Problems with getting to Mars

lid (John Savard) wrote

One thing that would help is to provide the astronauts, on DVD-ROM, extensive libraries which they can play back on personal computers.

Remember that Marsonauts -- or Jupiteronauts -- will always be
pretty close to Earth as the photon phlies. They'll be able to
read the news, get in Usenet flamewars, participate in civic life
just as well as most of us do now. It wouldn't hurt to have a
continually updated several-terabyte library/Web server on board
either. Some really nice flat-panel TV/displays and sound
systems might be worthwhile.

People who really need continual, diverse, flesh-to-flesh
social intercourse probably wouldn't like that, but there
are lots of folks who, I suspect, would be just fine with
such conditions.

On 31 Mar 2004 15:27:50 -0800, in a place far, far away,
(Allen Thomson) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

(John Savard) wrote

One thing that would help is to provide the astronauts, on DVD-ROM, extensive libraries which they can play back on personal computers.

Remember that Marsonauts -- or Jupiteronauts -- will always be
pretty close to Earth as the photon phlies. They'll be able to
read the news, get in Usenet flamewars, participate in civic life
just as well as most of us do now. It wouldn't hurt to have a
continually updated several-terabyte library/Web server on board
either. Some really nice flat-panel TV/displays and sound
systems might be worthwhile.

People who really need continual, diverse, flesh-to-flesh
social intercourse probably wouldn't like that, but there
are lots of folks who, I suspect, would be just fine with
such conditions.

Yup, the only thing they couldn't do is chat.

"jacob navia" wrote in message ...
Flight time:

Flight time means longer exposure to deadly radiation.
Multiply by two for the return trip.
22 months exposed to space is quite a feat... specially
if you want to go on living afterwards.

But that is not so much of a problem. Much worse are
the conditions when you arrive at Mars:

snip

Litany of scary stuff.

But then?

Why go to that surface in person?

There's a number of useful purposes. Exploration, recreation,
education, or habitation.

We will see many planets but surely we will
not go to the surface of each one: Take Venus
for instance. With a cozy 500 C a robot was
able to send a photograph before he died.

I don't see that. A trip to Venus would be extremely difficult, but
it's possible. Maybe won't be practical until some terraforming
project has been underway for a while. Jupiter would be more
challenging and I'd comfortably label that with "impossible". With
Venus, you need a strong, insulated can and a supply of liquid helium
or other volatile that you can transfer the heat to. I don't see
anyone hanging around for more than a few minutes though.

A human wouldn't even arrive at that...

Obviously Mars is much easier than Venus.
But still, at least 50-60 years away.

I'm sorry, but I didn't see the point of your post. It's clear that
going to Mars is difficult (even if you exaggerate some of the *known*
problems). And that currently we aren't making the equipment needed to
go to Mars. I figure by the time someone goes to Mars whether it is
ten years from now or sixty, we'll have a pretty good idea of what to
expect, and a lot of backup equipment and plans if we're wrong. So
what is the real bee in your bonnet? That sounds like the really
interesting thing here.


Karl Hallowell

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:55:49 GMT, "Alan Erskine"
wrote:

Another problem that may be extremely difficult to counter will be the
bordom that will occur during the coast period (to Mars and also on return).
How can the psychological problems that may result from this be countered?

E-Books are plentiful and take up very little mass. New books can be
easily uploaded on demand. DVD movies and TV programs take up somewhat
more mass, but not enough to be a major weight penalty. We should have
even better compression technology by the time we send humans to Mars,
so the latest news, sports, and entertainment programming should be
easily transmitted to the spacecraft while the crew sleeps. Thousands
of songs in MP3 can be stored in a small CD Binder.

Brian

"Karl Hallowell" a écrit dans le message de
om...
snip

Litany of scary stuff.


??

"Scary" ?

Not if you send a machine.

But then?

Why go to that surface in person?

There's a number of useful purposes. Exploration, recreation,
education, or habitation.


Exploration is better done by robots.

Recreation, education and habitation suppose an
environment where you can breathe, walk
around, etc. Mars is not like that.

We will see many planets but surely we will
not go to the surface of each one: Take Venus
for instance. With a cozy 500 C a robot was
able to send a photograph before he died.

I don't see that. A trip to Venus would be extremely difficult, but
it's possible. Maybe won't be practical until some terraforming
project has been underway for a while.

At least until the temperature goes down by 400 C...
quite a feat with an almost pure CO2 atmosphere.


Jupiter would be more
challenging and I'd comfortably label that with "impossible".

I think Jupiter's gravity is 8 times earth, so you would
weight 640 Kg if you weight 80 on earth. You can't
breathe, lungs collapse, the heart doesn't have
enough energy to pump blood, and you die in a
few minutes. We will need anti-gravity homes
over there.

With
Venus, you need a strong, insulated can and a supply of liquid helium
or other volatile that you can transfer the heat to. I don't see
anyone hanging around for more than a few minutes though.

At 400-500 degrees C your home is melting away
in a few minutes yes... :-)


I'm sorry, but I didn't see the point of your post. It's clear that
going to Mars is difficult (even if you exaggerate some of the *known*
problems). And that currently we aren't making the equipment needed to
go to Mars.

Robots *are* going there now.

The point of my message was to
say that there isn't any need to send
humans and contaminate a planet.

I figure by the time someone goes to Mars whether it is
ten years from now or sixty, we'll have a pretty good idea of what to
expect, and a lot of backup equipment and plans if we're wrong.

Maybe; Maybe we find life over there and we will never
touch it with anything else but sterilized machines.

So
what is the real bee in your bonnet? That sounds like the really
interesting thing here.


We should try to preserve any life we find in space.
Because of ethical reasons, and because of scientific
reasons.

Human exploration is risky because it could
mean a contact with an alien form of life. Until we know
for sure what is going on, we should always send machines
first.

Methane has been found some days ago. There are more
and more hints of a small but existent ecology, probably
completely underground, and with an alien biochemistry.

jacob

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 02:45:06 +0200, in a place far, far away, "jacob
navia" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

There's a number of useful purposes. Exploration, recreation,
education, or habitation.


Exploration is better done by robots.

No, it's not.

Recreation, education and habitation suppose an
environment where you can breathe, walk
around, etc. Mars is not like that.

So, I'm not having a good time when I scuba dive?

Just because you don't want to go doesn't mean that everyone is as
boring and unadventurous as you.

I'm sorry, but I didn't see the point of your post. It's clear that
going to Mars is difficult (even if you exaggerate some of the *known*
problems). And that currently we aren't making the equipment needed to
go to Mars.

Robots *are* going there now.

The point of my message was to
say that there isn't any need to send
humans and contaminate a planet.

There isn't any need for you to exist and contaminate this one,
either. What should we do about it?

"jacob navia" wrote in message
...
Flight time:

Flight time means longer exposure to deadly radiation.
Multiply by two for the return trip.
22 months exposed to space is quite a feat... specially
if you want to go on living afterwards.

You assume a relatively low mass space ship.


But that is not so much of a problem. Much worse are
the conditions when you arrive at Mars:

Hexavalent Chromium is the most cancerigenic
substance known. It is probably present in the
surface of mars.

Wait for the ground/dust chemistry to come with
further observation.


Very fine hard dust particles provoke asbestosis
(miner's sickness) and cancer.

A shower at the base front door.


Water is scarce and, when present, well mixed with
sulfuric acid.

Extremely unlikely on the sulfuric acid. If anything, it will
magnesium sulfate, calcium sulfate and sodium sulfate.
Ice is seems pretty common.


The dust will ruin the electronics, choke the filters, and be
a constant hazard. It is very difficult to keep outside unless
you have a lot of equipment and abundant energy.

Yes, a shower with water and a filter system.

Energy is scarce. Solar panels are the only solution since
carrying a nuclear reactor to Mars is a bit heavy for
today's rockets, not to speak about the increased
radiation dose of a crew that lives for 22 months
at a few meters from a nuclear reactor!

Again you assume a relatively small vessel.


That means that huge solar arrays must be established
and kept dust free to ensure the survival of the humans.

No oxygen, no food, everything must be carried
from earth.

Maybe not if it can be produced at the landing site
prior to the arrival on humans.


And do not forget reliability. Any equipment
failure means death. All system must function
without a flaw for 30 months. We have never
done that, and this will be the most difficult part.

Human space exploration is impossible with today's
technology.

Develop it. Isn't that the point in part?


More rational is to do what we can do instead of
dreaming sci-fi stories.

You don't know the 'modern' history of the
Nazi space program. An early science fiction
movie triggered some of the early rocketry research.


The only solution is to improve the current technology
and in the meantime promote automatic exploration!

Robots do not breathe, nor have any metabolism.
Supplies for all that disappear.

I agree.


Robots can work on Mars without any cancer fears
and radiation hardened robots like Spirit or
Opportunity perform without flaws in Mars, at
knock-out radiation levels.

Robots do not need a return trip. We can leave
them there, once their useful life is finished. Half
of the supplies (and budget) are gone.

Robots can be sterilized, humans can't. If we
put only one human in Mars we will contaminate
the planet forever.

And I am convinced that life exists over there.

I am not. I think is it long dead for perhaps
3 billion years..


Robots are the best solution: The explorers drive
them surely, safely, without any risk for themselves
nor for the planet they are studying.

To make a vehicle able to cruise in space and
sustain itself for more than two years without
any help from earth is a technology beyond
our reach. We will arrive at that in the middle of
this century, but I would be surprised if it
was before.

Going to the moon is *much* easier. But many
do not realize the difference between a 7 day trip
and a 30 month trip...

We have to build the base technology yet. And
so long that base technology (creating artificial
ecological system self sustained for times more
than 30-40 months) is missing we will go nowhere.

Zubrin speaks of sending robots to put the supplies
over there, so that humans arrive at an easy to
build base.

But then?

Why go to that surface in person?

We will see many planets but surely we will
not go to the surface of each one: Take Venus
for instance. With a cozy 500 C a robot was
able to send a photograph before he died.

A human wouldn't even arrive at that...

Obviously Mars is much easier than Venus.
But still, at least 50-60 years away.

I generally agree with this section since my last
comment.

It is a matter of will and time.

Marvin wrote in :

Other critical system will require a similar approach to failure
management. Excess safety margin if you can afford it, redundancy
where nothing else works, fault tolerance where you can. Minimisation
of the effort needed to localise and correct a problem.

This is the sort of knowledge I *THOUGHT* the ISS was supposed to be
for. The recent difficulty in locating the leak was very, Very
dissapointing.

Nope, until January 14 of this year, developing technologies for Mars
missions was one sort of knowledge that ISS was explicitly *not* for, and
Congress tended to seek-and-destroy anything of that nature that NASA tried
to slip in. Witness TransHab, for example.

-Spend some time on thinking about the ergonomics of your crew's
actions. Again, the recent window-leak on ISS comes to mind. If you
put a window where the crew can get to it, but you fail to provide an
easy and solid way for them to support themselves there, they *will*
grasp onto inappropriate spots.

People *did* think about it. The thing is, the window was *not* supposed to
be where the crew could get to it - it was supposed to be covered up by an
observatory rack called WORF. But WORF was delayed, and now sits on the
ground due to the Columbia accident, leaving the window exposed to the crew
much longer than its designers intended. The problem is not designers not
thinking, the problem is an incomplete feedback loop from the operators
back to the designers.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

Maybe; Maybe we find life over there and we will never
touch it with anything else but sterilized machines.


Have the recent crop of machines sent to Mars been sterilized? AIUI, NASA
hasn't gone to that trouble since the 1970s.

And if not, the issue of contamination is moot already.

We should try to preserve any life we find in space.
Because of ethical reasons, and because of scientific
reasons.

Ethical reasons don't exist where sapient beings are absent. And the science
won't matter unless there is motivation to spend the billions required.
Looking at strange microbes on a planet no one will ever go to, probably won't
cut it.

"Rand Simberg" a écrit dans le message de
...
On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 02:45:06 +0200, in a place far, far away, "jacob
navia" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

There's a number of useful purposes. Exploration, recreation,
education, or habitation.


Exploration is better done by robots.

No, it's not.

Ahh. You say that humans should go to the surface of the
planet Venus with its 500 C?

A robot will do that better. Please let's stop arguing about the
evidence

Recreation, education and habitation suppose an
environment where you can breathe, walk
around, etc. Mars is not like that.

So, I'm not having a good time when I scuba dive?


Yes. You can breathe after a few seconds again. You
are surrounded by water, there is plenty of
oxygen nearby, etc etc.

But I *could* imagine people exist that like carrying tons
of machinery around and living in a cold desert full
of carcinogenic substances. Why not?

Just because you don't want to go doesn't mean that everyone is as
boring and unadventurous as you.


I am speaking about exploration, and in that context
machines fare much cheaper and better than
humans. Of course the "fun" of going there
is absent. I wasn't speaking about sports.
There are people that will walk to the top of
Olympus Mons (if there is no life in Mars)
just for the fun of it. But we can't EXPLORE
a planet with that mentality. Those sports
guys will come AFTER space *exploration*
has finished.

I'm sorry, but I didn't see the point of your post. It's clear that
going to Mars is difficult (even if you exaggerate some of the *known*
problems). And that currently we aren't making the equipment needed to
go to Mars.

Robots *are* going there now.

The point of my message was to
say that there isn't any need to send
humans and contaminate a planet.

There isn't any need for you to exist and contaminate this one,
either. What should we do about it?

I came out of the water, as you. I grew up from
the entrails of this planet, like you. Humans are
part of this huge being living in this planet,
and you are human, like me.

I do not insult you, nor do I think you pollute
the environment because your ideas are
different than mine.

I am just another kind of man. I believe that
discussion and the interchange of ideas is
important, and for that we need tolerance
and respect of the ideas of other people.