Hypothetically: Suppose that suddenly, tomorrow morning, all of humanity collectively decided as a hive mind, Yes, we’ve got to send a team of astronauts to Mars. Now. Who cares if it costs trillions of dollars; it’s the top human priority.
Do we already have everything we need to do it (with only minor modifications)? Rockets, nuclear reactors, air purification, robotics, water purification and recycling, hydroponics, communications, medicine, all seem to be very advanced/mature technologies. We even have lots of AI nowadays. Is radiation shielding and radiation effect the main un-solved problem to date? What else are we missing?
I haven’t read it (he wrote a great book on immigration that I read – I’m convinced! We need more of it…), but it probably answers all of your questions in an entertaining, approachable, and funny way.
No. We have almost none of these capabilities sufficient to deliver and sustain a team of human beings on the surface of Mars. And no, the extra mass SpaceX ‘Starship/Super Heavy’ can hypothetically take to LEO does not substantially change that answer, nor does the “lots of AI nowadays” or any other handwaving of the real issues of entry/descent/landing of multi-ton payloads on Mars (the most difficult solid body to softland .
I write this having worked on two adjunct studies of the NASA Mars Design Reference Mission (DRM) 3.0 and 4.0 proposals as well as numerous other unsolicited proposals for space habitation and interplanetary high bandwidth telemetry/communications. Quite frankly, the practical advances in many technical areas critical to human exploration, much less ‘permanent’ human habitation, of Mars have been incremental at best. There are many previous threads on this topic that go into extensive detail about the challenges and limitations of current technology.
The odds are very uncertain. On a trip that long, involving a lot of key actions that have to go right, with no easy way to get back to Earth (as with Apollo 13), one little goof that arises months into it and it’s all over.
The track history of unmanned, one-way Mars probes is really poor. Some of those probes failed for the most ridiculous trivial reasons.
While the astronauts might willingly accept such poor odds, governments and space agencies have a very different view.
Throw in the “Um, why do we need to send people there???” question and it’s no go for rational people.
So do you mean send astronauts to Mars, the same way we sent astronauts to the moon? Arrive, stay a few hours, then return. I think we could pull that off, given the whole human race concentrating on it, and if we are willing to accept massive (possibly 100%) mortality among the astronauts.
On the other hand I think there are some major unsolved problems with any kind of long term stay on Mars.
It’s a lot easier if you’re willing to make it a one way trip, and if this is somehow uniting the world behind making it a huge priority, it seems like you can. Having no expertise and just an amateur interest in space stuff, I think the answer currently is no but I think we could make a decent shot of it it in maybe 5-6 years if it was truly a priority.
It is worth observing that the crew of Apollo 13 were really lucky that the fire and explosion of oxygen tank #2 and loss of pressure on tank #1 occurred in that phase of the mission. It happened after trans-Lunar injection and extraction of and docking the Lunar Module (allowing the LM to be used both as a ‘lifeboat’ and to use its descent propulsion system to transfer into an Earth return trajectory and make trajectory adjustments), and before the CSM injected into Lunar orbit. If it had occurred outside of that window, the CSM would have no ability to return to an Earth return trajectory because of the loss of the Service Module Propulsion System and because the LM would not be docked with the descent stage attached. So even missions to the Moon (or really anywhere beyond LEO) will have broad areas in the mission profile where a recovery or rescue is not feasible without an onerous degree of redundancy or a massive infrastructure in space to conduct rescue operations.
As you note, there is effectively no possibility of external rescue or abort for a crewed Mars mission once it has performed a trans-planetary injection maneuver throughout the duration of the mission (over 1000 days for a conjunction-class mission with an 18 month stay at Mars, or ~560 days with a 40 day stay for an opposition-class mission), so the crew has to be capable of self-rescue for the duration of the mission or else have a reliability with sufficient confidence that not only is there tolerance for putting a crew at risk but also the loss of a US$500B or greater mission.
For that cost, we could literally pepper Mars from pole to equator to pole with hundreds of Curiosity/Perseverance type rovers which could explore a far more vast area of the surface than any single crewed mission could possibly achieve, and could take the kinds of risks on terrain that we would never make with a human crew. (And of course, for a much longer duration with no need to recover rovers at end of mission.)
Yeah, but rovers aren’t as cool as astronauts. All the cool countries have astronauts. Even cooler is warp speed and light sabers. We can do those things, too. Can’t we? /s
As for the OP, we have some big problems here at home requiring some focus and resources, and we have yet to determine how to rally our residents to solve these issues. So, I don’t think we’ll be going to Mars, no matter what the state of technology is, any time soon.
For sure. But my hypothetical is just asking if political and social will were no issue - everyone agrees we need to go to Mars pronto - whether we already have the means.
Per Stranger, no we do not, so my ignorance is fought.
I think we can all unite behind it, it we agree on who is in the crew. There are a couple of names that spring to mind as ones that I think most everyone will agree, but as this is in Factual Questions for some reason, I won’t be more specific.
We are capable of mounting a mission, but the risks are high. It would be a disaster of the first order if our very first interplanetary manned mission ended with the loss of life.
Our unmanned devices are getting more and more sophisticated with every passing year. The cost is far less, and there is zero chance that human lives would be lost.
@Stranger_On_A_Train has already given an informed answer to the question, but I’ll just add that I think we’re less able to go to Mars right now than we were able to go to the moon around 1960. I remember as a kid seeing diagrams from that era showing how a moon mission would work, and it showed substantially the system that was actually used a decade later – a lunar lander detaching from an orbiting crew capsule, landing on the moon, and then an ascent stage returning and docking with the orbiter, which finally returns to earth.
Of course as a kid, my immediate thought was “so they know how to do it – why don’t they just go ahead and do it?” Well, they did, but it took a very busy decade and three major iterations of space programs – Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo – to acquire all the necessary learnings and technology. In the case of a Mars mission, I don’t know if we even have that much of a high-level concept.
Mostly because almost all of the technology for going to the moon aligned with that developed for WWII and the Cold War. There are no hugely compelling reasons other than interplanetary travel to develop things like human hibernation, long term hyper-enclosed environments, and rockets a hundred times bigger than necessary to put a satellite in orbit or a warhead in Moscow.
Yep, that sort of limited trip is possible. Not a “send man to mars, and colonize.” Risky, but possible. We’d have to send a couple trial missions first, boosting the cost- remember there were ten Apollo missions before the Moon landing. So, a least a couple just to go there, orbit and return.
They were lucky-but do note that was one out of 14, and the other 13 went off A-OK, including 4 who landed on the moon. And the tech back then was primitive. Mind you, I concur, unmanned missions are the way to go.
There is some water. And Mars is not a vacuum. But there was none of that on Luna either. Could a colony survive? I dont think so. Could be get there turn around and go back? Yeah. But why?
