I don’t get this presumption that crew members would need to, or even be desired to, get romantically involved with one another. It’s straight out of the 1950s.
That should have been “US$500B”. However, estimates upward of US$1T are not uncommon; the infamous “90 Day Study” Space Exploration Initiative had an adjusted fro 2018 cost of well over US$1T but it was also a comprehensive infrastructure rather than a single mission architecture. I’ve worked on adjunct studies to the NASA Mars DRA 3.0 and 4.0 (focusing on the ground-to-orbit infrastructure requirements) and as extensive as those original studies were we found that they often made very non-conservative assumptions about the amount of both consumable mass and inert mass (particularly the Mars descent vehicle) requirements, so I can see even scaled back or missions with high risk tolerance still being in the >US$500B range.
When you put a bunch of people together in isolation, biology happens. Again, this issue came up in at least a couple of the Hi-SEAS 6 month simulations, and while it didn’t completely ruin the “mission” it did create some adverse crew dynamics.
Stranger
Marriage vows or no, things could easily get “complicated” between these four couples. Consider who these people are, the elite of the elite. They made to the very top of the NASA pyramid and were chosen for this historic mission over thousands of other candidates. This fact makes them very “attractive” in every sense of the word. And just one “misunderstanding” could jeopardize the whole mission. Twenty one months is a long time to be in such close quarters. I’d go with an all male crew (and maybe a Real Doll stowed away in the Privacy Room).
I’m sure it (“biology”) does happen, but it’s not like there have been no journeys or endeavors of comparable duration in human history, or even contemporary to our time (military, exploration, even space travel for up to a year—take your pick). I’m not saying that romantic involvement among crew members should be prohibited, but I hardly think it needs to be an overriding factor in crew selection. Throw me in with the “made up of astronauts” crowd. Representative to the extent possible for a small crew, sure, but grown ass adults can, in fact, go for months or years on end without intimate sexual contact and remain functional, in spite of what members the incel community try to push as justification for their being generally rotten people.
Something tells me that the kind of people who become astronauts would already know and understand this, particularly as many of them will have had military careers.
Plus, think about it from a practical side. Just how common are married couples in space programs (and specifically NASA astronauts), and do we really want to have to narrow what I’m sure will be an already limited pool just based on necessary skills and education down further by limiting ourselves to teams of married couples in which both souses can fill a necessary role not better filled by someone else?
ETA:
Straight out of the 1950s, whether it’s “married couples only” or “males only.”
Again, grown ass adults can and should be expected to function with or without sex, even in the presence of people they are sexually attracted to. We should not be limiting the pool of candidates for such a risky mission based on mid-20th century sitcom representations of human sexuality.
History has shown sex happens, despite the best intentions to prevent it from happening.
As I said, “with or without sex.” It should not be an overriding concern for selection amongst an already limited pool.
We know almost nothing about Mars. Really just a completely negligible amount. We don’t even have the slightest clue what we don’t know about Mars. Mars is a planet with as rich a geologic history as Earth and so far we’ve only done the most superficial and limited poking around.
Which isn’t to say that robotic missions aren’t the best choice in the immediate future. They probably are. But deep understanding is going to require either boots on the ground or a level of automation and AI that is at least as difficult as a manned Mars mission.
I sense tons of PC in here, but lets be real. If one your females gets pregnant, you have just lost a crew member. Can we agree that women are wired differently from men?
Or gained one.
Yeah, I don’t really get why a space mission is expected to turn into teenage drama.
We already have a pretty good idea of what the crew would be like if we look at analog situations like submarine crews, exploration teams and long range reconnaissance patrols: Special forces teams are often 4 people but LRRPs are designed to keep functioning even after taking casualties and are sometimes overstaffed by 50% to 6. Submarine crews are all-male and manage to function. Even if submarine crews had some women (and it may be the case in some militaries) it need not turn into a dating game. Exploration teams like those that discovered the poles or ventured far away from any help tended to be all-male.
Again, looking at Green Beret teams, we tend to get a commander, communications, engineering, medical, payload/operations (a weapons sergeant for the Green Berets but here it would be a payload specialist for whatever category of science experiments is most important). That makes 5. Maybe 2 payload specialists from different disciplines. I’m guessing the commander would also be the pilot.
I would be most concerned about the motives of the applicants, which are going to be buried pretty deeply in the psychological complexities of those who raise their hands. We have no prior psychoanalytical experience to go by.
For manned missions to Mars? True.
For a small group of people who go on a long journey that can go from deadly boring to deadly while largely on their own? We have plenty of prior experience, since the dawn of our species.
And yet, in simulation it often does. Of course, you would expect that highly vetted and trained crews would do better than a group of volunteers…and then you read the story about Lisa Nowak and her apparent plan to kidnap and murder her romantic rival, and you have to wonder just how well you can really know anybody.
Ballistic missile subs are on deterrence patrols for two or three months at a time, which is basically as long as they can carry provisions. Recon patrols are rarely longer than a few weeks at most. Even the long duration exploration and circumnavigation expeditions during the age of sail which lasted several years allowed crew to go topside to breathe fresh air and made the occasional port. A crewed Mars mission using conventional technology is going to be two and a half years in duration with no chance to take a break from the rest of the crew. While an examination of the psychodynamics of a small crew is outside the scope of the studies I’ve worked on, the reading I’ve done on the topic indicates that it is a significant concern for mission planners because outside of a few really limited cases, this kind of isolation is just unprecedented.
It is certainly true that we have literally just scratched the surface of Mars, and there is a vast amount of information we could learn, but I’m dubious that we are going to learn a lot at this point from a crewed mission. People often like to point out that a human can walk much faster than the rovers can move, but again, that is comparing a person in a shirt sleeve environment to a rover limited by a low power supply. In reality, a person in a pressure suit is only going to be able to move a limited distance from whatever vehicle they have to return to, and the amount of useful work they will be able to do will be limited by the endurance and mobility of the suit. Which is not to say that people don’t have a place in space exploration, but a mission with a crew that remains in orbit teleoperating a multitude of rovers and sample probes deployed at various places on the planet that would be too hazardous to land a human crew is probably going to yield far more scientific data than a crew that lands in one spot and can only explore a limited range.
The “level of automation and AI” is certainly going to require substantial advances in technology but that is necessary anyway because there are various places in the solar system–in particular, the Jovian moons, or the far outer planets of Uranus and Neptune–that we are just not going to be able to send human crews to for a very long time because of the distance or radiation hazards. So we need to develop that kind of technology anyway. And a long duration habitation capability in space will require in situ extraction and use of space-based resources, which will have to be preceded by automation to bootstrap that because we just can’t lift enough equipment and resources from Earth to sustain habitation until we can extract those resources from space. So I return to the notion that we are better off developing a space-based infrastructure to extract and utilize consumables and other essential resources and then leverage that for more extensive planetary exploration rather than the Hail Mary pass of trying to send a human crew to Mars using barely capable chemical propulsion and habitation technologies.
Stranger
What are the closest analogs we know of, even if it’s unprecedented?
Point of fact, females have been serving as permanently assigned crew members to US Navy submarines since 2011. It started with female officers on SSBNs and SSGNs, but has since expanded to include newer SSNs and also female enlisted. But the gender ratio is nowhere near even, and, as I said, functioning grown ass adults can and should be expected to be able to do their damn jobs with or without romantic attachment to coworkers or immediate access to a spouse or loved one for extended period of time.
Heinlein dealt with this in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. Didn’t work out well there, even without Martians. And though I’d love to think otherwise, I doubt that within a generations, humans will reach Mars and survive. ISTM a logical process might be:
- build space station
- build Lunar facilities
- build robo-drones in orbit using Lunar materials
- launch robo-explorers to study Mars
- learn what the fuck can work on Mars
- launch robo-constructor to build Mars base
- build spacecraft for six Earthlings
- select crew (bisexual photogenic dwarves)
- launch crew to Mars - this takes time
- see who (if any) survive
- maybe try to return survivors to Earth
- find “volunteers” for next attempt(s)
- deport political undesireables to Mars
- establish sexual-fantasy spaceship line
- explain to Galactic Police why we broke curfew
That’s a top-of-my-head algorithm. Sure, it may be possible to plant Earthlings on Mars in a rush. We can also develop vaccines in a rush - if survival doesn’t matter. Ditto with Mars. The first batches of Earthlings will be expendable; thus the crews should suffer from terminal ailments so they needn’t return. This simplifies things - one-way tickets only. Provide many recreational drugs, sex toys, and fast WiFi.
Am I a “stranger in a strange land” for not caring what a science fiction writer from the last century thinks? Much less a science fiction writer who envisioned a crypto-fascist state in which citizenship is contingent on federal service and yet the world is presented as if everyone would/should be fine with that and then wrote it into a story meant for kids to sell them on the idea too?
I’d agree that a baseline, “Hail Mary” mission would not gain much over robotic missions. I am considering a future point with humans living in something approaching comfort and some minor degree of local industry.
Consider a basic geological tool: core sampling. Drill a hole as deep as you can go, removing cylinders of rock and analyzing them later.
It’s not impossible to imagine a completely automated core sampling machine, but it’s hard. From the initial assembly to the core handling to dealing with failures, each aspect would need to be thought through completely. Humans are good at this kind of fiddly, irregular manipulation. Robotics are not, as of yet.
A crew with access to some sort of rudimentary lathe can build replacement parts. They can design and build new systems that correct for deficiencies in the original design. They can perform assembly operations that weren’t anticipated originally.
Could we, at some point, have robotic systems that come close to matching human capabilities? Sure. But this is one of those hard problems with a difficult-to-estimate timeline and I couldn’t say whether this or a small Martian colony is likely to come first. Either one may be decades or centuries off.
I certainly agree with this as well. We can continue doing robotic exploration missions as well as missions that build up infrastructure. I hope and expect that SpaceX’s first plans are to start methane synthesis. It should be possible to deploy solar panels and/or small reactors for electricity, mine water, and run self-contained Sabatier plants to generate the methane (and oxygen). Having enough propellant for a return journey already prepared would be a prerequisite for any human mission.
Unless we can find some way to travel faster than we already do, it’s not going to happen. Even assuming that food, water, and air could be produced and recycled for the many months or years it would take to get there (and back), think about this: Being cooped up on a bus with X number of people, all that time, and there is NO escape. Period.
Nope, not going to happen.
This reminds me of religious folk who say that “teens ought to be able to coexist and interact without having sex on the sly.” Sure, they ought to, but there is a huge gap between “ought” and “will.”
And IIRC, there have been plenty of instances of naval sailors having sex on military ships.