Do We Have the 'Right Stuff' to Put an Astronaut on Mars?

"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct."

Carl Sagan

It only took eight years for JFK’s dream to land a man on the moon to be fulfilled, but plans to to land a man on is going to take just that little bit longer -24 years to be exact, but at least we know how we’re going to go about getting our astronauts there.

NASA is serious about launching the most difficult mission ever attempted by the human race - putting an astronaut on Mars. The voyage will cover hundreds of millions of miles and take two and half years roundtrip. It sounds like science fiction. To make it scientific fact, the United States needs to first flex its deep space muscles again on familiar terrain - the moon. It's called the Constellation program.

"The accuracy with which you need to target a landing site on the surface is like throwing a basketball from New York to Los Angeles and having it go through without touching the rim," explains Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the rovers Spirit and Opportunity..

If the astronauts actually that shot, and if they land on Mars, they will face a deadly environment - radiation from solar flares, dangerous dust and temperatures that average 60 degrees below zero. And they’ll have to do it for up to 18 months, before the Earth and align properly again for a faster return home. No astronauts have ever spent that amount of time on an alien world. Neil Armstrong was on the moon for less than a day.

"And I think it’s more responsible for us to go to the moon, check out these systems, make sure the life-support systems, the space suits, the little things we need for these long voyages, work properly," explains Dr. Rick Gilbrech is NASA’s exploration chief.

During Apollo, the furthest the astronauts could ever venture out on their lunar rovers was six miles. NASA hopes the new rovers will let the astronauts explore 60 miles from their spacecraft. Technological advancements will help in another way. Think about this: There is more computing power in your average cell phone today than there was on any of the Apollo spacecraft that took the astronauts to the moon.

Another example of how the new missions might be different is the robonaut, which looks like a cousin of C-3PO. It’s an early model of a robot that might assist the astronauts with mundane and sometimes dangerous tasks on the moon.

NASA isn’t using the moon just to train for Mars. Next year, it will launch orbiters around the moon and then essentially blast the lunar surface. In the midst of the debris field, NASA hopes to find evidence of hydrogen, which could one day help fuel trips home for the astronauts. But will there be any missions for the astronauts at all?

The biggest obstacle NASA faces is money. One critic has called the Constellation program "Apollo on food stamps." During the 1960s, 4 percent of the entire national budget was spent on space. Today one-sixth of 1 percent goes to NASA.

Thanks to some new details released by NASA for their new Constellation manned mission, we now have an insight in to what the missions will look like.

A 400,000kg (880,000lb) spacecraft would be constructed, in space. Due to the necessity of a craft that can act autonomously of NASA control, make the distance, and provide for its crew for a 900 day mission, the size of the ‘marscraft’ is obviously going to exceed that of the current space shuttles.

It would take three to four Ares V rockets to launch the elements of the spacecraft in to a low Earth orbit.

A ‘minimal crew’ would make the journey to Mars, taking approximately six to seven months to traverse the distance. A total of 550 days would be spent on the surface of Mars, before returning. Sent every 26 months to the red planet, the crews would need to take up to 50,000kg of cargo with them. They’d need an ‘aerodynamic and powered descent’ and autonomy or at least asynchronous from NASA control.

However, sending the crew is not the only part of this mission. Where are they going to live? How will all their equipment make the journey? That’s why their mission will be preceded by two separate missions.

With a theoretical launch date for the manned mission to arriving in February of 2031, a cargo lander and surface habitat would be launched December 2028 and January 2029, respectively using two Ares V launches. Subsequently, the launder will arrive October 2029, and the habitat a month later; the crew will arrive August 2031.

The second set of pre-launches will occur in late 2030/early 2031, and anticipated to reach at the same time as the first crew. Thus, in the first quarter of 2033, the second mission’s crew will launch to arrive on by December, with the first crew having left January that same year, after a 17-month stay.

Will we see human settlements on Mars? Or is it all just a dream? Will the American public even support traveling to places humans can barely imagine?

Posted by Josh Hill with Casey Kazan.

f you liked this article, please give it a quick review on Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.Thanks!

60 Minutes Mission Video

Related Galaxy posts:

Exploration: Secrets of the Soil
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
New Phoenix Mission Technology to Search for Life
Is there an Interplanetary Mars-Earth Microbe Shuttle?
"The Overview Effect": Is Space Travel Next Step in Human Evolution?
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited -NASA's Phoenix Probe & the Search for

Comments

[Oliver]

Hey great article. But you have an error in the link to the CBS video. You have htttp instead of http.

Best, Oliver

[Anon]

plagiarized entirely from the 60 minutes transcript.

[Scott]

There is no point in sending humans into space. Why are we still doing it? What is a human going to find there, what are they going to do? we are perfectly capable of programming our 5 senses into machinery, and sending a robot to Mars at a fraction of the cost and elimination of the danger to human lives. It's a
distraction from the obscene
amount of money being thrown into
a war here on Earth.
http://www.burtonmackenzie.com/2007/09/instead-of-sending-humans-to-mars-11.html

[Tyler]

To Anon,

Because we have to.

[Tyler]

Whoops, that was meant for Scott.

[Tyler]

Whoops, that was meant for Scott.

[Charbax]

We need to go to Mars directly. No need to go to the Moon first, we've been on the moon already.

If a company like Google and governments invested 10 billion dollars into it, we could put humans on Mars within about 5 years.

[Anonymouse]

Yeah...great article. I especially like how you copied word for word from the 60 minutes article. That plagiarism working out for you?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/04/60minutes/main3994925.shtml?source=RSSattr=SciTech_3994925

[TM22]

@ Anon

Do you know why space is very important to out race? It will pretty much save mankind itself. Think about it, out planet's enviorment is dying at a rapid speed and soon we're going to have nowhere to live, nowhere to to get free from War, nowhere to power from (power that will support billions of people) and the list can go on and on.

If I was somebody like Richard Branson, I would be investing this like it's the end of the world.

And again to Anon, why would we send robots instead of humans? It's kind of like this: We would'nt want to send something like a robot to accomplish the greatest feat in our species history. Plus, we've already sent robots up there and there will be plenty of technology that will supoprt our heroic astronauts.

[bob w.]

It will be no problem for NASA or our military to go to mars or to land on mars especially with all the new cool technology that they currently have pattented and are also currently building for the national / military space program now. For instance a company out of arizona is working on completing work on a hyperdrive that will allow us to go to mars in only 4 hours and that is only the tip of the iceberg. You thought the Stealth was COOL and think it was created in the 70's.
Now most of these things have not been declassified so you have to follow the paper trails and research documents to discover what is out there and what has been created (but most of it is all accessable on the net and so far it is pretty Awesome to see where time has taken us.) I'm not joking I love researching, everyone should look to some of those sci-fi movies and series like stargate or StarTrek for what our capability is closely becoming. It really isn't that far off, probably the only inhibiting factor is cost relating to our current economy.

[blitzio]

I'm gonna have to agree with the guys who pointed out that this article was plagiarized word for word from the CBS 60 Minutes site, I actually read this two days ago on the CBS website.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/04/60minutes/main3994925.shtml?source=RSSattr=SciTech_3994925

Didn't think the internet would notice? Come on.

[knoxvilledaniel]

Signing the Moon - Mars Initiative is probably one of the few things that Pres. Bush did RIGHT. That said, an expedition to Mars will not yield immediate visible benefits to the people of Earth, but it is ANYTHING but a frivilous waste of money. We'll expand the human race to another world, 2 other worlds if you count a human presence on the Moon. Humanity needs to expand our horizons & explore, for the survival of our species & to fulfill our instinctive need to explore. I just have a naive hope that we won't repeat the same mistakes there that we have here. Calling the Constellation program ( I thought it was " Orion " ) " Apollo on food stamps " may be quite apropriate. The days of the Apollo Program were some of NASA's finest.

[psulion]

To insure space funding for the human exploration of Mars all we must do , is turn Bill Gates and all his friends into space advocates .

[knoxvilledaniel]

I did a little more research on the Constellation program after my 1st post, the Orion spaceship will need MUCH MORE work if it's to leave & re - enter Earth's atmosphere safely. The formula for the original Apollo heat shield has been lost, trying to replicate it is chancey, the craft is top - heavy as well. And of course, they're recycling Apollo - era tech to build it. Can the NASA of the 21st century replicate the " Glory Days " & the " can - do " spirit of 1960's NASA, as exemplified in Apollo 13 ( Both the real life program & the movie ) ? For the sake of our astronauts & our future in space, I hope so. We're style using the tried & ( reasonably ) true formula of strapping people atop a giant Roman Candle in a can.

[FutureFail]

I think this is great. We really need to start another settlement somewhere almost completely cut off from Earth. I mean, this sounds a little, I don't know, stupid or something, but the threat of biological warfare and such could wipe out Earth's life, which any sane human wouldn't want. Basically, we need an insurance plan for the human race. But I agree with whoever said it earlier, we could put our knowledge into machines. I mean, according to Moore's law, machines are advancing insanely fast, and we'll soon have AI or a replica of a human brain, possibly before the launch (optimistically) and send that instead.
Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.
Oh well...

[knoxvilledaniel]

To psulion - I assume that Bill Gates is already something of a space advocate, since he wants to create virtual observatories on the Internet, & link an actual observatory to the Internet ( Is that right ? ) & if Richard Branson isn't an advocate of space, I don't know WHO is. We need to get more names on board. No one has ever asked the current or previous Presidential candidates what their stance on space exploration was or is, with all the other " hot - button " issues, space has been moved to the back burner.

As flawed as it is, we need a space program !!!

[knoxvilledaniel]

What would happen if the average American contributed as much money to the space program - lobbying & advocacy organizations & such - as they spent on admission to science fiction & fantasy movies / DVD's, Xbox & Playstation video games, SF book clubs & the like ? We could certainly do SOMETHING..... The above question is equally applicable to residents in other nations.

[matt]

well i think its a good idea to send humans there it would be kinda of cool if we started colonizing space and if we actually had another planet to live on. i mean mars atmosphere is mostly co2 all humans would have to do is build a smoke house of some sort to create that green house effect in the atmosphere. The planet needs to be warmed up some how its just a cold frozen desert it has polar ice caps on the north and south pole of the planet and im sure it has ice caps under the ground.