Mars?

Great Debates
1

Seems like most of the Great Debates questions are political. I’m tired of politics myself. Maybe this isn’t the right forum for this question, but I’d like peoples opinions on whether we, as a species, should go to Mars. Is it something we should do? Is it something we CAN do? Would it be better to just continue to send robots, or actually fund a human exploration? If we do a human exploration, what should the length be? Should we colonize Mars eventually? Should we (CAN we) teraform Mars? If we CAN, should we if there is life on Mars?

Hopefully this will be an interesting debate. To me, it beats wrangling over and over again about Bush and Iraq ad nasium…

-XT

2

Well, that’s somewhat of a personal question, but I’m looking forward to sharing with all of you!

:confused: What - this thread isn’t about me?? :confused:

3

lol, poor choice of wording there what? :slight_smile: How about, what length of time should the humans stay on Mars be? 2 months? A year? Several?

4

I think mankind can do anything, if it really wants to. A mission to mars isn’t impossible in my opinion and terraforming is definitely something we as a species should try.
I’d even volunteer for a mars mission and / or colonization, but I doubt I am eligible.

5

I think manned space flight is kind of dead right now. It’s going to take a leapfrog in launch technology to be able to establish a human presence on the moon, never mind Mars, and never mind an actual maintained presence instead of a photo-op and some low-g golf practice.

We need a space elevator. That should be our next big investment in space programs. Screw Mars (much as I dream of someday checking out the view from the top of Olympus Mons and looking down at a thriving populace. At night.). Screw any kind of daring, terribly expensive, low-return, plans. Work on launch tech. Launch, launch, launch. Once we’ve made it cheaper to get into orbit by a factor of 1000, then we should start to talk about real offworld colonies.

In the meantime, we should take advance of the incredible leaps and bounds in the fields of robotics and telepresence. We need to have assembly line, lightweight, & cheap swarms of resiliant robots all over the solar system. Instead of one big probe, we shoud send one big cannister with a hundred little probes. Networks, electronics, computational power, & communications all have gotten cheaper and smaller very quickly. Take advantage while we build the elevator/super shuttle. Really learn about our Solar System without the tragic loss of human life. For now anyway.

Long term? Spread intelligence to every corner of the universe. Build civilizations and make beatiful art. Cities on every rock, planet, and moon that we can get to. Just not now.

DaLovin’ Dj

6

First off I’ll recommend Robert Zubrin’s “The Case for Mars” http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684835509/qid=1051562373/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-0568266-8170542?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 which answers most of your questions.

We can go to Mars. The technology to get there was built back in the late 60s. It would require a new heavy launch vehicle or adaptation of the shuttle (Shuttle C). But that’s an implementation issue.

We can survive in space for period up to a year. We do not empirically know that we can survive that long outside of earth’s magnetic field. OF course we’ll never know until we go.

We can manufacture methane for propellant, oxygen for an atmosphere and water for living from an initial seed stock of hydrogen and the Martian atmosphere.

While robots are ideal scouts they are neither intelligent enough nor adaptable enough to truly explore a planet. I’d like to see the latest and greatest probe look for fossils in the Bad Lands compared to a human. To do real on site exploration takes people.

If we do go the effort to get through demands we stay for more than flags and footprint photos. We should stay for a year at least. Perhaps more importantly we should stay permanently, building from the initial mission into a planet wide movement that scout out viable village cites (local water/ground heat sources) where we will concentrate our exploration.

As for the microbes we’ll meet, I’m sure they’ll survive our colonization.

7

This article sums up what would have to happen with any Mars mission fairly well:

This quote does not mention the fact that all this will be really risky and expensive. Bush wants a man on Mars in 2020. That’s only ten missions from now, and the JPL, for example, freezes the technology for a mission in place two years in advance of launch.
There’s a mission on its way now, the next in 2005 is already set in stone, and it takes some time to analyze results fully, so the results of the 2003 mission won’t be felt until probably the 2009/10 mission. Even the most optimistic dreamers don’t expect humans living on Mars until 2030.

As to the rest of the OP, if there is life on Mars, we will have to make some very careful decisions in what we do there. If there is no life there, then by all means we should colonize it, to give the human race more than one basket to put all our eggs into.

Also, water on Mars without life in it means rocket fuel for easier exploration of the rest of the solar system.

As to whether we CAN terraform Mars, there are a lot of tricky issues there. Martian gravity is never going to hold more atmosphere than it does now, so we’re talking those domed cities of which we’ve heard tell for so many years.

Also, Mars only gets 1/4th the sunlight Earth does, so can we grow crops? How do we stay warm? If there are no fossil fuels or running water on Mars, how do we keep the lights and heat on? Hydrogen fuel cells run by the water on the planet, maybe, but we need to develop and test these technologies in situ first.

8

I’ve actually read several of Zubrin’s, including his Mars mission plan. Supposedly it would only cost 20-30 Billion…maybe Bill Gates could fund it. :slight_smile:

I wanted to get opinions on whether people felt we SHOULD go more than anything. I agree we should work on launch technology, and a space elevator might actually be technically within our grasp within a generation, theoretically. I think a base on the moon would be a big help also, especially if there is water at the poles.

I guess my feeling is, if we don’t go soon, maybe we won’t go at all. There will always be more and more problems ‘at home’ demanding our resources. I think things like new launch technology and space elevators will be pushed by our pushing the envelope to explore space, not the other way around. Its easier to cut the budget of the space program, especially for the R and D stuff. We haven’t really significantly changed our launch technology, or serious explored a space elevator (or even been back to the moon to verify the existance of water and feasibility of the creation of a base there) in decades. Its always, we’ll do that later, when the technology matures. But WILL the technology mature if we don’t push it?

9

20-30 billion is chumpo change. The US annual budget for this year is 2.5 TRILLION, so the entire amount would only be what NASA gets in a year anyway

10

20-30 billion is chump change. The US annual budget for this year is 2.5 TRILLION, so the entire amount would only be what NASA gets in a year anyway

11

Why would it have to be all the US? Is it the US itself that would make it so? COULD we work with other space agencies and other government and actually have an internation space program? Or at least an internation space mission(s) to Mars? After all, its important research, and important to mankind as a whole…not just to Americans. Or is it? IS it important to the world? Do any other countries even care about it at all?

12

The Russians have sent twice as many robot missions to Mars as we have. Unfortunately, all of them were failures, though not all were UNQUALIFIED failures. I believe the Euorpeans and the Chinese have plans to send robots there in the next several years as well.

Remember: just because we won the space race doesn’t mean everyone else stopped running.

13

Did we win? Why does it/did it have to be a race? Is it over? I certainly hope that its not just an American dream to go to Mars. I think that THIS mission, if it happens, SHOULD be a world mission, not a national mission. Is it the US that prevents this? Will NASA not work with other countries/space agencies? Or will they not work with US/NASA?

I had always heard that it was possible to have a thicker atmosphere on Mars than is currently there. I remember a professor of aeronautics (not an authority on teriforming) saying that what we need to do is put our greenhouse emmitting factories and industries on Mars, where they would do good. I thought that the present theory on the thin atmosphere was due to a massive meteor strike which ripped away a large portion of the atmosphere. Does anyone have a cite saying that its impossible for Mars to carry a heavier atmosphere?

14

Mars?

  • yes.*

Venus? :cool:

15

It’s also worse than going to the moon in one other important regard, not mentioned above:

The moon’s mass is 1.2% the mass of the Earth. Mars’s mass is 10.7% the mass of the Earth. This makes Mars a much steeper gravity well. Slowing to orbital speed and landing on the Martian surface will be easier than doing the same on the moon, thanks to the Martian atmosphere (you can aerobrake from interplanetary speed to low-Mars-orbit speed, and use atmospheric drag to slow your descent to the surface with heat shields and parachutes). But when it comes time to take back off from the surface, and to bost yourself away from the Red Planet with enough energy to get back to the Earth, that gravity well is going to be a killer obstacle.

If the astronauts have to take enough fuel with them to lauch off of the Martian surface and achieve Martian escape velocity, their Martian launch vehicle alone would weigh more than an Atlas booster rocket! This makes it absolutely imperative that a Mars-landing mission use material found on Mars itself to make the rocket fuel it needs to take back off again. (Perhaps a robotic rocket fuel factory can be sent there a few years ahead of the astronauts, and after we’ve verified that it’s done its job we can send the astronauts to Mars.)

16

“If we CAN, should we if there is life on Mars?”

Are you arguing that perhaps we shouldn’t despoil the Martian environment? Any life on Mars must be “primitive” indeed if we haven’t detected it by now. If we did discover some sort of “primitive” life on Mars, we wouldn’t need the EPA to step in and save it-- Scientist would be tripping over themselves to preserve it. I’d be all for making sure we didn’t wipe it out, but wouldn’t be too conserned about keeping Mars pristine.

I don’t know much about Terraforming. Sounds expensive. If we go there, let’s do it in a way that is self supporting economically. I got enough problems paying for welfare here on earth…

17

It’ll probably be Burt Rutan doing it.

Actually, no one doubts that Mars would be a fine destination. At least for short-term study. Whether a colony should be built there right now is another question. We might be able to put some kind of McMurdo-type installation there at great expense, but is that the smart thing to do?

I’m thinking about this as a space enthusiast weaned on Heinlein and dreaming of being able to live in a world where we have humans on other planets. The question is, what’s the best way to go about it? What gets us the most bang for the buck in terms of scientific knowledge?

For me, scientifically speaking I think more resources should be spent on robotic probes to the Jovian and Saturnian moons - there are lots of interesting things to learn there. And, we should get to work building some BIG telescopes. Giant interferometry scope arrays so vast that we can image geographic features and maybe even artificial structures on planets orbiting other stars. NASA has this goal as well, and has a series of telescopes planned for flight, culminating in the terrestrial planetfinder which will be able to find earth-like planets around other stars and even analyze their atmospheres. After that, they agree in the concept of large optical arrays, but have no specific plans. They need to be developed.

So, I say we turn NASA back into scientific exploration agency, tasked with robotic exploration and research into new spacecraft technologies, and turn the actual flying of people into space over to private industry? The government could fund prizes, give tax breaks, and contract goals out to private industry and let them bid on it outside of NASA.

Where’s the first place people should go? I guess Mars is the natural, although the Moon is a lot closer, and more likely to be exploitable in a financial way. Because that’s the other side of the coin - if you want to see space technology develop really quickly, give people a good solid financial reason for doing it. If lunar mining or a giant contract to NASA to manufacture hydrogen fuel on the moon looks to be profitable, suddenly there won’t be just a puny 20 billion going into a program, but hundreds of billions. Trillions, maybe. THEN you’ll see the kind of rapid technological development we dreamed about as kids happen.

And once we get to that point, travel to Mars will be a hell of a lot cheaper. We’ll go by beanstalk from the Earth to GEO, take a transfer shuttle out to the giant inertia pinwheel, hook ourselves up, and fling ourselves to Mars.

18

BTW, think of what those giant interferometry arrays could do for space funding. Can you imagine if we spot an earth-like planet 11 light years away, and we can image it well enough to see bands of vegetation and large oceans? The atmosphere looks to be oxygen and nitrogen. Average temperature 15C.

I think we might get funding for some damned high speed rockets then. Fast enough that the younger here of us might actually live to see a signal come back from a probe headed for Tau Ceti.

19

cough choke artificial structures?!

Ye gods, man, do you have any idea of the resolution required for such a feat? We don’t even have telescopes capable of resolving any would-be artificial structures on the moon, let alone on planets several light-years away.

One step at a time, when it comes to giant interferometry telescopes. Just getting one big enough that it could pick up the existence of an Earth-sized planet around another star is going to be a technological hurdle in and of itself.

20

Yep, I am. How about an effective aperture the size of the Earth’s orbit? Whaddya think you could resolve with that?