First Details of Manned Mars Mission From NASA

OriginalArlen writes "The BBC has a first look at NASA's initial concepts for a manned Mars mission, currently penciled in for 2031. The main vehicle would be assembled on orbit over three or four launches of the planned Ares V heavy lift rocket. New abilities to repair, replace, and even produce replacement parts will be needed to provide enough self-sufficiency for a 30 months mission, including 16 months on the surface. The presentation was apparently delivered at a meeting of the Lunar Exploration Management Group, although there's nothing on their site yet."

Ares V?

Those of us who are into classic rockets prefer the old muscle rockets - Saturn V, baby! The new rockets just have too much electronic junk.

That's right! Put some mag chrome nozzles at those old babies and nothing beats the classics!

Re:Ares V?

As for electronics, aside from some electronic controls, I doubt rocket technology has changed very much since the Saturn V era.

As a rocket engineer myself, I can reaffirm this statement. Given the catastrohpic and costly nature of rocketry failures, rocket scientists are extremely conservative folks.

And fundamentally, nothing in chemical rocket propulsion has changed much in the 40 years since Apollo started, especially for the kinds of liquid engines required for a manned interplanetary mission. (Ion propulsion, hybrid motors, and other niche propulsion techniques have made some significant strides, but are impractical for manned missions.) Structurally there are new materials available, composites, cermet, etc., that provide marginal improvements in performance. By the 2020s when a mission like this is in the design phase, I expect even more materials improvements will have been made.

And yes, electronics has advanced by orders of magnitude. However, given the radiation environment of interplanetary space, most microelectronics would not survive the trip without being quintupally redundant, heavily shielded, or custom designed and processed from the substrate up. And remember, we're talking about ultraconservative rocket scientists designing a manned space mission.

The problem is, Moore's Law works to the detriment of radiation tolerance. As structures get smaller and smaller, they become more susceptible to damage by the small amounts of energy deposited by ionizing radiation and especially to heavy ions (cosmic rays). The circuits and structures have to be designed specifically to tolerate the damage from radiation without altering the microcircuit function too dramatically.

No, for a manned interplanetary mission, you're very likely to see most electronics be several generations old technology, and critical systems will be designed with failure-tolerant and radiation-immune technology like electron tubes and relays.

You may think I'm joking, or being hyperbolic... but I'm not.

Of course, by 2031, who knows what will be either radiation tolerant and/or "several generations old."

Obligatory Futurama!

Fry: Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars.
Professor Farnsworth: Well, in those days Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah; but unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable.

The sad thing is...

We could have been going in 5 years instead of 25 if we as a species/world community had better priorities.

(example: 500 billion in Iraq, more than enough to fund the complete development and production of everything that would be needed)

Re:The sad thing is...

If we as a species/world community had better priorities.

It is an unfortunate reality that not everyone has the same priorities. The priorities of a person living in the first world for example are very different from those of a person living in the third world. For example, 98%+ Americans do not spend much time worrying about where their next meal is going to come from, but in large parts of Africa this a serious and growing concern. That is why it is so important to bring sustained economic growth to those areas because sustained economic growth is the difference between a modern first world existence where things like a mission to mars are within our reach and living in a mud hut and trying to scrape together enough food to feed your family. As long as these economic problems remain unsolved we will continue to have lots of wars, lots of violence, and plenty of terrorism to act as a sink for our time, money, and resources.

Hmm

From TFA:

Plants would be grown onboard to feed the crew and contribute to the "psychological health" of the astronauts.

Well, looks like the NASA PR machine no longer is worried about whether its crews appear to be "flying high," so to speak.

Robots

The funny thing is, the longer they wait to launch a human mission to Mars, the smaller will be the advantage compared to a robotic one. Spirit and Opportunity can already do a lot of exploration on their own but, currently, humans, could do a lot better, faster, etc. I'm not so sure that this will still be true in the 2030-2035 time frame. Regardless of the state of AI then, robots will be a lot more autonomous, capable of fairly advanced decisions and exploration capabilities. And they will be immensely cheaper to deliver to Mars (and anywhere else for that matter). So, the longer they put a human mission off, the least sense it makes.

Can someone please expain

Can someone please explain to me (and this is NOT meant to be a troll-post) why someone can't volunteer for a manned mission to Mars, raise funding from private companies/organizations and just go to Mars? Yes it would be a suicide mission, known up front and with the intent of it being for pure research and in the name of science, why the hell couldn't someone hit up a few big businesses and/or private investors for the cash to make a ship, buy or make the equipment for data analysis and the necessary supplies to get there and transmit back pictures and data? And more than just the Mars Rover, being able to survey the planet much faster and with more detail.

Is NASA a governing body in the sense that they can mandate who can go into space and moreover, where in space? It is my understanding that when Columbus wanted to find a route to the far East, he submitted his plans to various people and it took two or three tries before they finally granted him the money and ships he needed and I read that some of the terms of the agreement were such that they (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella) didn't expect him back... why not something similar for Mars? Setting aside things like training, time to build a ship, and most importantly cost, can it be done? Privately? And no, not the Astronaut Farmer-type thing. I'm talking about a legitimate, scientific exploration, in the name of pure science and discovery, privately funded, privately built and controlled, government and nationally independent.

Re:Can someone please expain

I think allowing someone to go on a suicide mission to Mars defeats the entire purpose of going to Mars in the first place.
Mars isn't a war to be won, it's a quest for humanity.

I doubt there will be manned spaceflight at all

I think we have to face facts that once the Shuttle program shuts down and the Russians lose interest in losing money and the ISS reaches the end of its service life that apart from the Chinese and Indians sending a few Nauts into orbit that manned spaceflight is going to take a VERY long break. Perhaps a century or more. Countries and societies seem to have almost no interest in it. Coupled with the enormous ignorance and misinformation about it e.g. a quarter of all Americans think NASA's budget is greater than the Pentagon, coupled with the increasing weaponization of space there just doesn't seem to be any future in it.

Chemical Rockets?

As long as they piddle about with chemical rockets, they won't be doing much more than a very expensive, long and dangerous flag-planting exercise.

Von Braun et. al. were working on a nuclear rocket back in the day for such a mission. Just look up NERVA.

And before anyone jumps on the "danger radiation" bandwagon, I'm not advocating a nuclear rocket for getting from the earth's surface into earth orbit. It would be quite safe to build a reactor, launch it into orbit and to install it on the spacecraft there. It would be quite harmless having never have been taken critical for the first time.

The crew could easily be shielded. Think nuclear submarine. The craft could be much bigger than one chemically-powered. There could be additional shielding for protecting the crew from solar radiation. There would be extra living space, more scientific payload and it would be easier to insert into Mars orbit at the other end.

Fission reactors have been about for 60 years now. We know how to make them safe and efficient. It would be absolutely stupid not to use a nuclear reactor to go to Mars. They could have one designed, built and tested in under 5 years if they put their minds to it.

But they won't. They'll leave that to our grandchildren...

2031

I'm scheduled to be alive for this, Awesome !

Give me a break...

It would have been an interesting article if it had gotten into how this "cryogenic" propulsion system will actually work. The biggest problems are (1) fuel for the outbound and return trip (2) how to land the craft that has humans in it and (3) how to get off the planet again. Mars' atmosphere is too thin for parachutes, and the gravity is too heavy to use conventional chemical thrusters to brake the landing all the way down (which isn't possible anyways due to the mass of the fuel you would have to haul all the way from Earth with those "cryogenic" thrusters).

No one has an answer to this question yet. There may not be one. It's not just engineering, there are basic scientific barriers. This is why SF always invents Warp Drive or some other back door - the constraints imposed by Newton's Third Law and the limitations of chemical propulsion make this whole thing a big pain in the ass. Funny how all these articles never bother to review the basics before launching into all the speculation.

Re:2031?!

NASA does not have the funding it had during the apollo era, so they are doing the best they can on low budgets.

On the other hand, I am just glad to see that instead of sending teachers and other non-astronauts into space they are actually trying to go forward and do something productive. The mission more resembles what was seen in the movie Red Planet where everything was made to be self-sustainable and there was really not much room for problems.

Of course, the plot to that is much different then this is going to be, but whatever.

Re:2031?!

The violence in Iraq lessened because Moqtada al Sadr told his army to stand down. It had very little to do with Bush's surge. If al Sadr changes his mind, attacks will go back up.

And private accounts for Social Security will only expose Americans to additional risks, and enrich a few bigwigs on wall street. Truth is, the program is not at all in bad shape, and if the rest of the Federal Budget weren't in such bad shape (due, in large part, to Bush's tax cuts and the war he started), the government would have surpluses.

Re:2031?!

Well, it won't happen - because a lot of people, when given this opportunity, would fail in securing their social security; and then when they are in need and without income, what happens? Does the goverment let them starve or offer euthanasia, since no SS funds are available for them?

The successful, healthy, and able people would opt out, since it would benefit them. And the less successful would either die or come to rob your house. (I am exaggerating, of course, but it would greatly increase the social differences, and this would hurt society a lot.)

Re:BVLLSH1T!

Each Saturn 5 cost $100 million.

Each Saturn V cost $100 million to buy - it cost another $75-100 million to checkout and launch. (In addition to this there is also is each flights share of the annual infrastructure costs.)
 
 

Contrast that with the "reusable" space shuttle that has to be pretty much rebuilt from the ground up after every mision - $500 million dollars a flight.

Wrong on both counts.
 
First a Shuttle isn't anywhere near 'rebuilt' between flights. (And don't hand me that "they rebuild the engines after every flight". They don't, and haven't for nearly a decade.) Second, the marginal cost of a Shuttle flight (I.E. adding a flight to the manifest) is under $100/million a flight. Just like the Saturn V, it's low flight rate means the per flight cost is dominated by that flight's share of the fixed annual costs.
 
At the end of the day - the difference in cost between the two is much, much less than urban legend has it. (Especially because Shuttle flights include the costs of the manned portion, the capsule if you will, and the Saturn costs... don't.)
 
 

A modified Saturn 5 would need a lot fewer missions to assemble shit in orbit, like the ISS.

Sure, you could assemble it faster - if you were willing to pay in excess of a billion dollars a shot. Saturn V class payloads don't come around too often, so all those infrastructure costs come back and bite you in the ass when you have to amortize years of support costs across a handful of flights.

Re:2031?!

If only we had the drive of the Apollo era.

We were kinda missing a fully-committed competitor for prestige and bragging rights, like we had when we were pushing to the Moon in competition w/ Russia.

Also, nothing (aside from a metric assload of money to go with the initiative) is stopping private interests from giving space a shot. Although there is a lot of work being done in that direction (Scaled Composites, Armadillo Aerospace, etc), I fear that most will stop cold or die off before they really get things going full-time, and some appear to be stopping short just on what they've done - e.g. Scaled Composites may become just a neat-o space tourista thingy to get into sub-orbit, but otherwise won't bother any further.

But then, I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised and proven wrong when it comes to this ideal.

(Hell, the only reason NASA appears to be getting back into the manned-mission-to-space thing again is because the Chinese got one of their own into space, and Russia+India want to put folks on the Moon... kinda sad that it takes ego just to get people working towards what should be a solid ideal in the first place).

All that said - someone call me when an average guy can get into space without spending a shitload of cash or his whole career kissing bureaucratic arse.

/P

Re:2031?!

And now our lack of vision as a nation..

Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? There's no lack of vision. You sound like you have plenty of it.

It's lack of desire to make the tradeoff, pay the cost. How much are you personally willing to pay, to send someone?

Ok, maybe you decided to chip in a few thousand dollars out of your own pocket -- you're willing to eat Ramen for 3 months every year, or give up internet access, or otherise bear that cost at expense to your life style. But now imagine you're not a science-valuing nerd. How much are you willing to pay then?

Answer: as a non-nerd, you're willing to pay about as much as a nerd is willing to pay for $USELESS_GOVERNMENT_PROGRAM. (Fill in that var with something you don't like. Maybe it's the war in Iraq. Maybe it's cancer cure research. Maybe it's tobacco farm subsidies. Surely there's something the government spends money on that you don't feel is worth the expense.)

We have plenty of vision. What we don't have, is consensus on what things are worth. Going to Mars is "cool" but it's not worth the same amount of sacrifice to everyone. And that's a pretty good reason to keep government out of this. Let people pay what they want to pay. Now go write your check and eat your Ramen.

Re:2031?!

And now our lack of vision as a nation and bureaucratical hassles have pushed the date even beyond that. It's a sad time to be an American. If only we had the drive of the Apollo era.

It's in a bold step of aggressive direction that the 'Prez has led us to this great vision of greatness, to reach Mars sometime in about 15 years! Children not even born yet will be in Junior High when we make it!

Er, not.

This is just political posturing. The lame-duck President gets kudos for being "visionary" without actually doing anything but talking out his arse. NASA gets some (much needed) press, and the Chinese get a message that maybe we aren't completely out of the race to space round II.

But it means nothing, the administration will change, priorities will change LONG before we even get a prototype ANYTHING constructed, and the "vision of the trip" to Mars is half-hearted, even if its proponents aren't.

Personally, this hurts all involved since NASA will end up with ANOTHER black eye of "Well, you didn't get us to Mars, either, did you!" while the real underlying problem, which is that NASA gets about 1/2 of 1% of the budget that the US Military gets. [thespacereview.com]

But most people think of NASA as this huge, labyrinthine gubbmint agency with nearly unlimited dollars. But when you look at it, we spend 200 times as much money killing people as we spend putting anybody in space.

And yet, space projects have had an amazing ROI. For example, the amount of money spent deploying the GPS system is dwarfed by the taxes earned by all the products and services based on the GPS system, notwithstanding its original military-oriented benefits. Research that went into solar panels, rechargeable batteries, materials research, etc. continue to provide incredible economic benefits today, year after year.

It's like somebody upstairs is intentionally shooting us all in the collective foot - just pisses me off to no end.

Re:2031?!

But when you look at it, we spend 200 times as much money killing people as we spend putting anybody in space.

    That's because all the people who need killing are here on earth.
If they were in space, then we would be spending a lot more money on killing them ... in space. But since they aren't in space, then there isn't any sense in spending all that money on space when we have so... many... people who need killing right here on earth.

    It's all a matter of priorities.

Re:2031?!

Actually 2231 is more like it. We have some prescheduled things arranged for 2031 that don't include billions of dollars spent on a trip to a red dot in the night sky. Which is all that Mars is. To us. Here. On earth.

    Earth that is running out of oil. Earth that is on the verge of massive climatic change due to massive CO2 overproduction in the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st. Earth that is so overpopulated in regards to the local economies that major religions are putting aside spirituality in order to replace it with mass suicide-warrior cults. Earth where melting ice caps threaten to disrupt ocean currents to the point of creating new ice-ages for our most productive regions.

    Are these problems solvable? Sure. Will they be solved? Not a fucking chance! This is where some bozo jumps up and says that this is the exact reason that we need a space program to preserve the earth's civilization and science because the earth is doomed.

    But with all that will be on the plate by 2031, there isn't going to be enough resources left to entertain such fantasies as Mars travel.

    Basically, Mars travel fantasies for 2031 are what flying-car fantasies by 2007 were in the 1960's.

    Realistically, by 2031, we'll be lucky to get the broken windows at the local McDonald's fixed. By 2031, there will be another three billion people wanting to come to your town and either kill you for some idiot god or take your job. By 2031, all the new cardboard and sheet-rock $750000 new McMansions built in the early 2000's will be rotting slums. And all the people who bought them will be bankrupt. Which means they aren't going to be paying taxes for fantasy space voyages. Because all the money that they do manage to pay in taxes will be going to pay for the Iraq war, which will be by then just a distant memory. But the 30-year notes will be due, and no one is going to buying the new US Treasury notes that were expected to replace them. With US dollar so worthless that it takes a hundred of them to buy a loaf of bread.

    Mars voyages by 2031? Absurd. Try 2231. Start thinking of the 1000 year future.

Why would you do that?

There are MANY ppl on this planet that would be willing to take a 1 way ticket to Mars. Seriously, I would, but I also know that I am too old for that. My belief is that the first mission will be a 1 way ticket (in spite of what NASA wants now). The reason is that it takes a LOT of work to get the ppl back. OTH, if we send supplies/equipment ahead of time, and build a small base, then a small group of ppl can go there and build out. I am also guessing that before 2025, the private world will already be heading there, with just the set-up I described.

Re:Question answered!

I'm a huge space proponent...

But it is not like the U.S. Government won't have all sorts of other debts to pay when the Afghan/Iraq wars end.

Let's try Social Security and Medicare to start.

These two programs are all slated to start running in the red decades before any Mars mission.

Re:Weight of food to carry decreased by FAT astron

If you thought that female astronaut who drove across country in a diaper was crazy, just wait untill you see what happens when you send a fat man into space with no food.