Back to the moon or aim for Mars?

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TheSamurai

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If NASA had to choose between returning to the moon and establishing permanent colonization or going to Mars and establishing colonization, which would you have them do FIRST of those two options.
 
Moon first, Mars second.

The moon is the safer place to start from IMHO, closer, and faster to get to and from. With what we're learning from Curiosity it appears Mars is harsher than we thought. I wouldn't want to walk about and suddenly find my space suit's boots are shredding... or worse yet, trip and tear it open.
 
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I used to be fanatical about Mars. But now I think it makes more sense to go back to the moon first for real exploration and experience before heading to Mars.
 
Moon first, Mars second.

The moon is the safer place to start from IMHO, closer, and faster to get to and from. With what we're learning from Curiosity it appears Mars is harsher than we thought. I wouldn't want to walk about and suddenly find my space suit's boots are shredding... or worse yet, trip and tear it open.

Plus in an emergency we can get help to the Moon in 4-5 days as compared to 6-9 months for Mars, at best.
 
I think the first thing they should do is take some of the leaders of the conspiracy theory movement that we never went to the moon, and send them up there so they can see the flag and the tire tracks. Then maybe that whole silliness will die.

But colonizing? Why would we want to turn the moon or mars into the same dung hole we've turned the earth into?
 
I think the use of the word “Colonization” is a bit of a stretch in this instance.

When virtually every ounce of everything needed to keep those colonists alive has to be shipped there; it isn’t so much a colony as it is, at best, a research station at worst it’s a publicity stunt. Kind of like what we have in Antarctica.

I’m as big a “Star Trek” nerd as the next guy but I’ve believed for some time now that until/unless we have a hell of a lot better technology* and that technology isn’t going to be developed, assuming it’s developed at all, on the Moon or Mars, any attempt to keep people on the Moon or Mars would likely become a big news story about the horrible way they all died.

And once there; then what?


*It all boils down to propulsion. When we can get to Mars in a matter of days instead of months and when we can put tons into orbit for what we now pay for pounds, we might stand a chance of establishing a viable research station on Mars or the Moon.
 
When virtually every ounce of everything needed to keep those colonists alive has to be shipped there; it isn’t so much a colony as it is, at best, a research station at worst it’s a publicity stunt.

I wonder what a gallon of milk would cost on the moon?
 
But the mining of He-3 and turning it into fuel for fusion reactors would off set the cost of the milk.. Assuming of course you could build one and make it work...
Once the colony is established and a giant dome is built, a handful of cows could be flown up, and the cost of milk would drop. Their farts could be harvested and used for fuel in the colony...

Oh and I think we need to establish a station on the moon and use that as a base for the Mars team....
 
I think it's time we all go back and reread Man Plus by Frederik Pohl.

What? Some of you haven't read it? Get to the library on the double!
 
If you look at the size of the Saturn V, about 4/5 of that rocket was just to get it off of the Earth. If we launch from the Moon, there is no atmosphere and less gravity. If we could mine the necessary materials for propulsion, it was be easier to go to Mars from the Moon.
 
Moon first, then Mars...

I have to laugh at the stupidity of people who think or say about a return to the Moon-- "Been there, done that". That'd be about like saying after Columbus's second voyage "BTDT" and so burn all the ships-- no need to return.

Exactly 12 people have walked on the moon. 24 have orbited it. That's it. 2 dozen people in all of human history. 6 places on the Moon have been explored by humans, with maybe that many more having been visited by robots (Surveyors, Lunakhods, the Chinese Rover last year...) That'd be about like parachuting 6 guys down in various spots across the US and saying it's been "explored". There's PLENTY of science left to do. If nothing else, we need to learn how to operate in the deep space environment, and on a hostile planetary surface. We need to do research into ISRU, or using deep space resources to create rocket fuel, water, oxygen, etc., all things that will be needed in bulk in any time of long-duration space exploration mission, long term habitat, etc. We need to learn about radiation shielding and long term low gravity operations and effects on human capabilities. We need to learn how to make a space suit that's not falling apart after TWO DAYS of surface operations... (The Apollo astronauts reported that their suits and seals were REALLY starting to show wear from the contamination of surface grit after only a matter of hours of actual surface operations-- which varied from mission to mission... Apollo 11 astronauts only were out on the surface a matter of hours, while by Apollo 17 they basically worked two days out on the lunar surface, and basically Gene Cernan said he felt his suit was "falling apart", that the seals were visibly worn and he worried that another day might see it fail entirely). These are questions that TENTATIVE ANSWERS are being researched here on Earth, but which CANNOT be FULLY TESTED on Earth-- our weathering processes create particulates completely unlike the lunar environment which has no wind or water, and it's quite likely that the particulate matter on Mars, although wind-blown like Earth, will be markedly different chemically then Earth dust and grit. We can GUESS, but we don't KNOW, because NASA doesn't even have the money to do a SAMPLE RETURN MISSION from Mars via robot, let alone anything more substantial.

As far as "living" on the Moon or Mars, I think that MAYBE, in 100 years or so, it MIGHT be possible, if technology continues to advance. Whether it will ever be practical or not or worth the effort, that's something else entirely. After all, Antarctica is a veritable paradise compared to the Moon or Mars, and nobody lives permanently there... we maintain a scientific outpost system, but there's no talk of "colonizing" Antarctica, despite the fact that materials and supplies, fuel, food, etc. are INFINITELY easier to deliver there in bulk (by regular ships or aircraft most of the year), oxygen is free and in infinite supply, water is easily obtainable by simply melting snow, etc. The Moon would be at least an order of magnitude harder to "colonize" than Antarctica, and Mars a magnitude harder than the Moon, if for no other reason than distance. If we EVER WANT to actually send people to live there, we need to answer some very basic questions first... We need to know if the lunar polar regions ACTUALLY contain water, and in what form, and if it's economically viable to extract, and how best to mine those resources and extract the water. Once we have water, it's easy enough to electrolyze it into hydrogen and oxygen via solar power (or nuclear power-- although the Moon gets equivalent solar energy levels on the surface as Earth (actually somewhat more since there's no atmosphere scattering the solar energy, no clouds reflecting it back into space before it reaches the surface, etc.) it is only available for the 2 week long day on the Moon-- and you need power for the 2 week long night. This will create big challenges for designing lunar power systems-- either you have to have TWICE the generating capacity in solar cells and then some sort of storage system for that power (batteries, or electrolyzing water into hydrogen and oxygen that you then store for use at night, running it through fuel cells to reconvert it into water and electricity, perhaps in a "closed loop" type system where the water is recaptured and fed back into the electrolyzers for use the next solar day, or to hydrogen/oxygen tanks for use as breathing oxygen or rocket or surface system propellants (such propellants could be used for long-distance rovers powered by fuel cells, mining equipment, etc). We have to understand how to build and maintain at least a basic self-sufficiency in energy, oxygen, and water for life support at a minimum before we can seriously consider long-term Mars operations.

Unless of course you want to do a Mars mission just for the sake of doing Mars... basically another 'flags and footprints' operation, with no lasting, sustainable presence possible. We could do an "Apollo" style Mars mission in a decade if we so chose to, and were willing to fund it properly and kick NASA in the pants about getting stuff done instead of playing around for years as they have with Orion and Ares/SLS. Sort of a "don't TALK about it, get it DONE!" attitude like NASA had in the 60's... (not that I see THAT happening any time soon, if ever!) We can shoot people out there in some sort of hab module for the year long ride out to Mars, land them, and then take off within 30 days for the return trip. You can't stay longer and get back to Earth, without waiting a year and half or so until the orbits realign (we have to be on the same side of the Sun to go or get back, basically). Heck even operations of 30 days on the Martian surface would be enormously difficult compared to the experience set we have from Apollo... It might be that a mission goes, lands on the surface for a matter of a few days, and then returns to Mars orbit and starts back for Earth...

Personally, I don't really see it happening... there's just not enough 'motivation' to pay for it and do it. Dreamers dream of it, visionaries proclaim it, but realistically, when it comes down to it, there's little motivation and less desire to actually fund it. Even now, with NASA loudly proclaiming they're "on the road to Mars" and all this with SLS and Orion, when one looks at the actual systems and costs, it's unsustainable, incomplete, and will require a FAR, FAR larger commitment in money and resources than has been allocated to it. Even by NASA boasting, they won't be ready to go to Mars for another 20 years, AT LEAST. When one considers how far robotics, computers, and ROV technology has come in the last 20 years, by the time we might THINK we're capable of going, with sufficient investment to pay for the hardware to do it, we should be able to land FAR, FAR superior robotic probes on Mars than ANYTHING we can envision today... I'm talking about robots that can walk or roll for miles, operating via their own on-board artificial intelligence, having received orders from Earth for their next objective, and deciding for themselves how to best get their, making decisions en-route as to hazard avoidance, obstacles, etc., and making scientific observations and recording anything of interest, and reporting its findings back to Earth for scientific analysis. If the robot sees anything of interest that it has highlighted for investigators on Earth, they can easily order the robot to backtrack and make further observations or scientific tests of the object or phenomena... And we could land a FLEET of these things on Mars, all over the planet, for FAR less than the cost and time wasted on even a MINIMAL human landing effort. These robots could operate on the surface of Mars for YEARS, even decades, and never need return to Earth. They don't need oxygen or water, or food or waste disposal. They can be engineered to operate in the environment autonomously without the need or possibility of repair (although programming them for self-repair is certainly a possibility in the future). They can be programmed to collect specimens and rendezvous with return vehicles from Earth, if we desire actual specimens to subject to more complete analysis here in Earth labs) which will return the samples autonomously.

Of course this side of NASA is being starved of funding and is languishing, largely BECAUSE it replaces the human and the need for "human exploration". If we can do the SAME THING robotically far more cost effectively, over a longer time period, and in more places, without risk to human life, and obtain more scientific knowledge and information in the process, then we SHOULD be doing it, and forget about putting "boots on the ground" there just for the sake of it... is it about "waving flags and photographing footprints" like Apollo (much as I love Apollo), or about achieving REAL scientific results and greater knowledge about a much broader region of our solar system than human exploration could ever think of achieving in the foreseeable future (or the next couple centuries at least). We've barely scratched the surface... our robots are currently at the "Ford Model T" stage, but they're not going to stay there long... look at military ROV capabilities, and you can see that developments are moving fast... in a couple decades what we can do NOW will look positively archaic... Remember Sojourner?? What a thrill that was-- a shoebox size rover on Mars... compare it to now. Now think 20-30 years from now...

There's plenty of places in the solar system where humans will most likely NEVER set foot... simply because it's impossible to set foot there and LIVE... The surface of Europa is such a place-- orbiting in one of Jupiter's MASSIVE radiation belts, landing on the surface would be about like camping out in a tent under a multi-megawatt nuclear reactor going full-power... You'd be bathed in lethal levels of radiation that would kill you in a matter of hours... Mars isn't anywhere near that bad, but if it were, we wouldn't have this massive divide between the "robotic people" and the "human exploration people". If human exploration was impossible, we'd throw everything we have into robotic exploration.

Later! OL JR :)
 
But the mining of He-3 and turning it into fuel for fusion reactors would off set the cost of the milk.. Assuming of course you could build one and make it work...
Once the colony is established and a giant dome is built, a handful of cows could be flown up, and the cost of milk would drop. Their farts could be harvested and used for fuel in the colony...

Oh and I think we need to establish a station on the moon and use that as a base for the Mars team....


Milking cows are only good for five to six years before they quit producing milk and have to either be destroyed for food or sent back to Earth. There would need to be ships going up on a regular basis with "fresh meat" to supply the colony with milking cows. After milking cows are done producing that's it they can not be bred to keep the colony supplied in milk. On the plus side of that equation, the explorers who live there will have plenty meat protein.

The economical choice would be to send powered milk, then mine the ice for water. But as Luke Strawalker has stated as well as our own government, we will never colonize the Moon or Mars in our lifetime!
 
Moon then think about Mars.

As others have said, it makes better sense to launch from the moon and we still have a lot to learn from the moon, which would be much more economically viable than Mars. I think the main reason Mars is being pushed first is the political optics and lack of interested from the public.
 
Mars is frankly beyond our technological reach for manned exploration. We do not have large enough rockets to launch anything of significance to Mars directly from earth. Throw in the radiation issues and the body degeneration from zero g and we have major issues. Mars is a pipe dream.

The Moon is a much better choice for the now and immediate future. Everybody remember Space 1999- I say build moon base Alpha. This would mean puting nuclear power on the moon, and in our space craft.

I am pro nuclear power. Heck, I think we should build Project Orion- pulsed nuclear power, but in orbit or on the moon. With that we might be able to get somewhere- maybe. Not the conventional Orion- the one dreamed up by Freeman Dyson et al.


Mark Koelsch
Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum
 
Neither, as much I love manned space flight with the serious problems with health out of earths gravity it is not really practical in the near future. What should be done is to send robotic probes all over the solar system. It is something we can do and the scientific benefits out way the limited manned missions that will probably not be funded anyway.
 
Milking cows are only good for five to six years before they quit producing milk and have to either be destroyed for food or sent back to Earth. There would need to be ships going up on a regular basis with "fresh meat" to supply the colony with milking cows. After milking cows are done producing that's it they can not be bred to keep the colony supplied in milk. On the plus side of that equation, the explorers who live there will have plenty meat protein.

The economical choice would be to send powered milk, then mine the ice for water. But as Luke Strawalker has stated as well as our own government, we will never colonize the Moon or Mars in our lifetime!

Send up bull semen and those armpit-length gloves, and hopefully they have an astronaut with an ag degree... LOL:)

Seriously they DO breed dairy cattle... you have to breed them so they keep producing milk. Of course the calves are sold basically at birth (they get the colostrum, or "first milk" which contains all sorts of antibodies and stuff that they need to survive IIRC) to veal calf farmers... my nephew's girlfriend and her family operate a veal calf operation... they own several calf barns and they get from a few hundred to a thousand or more calves delivered by their owner, and they raise them under contract, feeding them milk replacer. They're slaughtered for veal after a few months (don't recall the exact weight, but it's not real big... Veal is as tender as it is because they only eat milk replacer, and maybe some grain... I think they're running a couple thousand head or so in their veal barns now.

Now, about half those calves should be females, which would be replacements for the milk cows. The males would be slaughtered for veal or beef, as would any excess females. Milk cows who've outlived their productive lives producing milk would also be slaughtered for meat.

Thing is, animal agriculture is best suited to marginal conditions, that is, areas basically ill-suited to grain or crop production, for the most part, at least from a land-use perspective. That's why raising livestock on some land is a much better use of it than attempting to farm it and suffering bad erosion and other environmental problems, along with high input costs, for marginal crop yields. Another thing is, there won't be livestock in space... not mammals, anyway. Insects and fish perhaps, maybe someday reptiles, but until we're in some sort of Star Trek level of technology, it won't make sense for large mammal livestock. Insects breed rapidly and convert food really well, are far more radiation resistant than other animals, and capable of being housed in very confined small areas. They can also in many cases convert waste products into usable protein. Similarly, plants and fish can use waste materials and products to produce usable food. Reptiles, with their slower metabolism, use far less food inputs than most livestock, and can be harvested for meat. They are also hardier animals than most. Large mammalian livestock animals, like sheep, goats, and cattle, on the other hand, have fast metabolisms and are endothermic, meaning they require large amounts of food to maintain their body heat. They eat prodigious amounts of forages, and thus would be unsuited for the extremely limited production capabilities of any off-world greenhouses on Mars or the Moon... Chickens also have similar drawbacks, being avians, but on the other hand, chickens are smaller animals capable of producing both meat and eggs, they could eat insects used for waste disposal or treatment, among other things, and they're also pretty resistant to radiation as well.

At any rate, it's a moot point... any would-be space colonists will have to content themselves to lots of seaweed and algae protein for the most part, and perhaps some fresh vegetables from in-space greenhouses... meat animals would consume FAR too much food and space that could have been dedicated to the production of human food directly.

It's much like the myth of "renewable fuels"... at least the way the US does it... Lots of folks seem to think we could just replace all foreign oil with corn ethanol and soy biodiesel... in point of fact, it takes 4 quarts of petroleum product equivalent to produce 5 quarts of finished ethanol. IOW, we'd have to import FOUR TIMES as much oil as we do NOW to produce the same amount of motor fuels and other products we currently derive from imported oil! Other methods of producing ethanol (like Brazilian sugarcane produced ethanol) have MUCH higher production turnout (on the order of 3 gallons of petroleum to produce 1 gallon of ethanol) but still it's not a panacea... Same thing with livestock on a space colony-- you can either raise several thousand pounds of grain, grass, etc. to feed a single meat animal that might produce a few dozen to a few hundred pounds of meat, or you could dedicate all that space and resources used to raise livestock fodder to producing grain or vegetables for human consumption directly...

Later! OL JR :)
 
What would be the advantage to launching a mission to Mars from the lunar surface, as opposed to launching from Earth orbit?? I can think of disadvantages (dust/cost), but no advantages.....
Lee
 
What would be the advantage to launching a mission to Mars from the lunar surface, as opposed to launching from Earth orbit?? I can think of disadvantages (dust/cost), but no advantages.....
Lee

The low gravity environment of the moon might make manipulating large objects easier that zero G. Plus stuff won't drift away if you left it go, and getting stuff into lunar orbit is easier as well. This scenario assumes 3d printing technology from lunar materials is viable.
 
What would be the advantage to launching a mission to Mars from the lunar surface, as opposed to launching from Earth orbit?? I can think of disadvantages (dust/cost), but no advantages.....
Lee

Considering that the Mars ship parts will all have to be launched from Earth, none really. Now, if you're talking about a Lagrange point, then there are DEFINITE advantages from launching a Mars ship from there... It's been said that low Earth orbit (LEO) is halfway to anywhere... Well, the LaGrange points are half of the remaining half...

It would make a lot of sense to assemble the vehicle modules (hab, propulsion, descent/ascent, Earth return) at a Lagrange point (say EML-2, on the far side of the Moon-- Earth Moon Lagrange 2), ESPECIALLY if you could fly up lunar-produced LOX propellant. Since oxygen is SO much denser than hydrogen, and more of it is used than hydrogen (or whatever rocket fuel you're using with the LOX) then it makes TREMENDOUS sense to launch that heavy propellant from a low-gravity environment like the Moon, especially one that's "right around the corner" from EML-2. Launching hydrogen from Earth isn't such a big deal; other than the "preventing boiloff" and cryogenic transfer issues... all you really need is a REALLY big fuel tank and a way to push it out to EML-2. If you're assembling your Mars craft there, you'll already have a means to push it out there, by whatever pushed the modules out there. That's why certain elements within NASA have been pushing for a "gateway station" at EML-2. Nothing tremendously fancy-- just basically a hab module, place for visiting astronauts to live and work, a place to store supplies, power and comms systems, solar power, an airlock, and eventually a propellant depot module (either autonomous or connected).

And before anybody says "do it at ISS", well, ISS is in the wrong orbit. ISS is inclined too much to the equator so that the Russians could access it via their more northern launch sites... If it had remained Space Station Freedom and been assembled at 28.5 degrees instead of 51.7 degrees orbital inclination, it might have made sense to use it as an assembly point. As it is, the more steeply inclined orbit significantly decreases the payload capability of rockets launching from KSC to that orbit (since the greatest efficiency is to launch due east because of Earth's rotation). Plus, a spacecraft leaving from ISS's steeply inclined orbit would have to make a propellant expensive plane-change maneuver in order to fly to Mars, in the plane of the ecliptic, rather than "north" or "south" of the plane of the ecliptic... (above or below it).

Later! OL JR :)
 
This is from a layperson on these matters.... I would think we could probably land a guy on Mars anytime - we just need to assemble a reasonable sized craft in orbit, and launch.... the kicker would be getting them back - how much fuel do you need to launch from the Martian surface back to Mars orbit - I would think a fair bit.... (I may be wrong) - how easy is it to cart all that fuel to Mars, then re-entry and land it on the surface of Mars safely?? I would think not a trivial process, certainly a magnitude or more more difficult than the Moon?? I (Again I may be wrong)
 
This is from a layperson on these matters.... I would think we could probably land a guy on Mars anytime - we just need to assemble a reasonable sized craft in orbit, and launch.... the kicker would be getting them back - how much fuel do you need to launch from the Martian surface back to Mars orbit - I would think a fair bit.... (I may be wrong) - how easy is it to cart all that fuel to Mars, then re-entry and land it on the surface of Mars safely?? I would think not a trivial process, certainly a magnitude or more more difficult than the Moon?? I (Again I may be wrong)

Quite true... The difficulty isn't in getting back off of Mars, it's getting down to the surface.

To sustain a crew for landing, their food, oxygen, supplies, etc. and the ascent spacecraft with its propellants, would require a few dozen tonnes of mass at a minimum. This would require the largest heatshield ever constructed. We've built heatshields for Mars, but only landing a few tonnes of mass through entry, deceleration, and landing. This would be an order of magnitude larger heatshield than any ever built. Another issue is the "deceleration" part... if you want to make the lander ALL propulsive deceleration, hover, and landing, that's going to require a LOT of propellants. If you want to shave the propellant mass, you have to use a passive decelerator-- ie a supersonic parachute. Now, again, due to the mass that has to be landed on a manned mission, this would have to be THE largest supersonic parachute ever contemplated. It would be an order of magnitude larger than any supersonic parachute ever made. Plus, it adds complexity to the mission... another event that MUST work correctly if the crew isn't to crash and die. Mars gravity is only 33% of Earths, which simplifies launching mass off the surface... the BIGGEST problem is, Mars has JUST ENOUGH atmosphere to be a problem-- not enough to truly slow you down subsonic on its own, not enough for 'regular' parachutes for landing, which means you have to have rocket engines thrusting against gravity to slow you down enough for a "soft" landing, but Mars DOES have enough atmosphere to REQUIRE the use of a heatshield for any spacecraft attempting to land on it... IOW, the Mars atmosphere makes EDL (entry, descent, and landing) a nightmare...

Now, there's some "work arounds" to these problems. First we can consider different shapes or structures than the typical conical or spherical-section round heatshield. One alternative is a biconic entry vehicle, basically a fairing with the heatshield built in on one side, which would create lift somewhat like a lifting body. Of course constructing such a device and having it hold together for years in space during the trans-Mars coast would be an engineering challenge, and has never been done. The other thing is, we can break up the mass as much as possible-- we could land an ascent vehicle on Mars for the crew to use to return, land a separate hab module for them to live in, a pressurized (or nonpressurized for that matter) rover, along with the surface and scientific gear, and then land the crew once that is all safely on the surface and within reasonable distance of each other. The crew would land in a small EDL spacecraft just sufficient for the task. We COULD even break up the ascent propellant load into a "tanker" that would be used to refuel the empty ascent vehicle... problem is, all this adds a lot of complexity, and you want to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that ALL your mission elements are safely on the surface in reasonable proximity to one another before committing to the landing, and if anything goes wrong with one of the elements, well, the entire mission might have to be scrubbed if there weren't a backup. So, breaking it up into smaller bits really adds a lot of complexity to the mission and a lot of "failure points".

Now, Zubrin in his book "The Case for Mars" (which I highly recommend) postulates that the best way to solve the propellant mass issue is to make the propellant on Mars, using ISRU (in-situ resource utilization). He recommends landing the ascent spacecraft on Mars up to a year or two in advance of the expedition crew's arrival by an EDL lander. The ascent spacecraft would be used for ascent only, having just enough propellant for landing itself, and a quantity of hydrogen brought from Earth, on the surface of Mars. The lander would have a Sabatier process reactor on board, and would start drawing in carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere. Using either self-deployed solar panels or a nuclear power source, it would then begin to react this Martian carbon dioxide with the hydrogen supply from Earth, and create methane and oxygen propellants in the process. These propellants would then be liquefied and stored in the ascent vehicle's propellant tanks. Once the ascent vehicle had filled its tanks with propellant, it would signal Earth that it was ready and capable of liftoff from the Mars surface. The crew would then be clear to land (this could be done while the crew was en-route, but if there was a problem with the ascent vehicle, the crew could not land-- they would have to do a flyby of Mars and return to Earth, or perhaps enter Mars orbit and conduct orbital experiments only before returning to Earth.) Hydrogen, being extremely diffuse, would require a pretty big propellant tank for the trip from Earth, but the propellant itself wouldn't weigh that much. The ascent vehicle's propellant tanks would be much smaller, because both LNG (methane) and LO2 (liquid oxygen) are much denser than an equivalent quantity of hydrogen. The ascent vehicle's power source could also do "double duty" serving as the landing crew's power plant on the surface of Mars for their expedition...

Thing is, ALL of this is going to be terribly complex, and take at least a decade to develop once its approved and FUNDED... and of course NONE of it is yet by a longshot... and it goes without saying it's going to be TERRIBLY expensive... Plus, the "payoff" is likely to be at least a decade and a half or more down the road from the time its started-- IOW, you have to convince Congressvermin that they should allocate dozens of billions of dollars to develop Mars hardware and systems NOW, when the mission and all the glory won't be for another 20 years, likely after they've retired or lost their reelections. IOW, highly unlikely, because there's no political payoff... in fact, quite the opposite, because what politician wants to go home to their district or state and answer tough questions about why they allocated billions in funding for some "kaka-mamie" Mars landing in a quarter century when the highways are falling apart, the environment is polluted, the schools don't have enough money, healthcare is a mess, the economy is in the dumper, (insert favorite 'cause' here)..." IOW it's a political "detriment" to support such a thing, certainly NOT a political "asset"... (unless of course you happen to be one of the 'space state' legislators who happens to have a big NASA center or NASA contractor plant or facility in your district).

Anyway, that's some of the issues... that doesn't even address the radiation problem... The tenuous Mars atmosphere isn't thick enough to shield people on the surface from radiation, and Mars has no magnetic field to deflect high energy particles... So basically the astronauts will be exposed to nearly the same amount of radiation on the surface as they would in space. Surrounding the spacecraft hab module for the cruise out to Mars in a shell of water (external tanks, whatever) to help protect them from the radiation during the long trans-Mars cruise and trans-Earth cruise after the mission would be difficult enough... but designing this into the lander, would be essentially impossible. It's possible that one could use Martian dirt to cover the lander to provide radiation shielding, but this introduces more complexity into the mission... you either have to have astronauts with spades and sandbags working for days to sandbag their hab, or land some sort of excavator or system on Mars to do the job for them... either way will be complicated and expensive.

Later! OL JR :)
 
Another problem with using an ascent stage that arrives and lands a year or so ahead of time and then makes its own fuel, is; do you really want to trust a bunch of hardware that has been sitting unattended on the Martian surface for a year or more to actually work?

And what happens if the manned mission is well on its way to Mars and the ascent rocket gets damaged or there is a critical un-fixable fault?

Does the mission just make a U-turn and come back to Earth? Obviously that’s a big fat NO.
Instead it has to complete its voyage to Mars then hang out in Martian obit for a couple of months, or more, until the planets align for a return voyage. This could leave the astronauts living in a zero-G environment for more than two years with no “Vacation” in the 1/3 G of Mars.

Worse; what happens if they actually land only to discover something has gone wrong with the ascender that didn’t get noticed and reported? Dammed shame about those astronauts.

As far as getting the manned vehicle down to the Martian surface. I remember reading something about using the two Martian moons as a means to kill all the orbital velocity negating the need for an aero-breaking maneuver.
 
Everybody remember Space 1999- I say build moon base Alpha.

Mark Koelsch
Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum

Man I loved the show as a kid, it's funny watching the reruns on the internet now it seems so fake, but so do most movies over 5 or 10 years. An auction came up a year of so ago on a Deluxe Eagle Space 1999 gift set and I couldn't help myself...of course it has never been out of the package and sits in a cupboard, a bit of a waste for me as I typically don't collect things. Well there is that Thunderbird 2 sitting on my desk. :wink:

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Another problem with using an ascent stage that arrives and lands a year or so ahead of time and then makes its own fuel, is; do you really want to trust a bunch of hardware that has been sitting unattended on the Martian surface for a year or more to actually work?

And what happens if the manned mission is well on its way to Mars and the ascent rocket gets damaged or there is a critical un-fixable fault?

Does the mission just make a U-turn and come back to Earth? Obviously that’s a big fat NO.
Instead it has to complete its voyage to Mars then hang out in Martian obit for a couple of months, or more, until the planets align for a return voyage. This could leave the astronauts living in a zero-G environment for more than two years with no “Vacation” in the 1/3 G of Mars.

Worse; what happens if they actually land only to discover something has gone wrong with the ascender that didn’t get noticed and reported? Dammed shame about those astronauts.

As far as getting the manned vehicle down to the Martian surface. I remember reading something about using the two Martian moons as a means to kill all the orbital velocity negating the need for an aero-breaking maneuver.

Not sure how that'd work (using the moons to break the velocity for a "straight drop" into the atmosphere... Not saying it CAN'T work, but man talk about an 1000 orbital mechanics experts dancing on the head of a pin...

Well, as for an ascent vehicle sitting on the surface, well, that's likely going to have to happen anyway. There's nothing that really is that complex about sending the telemetry back to Earth, and having a "mission control" room dedicated to watching over the MAV... Basically ALL the systems would have to be monitored and telemetered reports back to Earth, if only in "packets" of data as daily reading summaries. While the distance complicates telemetry monitoring of the MAV, condensed "packets" of data of various types, with commands to monitor more critical systems more closely if needed, perhaps in a rotating basis. Once the Mars vehicle arrives in orbit with the crew, presumably they'd be able to really do an in-depth checkout of all systems, since communications would be MUCH easier with a direct link to the MAV on the surface, instead of having to rely on the Deep Space Network receiving the signals on Earth. Basically they'd be monitoring the ascent vehicle until the last moment, and ENSURE that everything was operable.

There's ALWAYS going to be an element of risk... it's simply unavoidable. NOTHING this complex can be performed without risk. There was substantial risk on Apollo-- the LM ascent engine COULD NOT be test fired before the actual firing of it to lift off the surface of the Moon. The descent engine couldn't either, but if it didn't fire, it was simply an aborted mission-- do what you could from lunar orbit in a 'contingency mission", and then come home. Of course if the SPS engine didn't light on the Service Module, you were stuck in lunar orbit and just as dead.

Anyway, it's just one of many ways that a Mars mission can be mounted. It's not any more particularly likely to happen than any of the others, either. Of course there's going to be tradeoffs between safety numbers versus heat shield capabilities, etc.

Later! OL JR :)
 
The moon then the asteroid belt then Mars. I say the asteroid belt for the basic materials needed to "terraform" Mars. I would need an empty Mars for this to happen. Minerals and ice are floating in the Belt. Small powerful ships to nudge the wanted object into a path that intersects Mars then just let the objects slam into the surface. From what I read there was an atmosphere but due to low gravity and time the atmosphere vented to space. "Ice" is more than frozen water, it's a chemical soup containing water and frozen hydrocarbons.

I think we need to get off-planet, at least a viable colony. We don't need to be hit by an asteroid for life as we know it to end. If we're around when Yellowstone blows or any of the other supervolcanos around the world we can kiss our wives goodby and maybe the rest of mankind as well. I'd settle for now with a moon colony but I feel we MUST get off this rock.
 
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