Humans to Mars a Principle of Space Exploration:

Humans to Mars a Principle of Space Exploration
by Tomasz Nowakowski for Astrowatch.net
Paris (SPX) Aug 21, 2014

Let's say it straight. Mars is, without any doubt our next step in space exploration, sparking our imagination for many years in spaceflight history. After sending tons of scientific rovers, it's about time to send human pioneers to start colonizing the Red Planet.

The only question is when will we reach that highly anticipated milestone? "Sending humans to Mars around 2033 should be the single organizing principle of future space exploration," Professor G. Scott Hubbard of Stanford University and former NASA Ames Research Center director told astrowatch.net. He will give a speech on Sept. 6 about Mars exploration at the European Mars Conference (EMC) 2014 that will take place in Podzamcze, Poland.

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Humans_to_Mars_a_Principle_of_Space_Exploration_999.html
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Wanna Trip To Space? To Raise Money, Mars One Is Offering A Lynx Joyride:

Private trips to space are pricey, but from time to time contests come up that offer even those of modest means the chance to get there.

Take Mars One’s latest publicity campaign, which is to offer a chance for a trip upon the (so-far-unflown-in-space) Lynx spacecraft in exchange for donating to the organization, which plans to launch a one-way human trip to Mars in the next decade.


“The campaign will provide funding for a 2015 Earth mission, which is a simulation project to replicate the future Mars human settlement here on Earth, as well as the 2018 Mars mission to Mars,” Mars One stated.


The campaign, called “Ticket To Rise“, is essentially a fundraising campaign for Mars One. The group is selling memberships, selfies of photographs with Mars in the background (during a 2018 mission), T-shirts and at the high end, coins or attendance at VIP events.


The Mars One plan to bring people to the planet has generated lots of publicity among the media, amid skepticism that the funding and technology could be available to bring people to the Red Planet starting in 2024. The organization began whittling down applicants this year and as of May, said there are now 705 “potential Mars settlers” remaining.


If successful, Mars One hopes to bring settlers to the Red Planet every two years, four people at a time, and leave them there to establish a colony. The organization says there are “no new technology developments” needed to get people to Mars, and that it has gone to “major aerospace companies around the world” to figure out what needs to be done.

The XCOR Lynx spacecraft is one of a small number of vehicles competing for the chance to bring wealthy people into space. From time to time, the company has partnered with other entities (such as men’s grooming company AXE) to run contests to drum up interest in their product, which so far is unflown in space.

http://www.universetoday.com/114395...se-money-mars-one-is-offering-a-lynx-joyride/
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How realistic is the MARS ONE IDEA?

In my books he gets 100% for guts, get up and go, Innovation and Optimism.


Less likely, but again he gets 100% for get up and go, guts, Innovation and Optimism, is BTE DAN
An article on BTE DAN is as follows.....
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Could a 21st Century USS Enterprise Really Fly?
Only an imagination made of stone could fail to stir at the thought of a real-world USS Enterprise blasting away from Earth within 20 years, reaching Mars in three months and restoring a sense of epic grandeur to mankind’s spacefaring dreams.

But is that vision, which went viral thanks to the detailed blueprints of an anonymous self-described engineer known only as BTE Dan, actually possible? Trillion-dollar price tag aside, could this 21st century interpretation of the Enterprise boldly go where no one has gone before?

Unfortunately not, say spacecraft designers, but it’s still a worthwhile thought experiment.

“In summary: Cool idea, not very practical, extremely optimistic in assumptions for near-term developments,” said John Elliott, flight system lead on NASA’s Outer Planet Flagship Mission. “But if it gets people talking and thinking outside the box, it’s not a bad thing.”

With a faster-than-light warp drive remaining science fictional, BTE — “Build the Enterprise” — Dan’s ship would be propelled by ion engines running off a 1.5 gigawatt nuclear reactor. That’s roughly the amount of energy generated by a decent-sized terrestrial nuke plant, and harnessing its power in space would be hard.
http://www.wired.com/2012/05/bte-dan-enterprise/
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Nice to have people like that leading the way.
Our political leaders could take a few pages out of their book.

 

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The BTE DAN web site is as follows....
http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/author/bte-dan

 

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Mars One has no real background in anything that is space related and all they want is money. I'd say to be very cautious of this enterprise for they have no credentials is space travel.

 

That may or may not be factual, still from memory they had over 200,000 applicants to be whittled down to 40.
No, I wasn't one.....The Mrs has me by the short n curlies!

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Mars One is just a media hype and has no substantial engineering backbone to it. It will remain as an advertisement gimmick until it directs the money to the real engineering goals.

Also, I would like to argue for a case against Mars. There are other world that would suit humans much better than Mars, such worlds being; moon, Titan, Europa, Encelados, Ceres.

 

Well, your eyes only

I like to know what makes those planets more habital for humans in your opinion as opposed to mars? Mar is alot closer than the others.


From what I know the issue of making life possible on most other planets in the solar system is quite difficult, even for the moon. so i have to assume that you mean there are better resources or something that makes those planetary bodies better than mars.

it would be nice to see a attempt at the issue, but its not worth people dying in space to gain data.

DwayneD.L.Rabon

 

As scientists mentioned with regards to the BTE DAN proposal, if it starts people thinking about getting to Mars and beyond, it's a good thing.
All the places you have mentioned are potential targets for missions both manned and unmanned, but Mars is closer.
I would like to add another....Mercury. There are polar regions of Mercury that receive little or no Sunlight, due to its lack of axial tilt.
Wouldn't that be a great manned outpost.

 

I believe there would be too much radiation on the moons of either Jupiter or Saturn. Colonies there would need to be below the surface, and the geology is also very unstable due to tidal forces. I can't imagine a place to colonize that would be more prone to equipment and life support breakage. Good places to freeze in a deep pool of liquid methane.

Other than life in the Arctic or Antarctic, there's nowhere on Earth that is remotely like the Mars environment. At least those places have plenty of cold, breathable air and water. With Mars' weaker sunlight, you'd either need to plant 100 acres to yield the amount of sustenance we cultivate on Earth in only one, or else use a mirror based solar collector to concentrate the dim light on a smaller plot of soil. Obviously, ideas like using solar energy would work much better and easier for a colony located some place like our own moon. We also have no practical ideas about how to protect such apparatus on Mars from getting covered by sandstorms. All of this stuff is new or else we will have to find new ways to supply energy.

If it is not practical to send Mars explorers in a self-contained and /or self-sustaining environment (and I believe that it is not), it will be necessary to set up an economical system of outpost resupply from Earth. This would mean a series of strategically placed solar powered orbital slingshots (a la Clarke's 'space elevator' upgrade), perhaps using the Earth-moon system as parts of the supply loop. Mars is a planet with few resources other than a lot of red sand, dry ice and water. It is going to be difficult to impossible to sustain even a small colony that needs basically everything else to be supplied to them from the Earth.

No volunteer here.

 

Difficult, without a doubt. Impossible?? Not in the least. Well within the capabilities of any sufficiently advanced civilisation..
Perhaps if it had not been for those two horrible variables of economics and politics, we could already be on Mars.

 

Biosphere 2 is an Earth systems science research facility. It has been owned by the University of Arizona since 2011. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. It is a 3.14-acre (1.27-hectare)[1] structure originally built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona, US by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO. Constructed between 1987 and 1991,it explored the web of interactions within life systems in a structure with five areas based on biomes, and an agricultural area and human living and working space to study the interactions between humans, farming and technology with the rest of nature. It also explored the use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. The name comes from Earth's biosphere, "Biosphere 1". Project funding came primarily from the joint venture's financial partner, Ed Bass' Decisions Investment, costing US$200 million from 1985 to 2007, including land, support research greenhouses, test module, and staff facilities.[citation needed]

Biosphere 2 sits on a sprawling 40-acre (16-hectare) science campus that is open to the public.
The size of two and a half football fields, it remains the largest closed system created. The glass facility is elevated 4,000 feet (1,200 m) above sea level at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains, half an hour outside Tucson.
Biosphere 2 contained representative biomes: a 1,900 square meter rainforest, an 850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1,300 square meter savannah grassland, a 1,400 square meter fog desert, a 2,500 square meter agricultural system, a human habitat, and a below-ground infrastructure. Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems and passive solar input through the glass space frame panels covering most of the facility, and electrical power was supplied into Biosphere 2 from an onsite natural gas energy center.
Biosphere 2 had two closure experiments, Missions 1 and 2, during which the structure was sealed with researchers living inside. The first, with a crew of eight people, ran for two years from 1991 to 1993. Following a six-month transition period during which researchers entered the facility through airlock doors and conducted research and system engineering improvements, a second closure with a crew of seven people was conducted March 1994 – September 1994. In the course of that second mission, a dispute over management of the financial aspects of the project caused the on-site management to be locked out, and the mission itself to be ended prematurely. The sealed nature of the structure allowed scientists to monitor the continually changing chemistry of the air, water and soil contained within. Health of the human crew was monitored by a medical doctor inside and an outside medical team.[citation needed]

In 1995, Columbia University took management of the facility for research and as a campus until 2003. In 1996, they changed the virtually airtight, materially closed structure designed for closed system research, to a "flow-through" system, and halted closed system research. They manipulated carbon dioxide levels for global warming research, and injected desired amounts of carbon dioxide, venting as needed.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...q4gJAD&usg=AFQjCNHE6wsNvPhtbPHdZBTv2_ENh-0u4Q

So it has already been done so why waste more money doing the same thing over and over?

 

Yes, that is always true. It was true when North America was being colonized. The colonists required constant supplies from Europe. Most of the early colonists died, in large part because the resupply ships for so few and far between. Columbus himself lost lots of men he left behind - on his return they were all dead. Roanoke is another example of a failed colony.

So yes, it will require a dedicated effort over decades to make it self-sufficient. But I suspect the general view is to make it permanent communication/exchange, like nowadays between North America and the 'rest of the world'.

 

Because it's not important to put people in Arizona. It is very important to put people on Mars.

 

any simulation of technology that could perhaps be used on places like Mars where self sufficiency is required, is indeed useful.

Meanwhile the real exploration here is still done by national agencies of the world, contrary to what SpaceX ambitions are.

 

It is useful as a means to practice for getting to Mars. It is not important, however, to put people in Arizona.

National agencies will purchase SpaceX hardware, just as they currently purchase hardware from other companies. SpaceX just makes things cheaper.

 

But this biodome was to see if a habitat could be to use on Mars and it was shown it couldn't work here on Earth.

 

Well, no, I think it showed more that politics will get in the way of even the best intentioned experiments.

The first round of experiments revealed a lot of problems in oxygen loss (due to concrete absorbing CO2) and ecosystem balance (ants took over, fish were overstocked etc.) The second round started off quite well with most of those problems fixed, and they in fact achieved oxygen and food self-sufficiency. Unfortunately the project was then vandalized and the results invalidated, and eventually the project just fell apart.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

see also:

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/The_Challenges_of_Building_A_House_on_Mars_999.html

http://www.exploremarsnow.org/

http://www.designbuzz.com/mars-base-habitat-bringing-mars-earth/

 

so if US/Russia/Europe don't do it, China will. http://news.msn.com/science-technology/china-eyes-first-space-station-by-around-2022-1

 

I say get to it, all of it.

We need to reread some of the old scifi stories, like melting a nickel-iron asteroid and spinning up a ship's hull. Good old Level I civilization stuff...

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