now, or only a generation away from our present abilities.

We have been doing nothing much more than drilling holes in space for 43 years, and every five years or so going back to the drawing board for a look, but not advancing. Obama's plans, nor Bush's plans included a project like the one in your link.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

 

[American Horse]

Bradbury's "THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, would have to be classified as "fantasy" rather than straight "hard" science fiction"

First short story (of 28) in The Marian Chronicles.
Rocket Summer (January 1999/2030)
(First published in Planet Stories, Spring 1947)

The stories of the book are arranged in chronological order, starting in January 1999, with the blasting off of the first rocket. "Rocket Summer" is a short vignette which describes Ohio's winter turning briefly into summer due to the extreme heat of the rocket's take-off, as well as the reaction of the citizens nearby.

And the final short story in The Martian Chronicles:
The Million-Year Picnic (October 2026/2057)

(First published in Planet Stories, Summer 1946)
A family saves a rocket that the government would have used in the nuclear war and leaves Earth on a "fishing trip" to Mars. The family picks a city to live in and call home. They go in and Dad burns tax documents and other government papers on a camp fire, explaining that he is burning a way of life that was wrong. The final thing to go on the fire is a map of the Earth. Later, he offers his sons a "gift" in the form of their new world. He introduces them to Martians: their own reflections in a canal.

 

[geauxtohell]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hKSYgOGtos[/ame]

 

[American Horse]

NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical; ARSENIC

This has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"

 

[Mobius]

Manned exploration's a bit of a gimmick, to be totally honest. Yeah, live video feed of dudes walking on the surface of the Moon is nice and all, but it's much cheaper and less of a hassle to simply have robots go out and collect data. I guess a similar principle is at work with the increasing acceptance of drone aircraft for military purposes.

 

[American Horse]

Manned exploration's a bit of a gimmick, to be totally honest. Yeah, live video feed of dudes walking on the surface of the Moon is nice and all, but it's much cheaper and less of a hassle to simply have robots go out and collect data. I guess a similar principle is at work with the increasing acceptance of drone aircraft for military purposes.

The flexibility of any robotic equipment is inadequate as compared to the abilities of human beings walking on the surface, especially when we consider the elapsed time between what we perceive after an image is sent back, and then the signal to perform an action or a task, and then the-wait-to-see how the action actually played out once initiated. The Mars rover Spirit is stuck or hung-up on Mars at the moment and we have been trying to free it for almost, what; 18 months now?

A drone has all the flexibility of a bird in flight, and the instantaneity of communications of being right here on the home planet. We can send robots of different varieties and for different purposes until the cows come home, and we will still not have approached what a set of crews arriving there after a base has been pre-positioned in place would be able to accomplish.

If they do not need to return, then they can set about improving and developing a presence there. And it won't be about prancing around on the surface for a sideshow. It will be about science, economic development, and the preservation of human life against some threats we have only recently begun to recognize. Once there, we would make the most of it, just like the first pilgrims in North America did because they had to.

Chances are that they would be as or more self sufficient in a few years than our human presence is at Antarctica

 

[Mobius]

It will be about science, economic development, and the preservation of human life against some threats we have only recently begun to recognize.

Threats like what?

 

[American Horse]

It will be about science, economic development, and the preservation of human life against some threats we have only recently begun to recognize.

Threats like what?

The most recent 20 years have brought us vast new knowledge about our physical universe and our place in it. For instance, we’ve learned about the existence of the Kuiper Belt, a region of micro-planetary sized bodies. This discovery has resulted in the down-sizing of Pluto from (major) planet to minor planet, and the conclusion that it, along with it’s companion Charon are Kuiper belt bodies. They may be among the largest but there are probably many others just below their size threshold. And there is one known KB object which is 30% larger than Pluto, “Xena” (2003 UB313) and these objects show a propensity to unite as companion bodies: Pluto/Charon, Xena/Gabriella.

We have discovered and proved the existence the Oort Cloud, a “cloud” of icy/dusty/dirty coalescing matter left over from the early accretion disc of the solar system, from which comets that exist there in very large quantities are sometimes perturbed from that region and fall towards the sun intersecting the orbits of the inner planets, including the Earth and its moon.

We have discovered that our galaxy consists of dark matter to some fairly high proportion (80% by some estimates) which may include the type of matter in the above mentioned regions, but everywhere else and in the neighborhood of our sun and its companion planets. These dark objects may be larger bodies, rogue planets, and some very large but too small such that they have failed to become ignited by fusion to become stars. And of course there is the dust and gas which has not coalesced into any organized form which is ubiquitous in the galaxy.

For the uninitiated the galaxy is the “island universe” that comprises between 200-billion and 400-billion stars, including our own. Consider that huge spread; the number in that estimate has done nothing but increase over the last century, and even now we might be off by more than a 100-billion. Part of that discrepancy has come from the recognition of the great amount of dark matter that must exist.

At one time, in my own lifetime, astronomers thought there were a known number of comets and large objects, but every new discovery has forced us to accept that our neighborhood is much more cluttered and dynamic than we realized.

Just like in our own lives, the greatest danger comes from our own neighborhood, and closer still from our own family, that of our planet's siblings, objects of all sizes,what we might call the solar family.

For our discussion, we can discount long term threats like the sun going nova, or diminishing in output, or gamma ray bursts, or a rogue black hole. Even a visit to our neighborhood from a sister sun can be predicted out to some millions of years. This will eventually happen and disrupt our sun’s retinue of orbiting matter, including comets, asteroids, meteoroids, etal causing some of that to move in some dangerous (to us) paths, but for the present we may safely discount that event as being very long term, or very low in incidence of probability before a threat emerges.

Unlike the ones above, are threats which would probably leave no safe haven anywhere in the inner solar system. The greatest near term threats come from near-space, or objects moving into near space which will be most dangerous to individual planets, and in particular to our own, because we have no outposts on which to preserve humanity if such an event did happen.

Stephen Hawking has recently said that he believes a major factor in the apparent scarcity (we know of only one) of intelligent life in our galaxy is the very high probability of an asteroid or a comet collision with a system’s inhabited planets before they become sufficiently advanced to make their presence known. A civilization of long enough duration should begin to alter their home system, or expand their realm of influence by interstellar travel, such that the existence of one or more should be apparent.

The existence of “dark matter” is one of those discoveries that has huge implications for the potential dynamics of our own neighborhood. A dark object, or an unknown object could at any time, or have already perturbed denizens of the Oort cloud, or the Kuiper belt and launch or have launced a number of objects toward, and in a collision course with Earth.

Back in 1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, after breaking apart in some 20 pieces, collided with Jupiter and disrupted its atmosphere for weeks.

Recent impact on the moon was witnessed by monks in 1178; producing the formation of the twenty-km diameter Giordano Bruno crater. From the date we can deduce that it probably was an object from the “Taurid” meteor shower stream of debris left over from an extinct comet, and from which the Tunguska event also most likely originated.

Some 13,000 years earlier, an occurrence thought by some researchers to be an extraterrestrial impact set off cooler weather and large-scale extinctions in North America. The "Younger Dryas event," as it is known, coincided with the end of the prehistoric Clovis culture.

Consider that the fall of Rome brought on the one-thousand-year period known as the "dark ages" in Europe. A calamitous event like the one theorized to have happened 13,000 back, considering our global interdependence, could bring on a dark age for science and civilization that would never again permit the kind of freedom and technology which we presently enjoy.

A tangential consideration; Robots: I personally have a concern with robots; Might robots, after the most advanced models have been produced to a state that they would ably replace human beings, become a threat to their masters? Consider the types of robots that would be required to produce efficient and economical results on a planet as distant as Mars. They would need to think on their own, and that could promote a level of intelligence that could eventually become self-serving, and dangerous back here on earth. Just a thought.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Martian Glass Tunnel?

 

[American Horse]

Martian Glass Tunnel?

Believed to be; Some temporary habitats are thought to be practical in them, as they can be sealed off to contain living conditions for the first pioneers on Mars.

This is the best I've come across on our future on Mars

The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization -
Robert Zubrin, Lockheed Martin Astronautics


Here are just a few excerpts from the linked paper by Zubrin:

ZUBRIN: “ - While I shall return to historical analogies periodically in this paper, the arguments presented here shall not be primarily historical in nature. Rather, they shall be based on the concrete case of Mars itself, its unique characteristics, resources, technological requirements, and its relationships to the other important bodies within our solar system. …

Among extraterrestrial bodies in our solar system, Mars is unique in that it possesses all the raw materials required to support not only life, but a new branch of human civilization. …

If the launch vehicle used has a 1000 tonne liftoff mass, if would require 107 launches to assemble the CH4/O2 freighter mission if launched from Earth, but only 2 launches if the departure is from Mars. Even if propellant and other launch costs were ten times greater on Mars than on Earth, it would still be enormously advantageous to launch from Mars. …

The result that follows is simply this: anything that needs to be sent to the asteroid belt that can be produced on Mars will be produced on Mars.


The outline of future interplanetary commerce thus becomes clear. There will be a "triangle trade," with Earth supplying high technology manufactured goods to Mars, Mars supplying low technology manufactured goods and food staples to the asteroid belt and possibly the Moon as well, and the asteroids and Moon sending metals and possibly helium-3 to Earth. This triangle trade, illustrated in Fig. 1 is directly analogous to the triangle trade of Britain, her North American colonies, and the West Indies during the colonial period. Britain would send manufactured goods to North America, the American colonies would send food staples and needed craft products to the West Indies, and the West Indies would send cash crops such as sugar to Britain. A similar triangle trade involving Britain, Australia, and the Spice Islands also supported British trade in the East Indies during the 19th Century. - "

HERE'S A LINK TO THE GENERAL FILE FROM WHICH I FOUND THE ABOVE MATERIAL

The next best that I've read is the fictional "account" in the "Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

[Sallow]

Manned exploration's a bit of a gimmick, to be totally honest. Yeah, live video feed of dudes walking on the surface of the Moon is nice and all, but it's much cheaper and less of a hassle to simply have robots go out and collect data. I guess a similar principle is at work with the increasing acceptance of drone aircraft for military purposes.

We should go to Mars. Not in twenty years..in five years.

Stop the wars..and start investing in Science.

That would really move us forward..

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trya1ETd9Hs&feature=related[/ame]