"Crew" the first voyage to Mars

If all goes well (unlikely) the first trip to Mars will take 21 months. What should the crew look like?

Six, eight or ? crew members? (I’m think eight because fatalities may become an issue.)

Male to female ratio?

Established couples or let the crew sort it out on the trip?

“Professions”? I’m thinking two MD’s. (Difficult for a doctor to work on himself). A Psychologist (to at least attempt to keep everyone from killing each other.) Scientists (What kinds?) Captain (someone has to be in charge).

Other personel questions to consider?

You want as few people as possible, so as to consume the least resources and require the least life support, but still enough that loneliness isn’t an issue, and enough to overcome an accidental death. I recall reading that 3 people is undesirable for a team because it tends to turn into a 2-vs-1 dispute dynamic, and so the bare minimum should be four.

One has to be the commander. Ideally, 2 men and 2 women would be good, so as to help minimize sexual/relationship drama (having all 4 of one gender wouldn’t be good, nor would having three of one gender and only one of the other.) I’d suggest two married couples.

One must be a medical expert; preferably surgeon level. But everyone must be fully proficient in operating all the systems of the spacecraft.

You want asexuals. Problem solved.

Not only would I require couples, I would require that they have been married for at least five years prior to the start of the selection process. What you don’t want is people marrying just to make themselves eligible for the mission. You need relationships with at least some measure of stability.

Every crew member is going to need to start off as an expert in at least two subjects, and is going to have to learn at least the basics of every area of expertise needed on the mission. You need to be prepared for the possibility of one or more of your experts being killed or incapacitated. This is simplified by the fact that, for most situations, the best experts the planet has to offer will be available for consultation (though of course, with a time lag of several minutes). The communication systems will probably need a greater degree of onboard expertise, because if those fail, you won’t have the help of flatlander experts to fix them.

I don’t know if it’s possible to get enough expertise, and redundancy of that expertise, with four people. With six, I’d guess that it is, but that might lead to the sort of two-against-one dynamics Velocity mentioned, but at a couple level rather than individual. Then again, the proper solution for that might just be greater discipline, with a clear and absolute chain of command.

One also has to consider the PR angle. The first manned mission to Mars is going to be one of the most historic feats ever undertaken by humanity. For something like this, some people would be upset if the crew consisted entirely of people of one race alone, such as an all-white crew. (Yes, nobody really cares that all of the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon were white men, but that was a different era.) So people will want racial representation. Whichever governing agency that selects the crew may want at least one white, one black, one Asian, one Hispanic, etc. represented if possible. Total diversity may not be possible but it wouldn’t be good to be all of the same race or nationality (having a diverse, but all-American, crew, for instance, might not fly either).

The NASA/SP–2009–566 Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 assumes a baseline crew complement of six (6) astronauts. No gender is specified and per the generally prudish attitude NASA has has in regard to sex there is no mention but I would assume a mixed crew with the explicit prohibition against crew members being in any kind of romantic relationship (although that didn’t work out too well in the a couple of the Hi-SEAS simulations). Despite the notion that it might be preferable to send married couples, that is contraindicated in the interpersonal dynamics of a close quarters hierarchical environment (hence, why the military does not permit married couples to work in the same unit); even if the members of a couple have a good relationship with one another, the dynamics of that relationship vice their responsibilities to the crew and mission are problematic to say the least. Of course, people will naturally pair off in such circumstances (romantic or otherwise) but adding the vows of marriage to such a situation is a complication that I’m sure mission controllers would rather avoid.

As for occupations, while it may seem to be preferable to bring a surgeon, it probably isn’t really necessary. Any kind of trauma or deep cavity surgical intervention in a freefall environment will result in uncontrolled bleeding due to a lack of gravity to settle the blood and cause it to clot. Even if the interplanetary transfer vehicle has simulated gravity (which is not the baseline assumption) the odds of an injury that requires surgical intervention but that can be supported with the limited facilities that the crew can carry is unlikely. In short, someone who is grievously wounded will likely die anyway, and that is just part of the risk that has to be accepted. The more likely medical conditions are due to solar particle radiation damage, syndromes due to interplanetary radiation, nutritional deficiencies, and osteoporosis and muscular degeneration due to the low/zero g environment. With a crew size that small and the presumably few opportunities for crewed exploration, it would make more sense to have two or three members of the crew trained to an advanced paramedic or licensed practical nurse level in addition to their primary roles and rely upon ground-based support for advanced medical diagnosis and treatment guidance rather than dedicating an entire crew position to medicine, unless there is some particularly mission goal pertaining to the medical observation and treatment of people in a long duration space environment. A more likely crew complement would be something like couple of geologists, a geophysicist/planetary scientist, a biologist/geochemist, a dedicated flight engineer/pilot, and mission commander; this is assuming that the primary interest is understanding the geochemistry, geology, and hypothetical exobiology of Mars.

Of course, there is little need to actually send a crew to do this; for the cost of a conjunction-class mission (which starts at ~US$500T and goes up from there) you could pepper the planet with advanced Curiosity-type rovers, self-drilling probes, orbiting climate and surface surveillance satellites, et cetera and still have money left over to support outer planet exploratory missions to bodies of interest like Titan, Enceladus, Europa, Eo, and maybe even a mission to Uranus or Neptune, and extract far more scientific value per dollar spent. It is true that these vehicles do not move as fast as people in a short-sleeve environment but that is a consequence of the low power systems (solar or radioisotope thermoelectric generators) rather than because people are inherently more mobile than vehicles. The power requirements for a crewed mission of similar capability are going to be orders of magnitude greater just to keep the crew alive as well as the limited mobility and functionality astronauts will have in pressure suits, notwithstanding all of the effort that has to go into retrieving the crew at end of mission, and of course we can make a good effort at sterilizing rovers and probes whereas it is literally impossible to send a human crew without their natural biomes and other microorganisms that will inevitably hitch a ride which will contaminate the surface and every sample they come into contact with. It makes far more sense to establish a space-based infrastructure to be able to develop in situ resource extraction and utilization for consumables like propellant and water as well as developing technology and processes for the long duration habitation of humans in space so that an eventual crewed mission to Mars isn’t a tiny crew engaging in a desperate high risk effort at enormous cost, but instead is a normal consequence of technology development and resource utilization.

Stranger

I propose that the crew consist entirely of astronauts.

Are we talking about a round trip & short stay or starting an Elon Musk type colony? If it’s starting a colony I think it needs to be more than 2 couples. The odds of someone dying on the surface of Mars is high. The group needs to be able to absorb the loss of a member or two and keep going.

As long as Matt Damon is in the crew they’ll be fine - he can grow potatoes in anything…

There isn’t going to be an “Elon Musk type colony” on Mars for the foreseeable future. Not only are the resources to support a colony not readily available–what surface water exists is locked up in the thick brine of recurring slope lineae, months-long dust storms preclude reliance upon solar power, and the regolith is liberally contaminated with toxic perchlorates, while the amount of oxygen and nitrogen that could be extracted from the atmosphere or geological sources is tiny even assuming that there is enough energy to turn it into breathable air–but it is unclear whether humans can remain healthy in the 37% Earth gravity environment for long term habitation. It would literally be far easier to colonize Antarctica which at least has breathable air, pure water, and the normal gravity level that humans have evolved to function in.

Stranger

If everyone’s an astronaut, someone’s gotta be the redshirt.

Tripler
Just sayin’.

Short people.

Short people take up less space, weigh less, eat less, drink less, and breathe less. They’re a bit healthier than tall people, less likely to fall over and break a bone, and have better temperature management due to their high surface area/volume ratio.

Tall people basically just have a bunch of extra meat attached to them, which is pointless to bring along for a long trip where mass is at a premium.

I’ll go with six: two scientists, two medical professionals, two engineers. I don’t think the genders or existing relationships matter much because they’re all going to end up hating each other anyway.

QFT. Although I’ve enjoyed reading SF novels about Mars (Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time-Slip is my fave), I think a present-day trip to Mars is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea. We already have a pretty good idea what’s there. I see no need to spend billions (maybe trillions) of dollars on an incredibly dangerous and probably unsurvivable adventure, just for bragging rights and the ability to pick up an interesting rock.

Why do you think couples married for at least 5 years would be best for this? Most likely one of them won’t be able to function if the other dies, which would be highly likely on this kind of mission. IMHO, women would be disqualified for the early missions. You need hard men for this, not some guy that is worried about getting laid or taking care of his woman.

Sure, but from a PR/significant/interest standpoint, nothing beats human astronauts. No amount of unmanned drones, probes, rovers can or would capture even a fraction of the interest and hype that sending live flesh-and-blood humans to Mars would. The excitement and allure is simply not there with robots. People want that human narrative.

Apollo 13 captured great attention and spawned books, a movie, etc. because it involved three humans facing imminent death if a complex lifesaving solution couldn’t be found. Nobody would go to theaters to watch a movie about an unmanned Apollo spacecraft that developed a short circuit or something but NASA controllers found a way to fix remotely.

Well, only for vegetarian values of “pointless”…

This is a common notion that is fed in part by the fact that the Apollo XI EVA was the most watched televised event in history, but in general the public doesn’t really care all that much about space exploration, and certainly not to justify a mission cost of half a trillion dollars or more. Nor is there any “human narrative” that would enthrall viewers for weeks or months of a mostly boring ground exploration mission with geologists and planetary scientists collecting rocks and soil samples. There is plenty of enthusiasm among actual space enthusiasts for the Mars rovers and it much of NASA’s educational outreach is in reference to the ongoing Curiosity rover mission, which again costs a tiny fraction of a percent of the cost of a crewed mission for the scientific yield. The real purpose of space exploration should not be a stunt mission to plant a flag for cameras but to collect data and gain insight into the nature of the universe beyond our planet, both for general knowledge and because we often gain more information pertinent to our own existence.

Stranger

All women crew, but with a cryo sperm bank, so they can repopulate the species. This gives the chance of the greatest genetic diversity with the fewest number of crew that needs to be supported early on.

Whoa. If “US$500T” is intended to mean "500 *trillion*" then that seems dramatically higher than even the most pessimistic estimates I've seen. For example, [a 2017 estimate](https://money.com/travel-mars-price-cost-tourism/) put the cost of a crewed Mars mission at 1 trillion, spread over a 25 year period–that is, $40,000,000,000 a year, every year, for a quarter of a century, which is a hell of a lot of money…but still not “the entire economic output of the Planet Earth for four to six years”.

It seems to me that the lack of marriage vows would be the greater complication.

Certainly you’ll need hard people, but what makes you think that hard people are all men? And yes, there’s a risk that some of them would be widowed, but the kind of person who gets to be an astronaut in the first place is the kind of person who can still get the job done even while grieving.