This is another not-poll where I just want 'dopers thoughts on when, or if, humans will go to Mars…or back to the Moon I suppose if you think that’s the direction we’ll go. This isn’t asking if you think we should, but if you think we will…the ‘we’ defined as humans. Could be any country or even a private company. Think that will happen in your lifetime? In the life time of someone alive today? In the life time of someone who hasn’t been born yet, but will soon? Further down the road? Never? What are your thoughts on when or if this will happen?
China is going to go eventually. Now I don’t know if that’s in five years or twenty but I do see it as a basic inevitability. As soon as the powers that be in American politics see the Chinese announcement as imminent, 'Merica will announce our own crewed Mars mission and we’ll have a new space race.
I really doubt that there is a justifiable scientific reason for a crewed mission to Mars. It will come down to national pride though and we’re not going to sit this fight out.
For Mars I don’t know how far out it is but the sooner it is the greater the chance that the crew never comes home.
I hope we are significantly further along in space exploration technology and experience before anyone tries to travel to Mars, so at least 20 years out.
China seems to be dead set on going to the Moon to prove they can do it. Doesn’t seem that difficult with 21st century technology and what we learned from the first Moon missions, but still risky. But if they really wanted it they could get there in 5 years. If we really wanted it we could too, although without help from Russia or maybe China we may have a hard time with the first leg of the trip because we’re not real good at putting people in orbit right now.
Moon: fairly soon. I’d be surprised if it was less than a decade, but not too surprised, especially if China really ups its game and really wants it. Within 20 years, we (human race, not necessarily USA) should have had a return mission that is much more substantial than the Apollo missions in terms of crew size and duration of visit. Colonizing, if it happens at all, will be much later.
Mars is just a bit harder. Maybe in my lifetime if I stay pretty damn healthy (I’ve got grandparents pushing into their 100’s, so maybe). You can’t really just go visit Mars like you can the moon. Even a very long lunar mission would be only a couple months. The minimum mars mission is a couple years. Even a visit is not much different from colonizing, logistically speaking.
I think that we will probably visit an asteroid before Mars. It is much easier to get to many asteroids than it is to get to Mars, anyway.
Although comparisons are often made to the Apollo program, going to Mars isn’t just a little bit harder than going to the Moon; even setting aside the the distance and duration of the mission, which is over a thousand days for a conjunction-class (18 months at Mars) mission or ~560 days for an opposition-class (40 days at Mars) mission, the degree of hazards, the amount of resources and materials that have to be transported to support habitation and exploration, the problem of supplying sufficient energy to support crew on the surface of Mars, and the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) problem with landing a payload larger than 1 MT on the surface of Mars (often referred to as “the most difficult solid body in the Solar System to land upon”) makes the crewed exploration of Mars far more difficult than common public perception. Even a fairly minimalist, high risk opposition-class mission is going to run at a cost exceeding US$200B; by comparison, the entire Apollo lunar program cost less than US$120B in today’s dollars. Estimates for the more extensive conjunction-class mission with the year-and-a-half surface stay start at over US$500B and go up, with a number of uncertainties about how to land sufficient supplies and equipment to support a small crew of 4-6 people for that duration.
I know that a lot of people believe that such a mission can be accomplished as a seat-of-the-pants, improvise on the fly effort with minimal cost, or that Elon Musk will fly himself and a group of “colonists” there in style in a big finned spaceship that looks as if it just flew out of a 1950s sci-fi movie, but the reality is that space is a very difficult and hazardous environment for hardened equipment, and is completely unforgiving to living organisms. Aside from the energetic charged particle radiation emitted by the Sun in coronal mass ejections (which the Earth’s magnetosphere protects astronauts in Low Earth Orbit from, and which could theoretically be protected by putting the mass of the propulsion system and waste products between the ship’s habitat and the Sun), there is high energy cosmic radiation which comes from all directions and has energies that cannot be stopped by any amount of practical shielding. There is also physiological issues with living in freefall or in a fraction of Earth gravity for an extended duration of time (the gravity of Mars is ~1/3 of that on Earth); while we don’t have enough experience to say what amount of gravity is necessary, the opinion of space physiologists is that there is probably some degree of detrimental impact from living in a significantly reduced gravity.
There is often the notion that a crewed mission on Mars could go further and perform more tasks than remotely-operated probes and rovers, but this assumption can only be justified by assuming that a crew would be able to operate upon the surface of Mars in a ‘shirt sleeve’ environment without the encumbrance of a pressure suit or limitations or time and distance that the crew could be from a habitat. In fact, what prevents Mars rovers from covering more territory or drilling below the surface for samples isn’t the lack of human presence but limitations upon the amount of mass that can be delivered and the amount of energy available, and these challenges are greatly increased when having to support a human crew, which would still have to operate in bulky pressure suits (the atmosphere on Mars is about ~1% of atmospheric pressure on Earth, and is predominately CO[SUB]2[/SUB] so it could not support the use of any combustion-powered engines or equipment). The Spirit and Opportunity rovers relied on sunlight, and often had to go into a ‘hibernation’ mode during the weeks-long periodic dust storms, and the Mars Science Laboratory ‘Curiosity’ rover used a compact radioisotope thermoelectric generator (the MMRTG) which produced about 125 W of power. How enough power could be reliably generated to support even a small human crew is one of the many challenges of a long duration crewed mission, with the assumption being some as-yet-undesigned compact nuclear fission reactor. (The Game Changing Development program at NASA has been doing proof of concept work on a compact nuclear reactor for deep space and future Mars missions, e.g. the Kilopower project, but it is nowhere near a level to be licensed by the NRC or deployed for use on a crewed program within the next decade.) In fact, for the cost of a crewed mission we could pepper Mars from pole to pole with dozens or even hundreds of rovers more advanced than the MSL and capable of covering more ground than any crewed mission possibly could.
At this point, I think the chance of someone sending a crewed mission to Mars and returning them safely to Earth in the 2033 transit opportunity is remote, and I would really be surprised to see a mission by mid-century. Nor is it really sensible to make going to Mars–or any particular destination–the focus of the space program, which should really have a broader focus in space exploration and the development of space technologies in general. To that end, it would make far more sense to develop a communications, transportation, and resource utilization technologies and infrastructure that supports both exploration and commercial use of space. Once there is an infrastructure in space that does not rely upon shipping all resources and materials from Earth into orbit or using ground-based communication systems like the NASA Deep Space Network (which is obsolescent, costly to maintain, and nearly at capacity in just dealing with the current small number of deep space missions), going to Mars or beyond will be less a ‘Hail Mary’ type effort at enormous expense than a rational effort at exploration. The supposed glory and national pride of being first to plant a flag and leave footsteps is a notion that seems appealing in the minds of enthusiasts, but one of the most enduring lessons from the Apollo program should be that the problem with “destination-oriented” efforts is that the end (in the minds of the politicians) once you’ve gotten to the destination, which is why funding for Apollo was slashed even before Armstrong and Aldrin put their footprints on the Moon, and then cancelled outright as soon as public attention waned. It is better to pave the way to the future with a more enduring legacy of technology (which will largely be automated while we figure out how to mitigate the hazards of space physiology and how to extract resources for habitation in space beyond Earth orbit) that makes space more accessible even if it isn’t as sexy as the image of a heroic crew struggling every step of the way to survive at enormous cost.
Stranger
What technologies, systems and infrastructure do you think would be most useful for communications, transport and resource utilization?
I was going to point out the reasons that it won’t be feasible for decades yet, but . . .
what Stranger said.
Stranger = /thread
I think we’ll see an attempt at a symbolic mission (flyby or footsteps-and-flags) before 2040.
Previous thread on the subject from 2017, with poll.
Mary Roach’s book “Packing For Mars” convinced me that we will never have interstellar, or even interplanetary, space travel unless we can do something about the speed of light.
Probably a while since there really isn’t much to gain by going to mars other than bragging rights.
People follow their incentives. There are incentives tor reverse aging. There are incentives to build AI. The incentives to go to Mars aren’t really there.
Yeah it’ll advance space travel, possibly advance asteroid mining. But for the most part, I don’t know if ego alone is a big enough motivation for anyone to go to Mars.
So I’d guess 40+ years.
If we’re going to wager, we’d better make the terms clear:
*A human will land on Mars’ surface and return still alive to Earth in year YYYY.*I’ll book the over-under at YYYY=2075, 2-3 odds You Pick. (And China is more likely to succeed than U.S.A.)
Based on the expertise of knowledgeable people like Stranger, I think we are not sending a (successful*) manned mission to Mars in this century.
Personally I’d much rather see a permanent presence on the moon. If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere. And it’s a much closer platform to experiment on.
*I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk or someone like him manage to bolt together an ill-fated attempt.
I think we’ll see a manned return to the moon by 2030 and Mars by 2050, based on little more than wishful thinking.
Yes.
And because bragging rights would be seriously curtailed if the humans suffered harm, enthusiasm for a “boots on the ground” mission might have to wait until the probability of a truly safe mission looks high. Which will tend to postpone the date considerably.
Adding humans to an asteroid mining mission seems enormously counter-productive: dramatically higher costs and reduced payload return capacity.
If China seems determined then, rather than another space race, I think it makes a lot more sense to partner with them. In fact it should be an international effort including China, the USA, Russia, the ESA, Canada, Japan, India, and pretty much anyone who can and wants to be involved.
That’s if it’s done at all, and there have been some good reasons given not to do it, at least not anytime soon.
I will say that such efforts can cause engineering and medical advances to happen sooner than they otherwise would have (if they would have happened at all), but it’s difficult to calculate the value of that.
And there could be unpredictable social advances. Would we be as environmentally aware if not for the pictures of Earth from space? Who knows what changes could occur to our thinking from trying to survive on Mars?
We really need to send robots there first to create some sort of infrastructure for us to use when we get there.
Nothing worse than a 9 month trip, and you then have to pitch your own tent.
Adding humans to anything increases the costs dramatically. It will be a cost/benefit ratio to determine if having humans on hand is worth the cost of doing so. Once again, until there is substantial infrastructure in space, I would be on the not being worth it side. OTOH, asteroids do have the benefit of not having a big gravity well or atmosphere that you have to land in and then escape from. Return payload capacity, (especially if you are using any sort of in situ resources for fuel production), is the least of the concerns.
I can see a boots on the “ground” on an asteroid for bragging rights or national pride within the next couple decades, probably before we send people to Mars.
I have a feeling that the return to the moon thing will go into overdrive when the final moon-landing astronaut dies, and that #13 will be a woman.
Put me in the “more pessimistic” column (>30 years). I think the lack of public will to do so is a bigger factor than we want to admit.
I roll my eyes a bit every time a talking head explains that we HAVE to go to Mars so that we are guaranteed survival as a species (many thanks to the late Dr. Sagan). That’s all fine and dandy, but I think if you ask people whether they want us to spend trillions of dollars ensuring the survival of the species, most will ask, “But does that mean MY kids, or the Smiths who live down the street? If it’s my kids, sure. The Smiths? Never liked them that much.” Human beings really aren’t that geared towards saving a small, select group of faceless people with whom they have no attachment, especially if there’s absolutely no chance of reciprocity down the road. If the remaining 99.99% of the population is doomed, what’s the point? We’d rather have a last-day-on-earth tax rebate and spend it on hookers and blow. Apathy will delay the effort more than lack of technology.
I really can’t see it happening, unless there is some spectacular technological breakthrough. Stranger made a pretty good case. The problems of humans surviving in deep space seem insoluble.