The libration points–particularly the L4 and L5 points–are good places for low energy transfers from and into the Earth’s sphere of influence. Their relative stability also makes them a good place for emplacing a solar power satellite, which will remain in a fixed position relative to the Moon. The original justification for Gerard O’Neill’s L4 and L5 colony proposals was to build solar power satellites using material mined from the Moon’s surface and beamed to fixed microwave antenna on Earth’s surface as it rotated through its day. That solar power satellites for terrestrial power don’t really make much sense was not fully apparent then, but really, it was just a rationale to justify habitation in space anyway.
Remember the timelines we’re talking here: ever. Let’s suppose you’re correct. So we study them, then go on the planet. Or figure out how not to contaminate Martian life in the meantime.
It is essentially impossible to send astronauts to the surface of Mars (or another body) without a virtual guarantee of contamination. Humans are covered and infested with microbal life, and preventing that from getting onto a pressure suit or out of an airlock is really not feasible without extreme measures, e.g. sterilizing radiation that would harm the explorers. Even the rovers that were sent to Mars are baked and exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation in the effort to sterilize them, and they still have trace amounts of robust bacteria that survive in crevices or from post-sterialization exposre despite being maintained in 10k or better cleanroom conditions, because they still have to be handled and encapsulated by people.
Note that this isn’t really much of a concern that Earth bacteria will overwhelm any indigenous biome; no body in the solar system has anything like even the most extreme Earth conditions; Io is actually probably closest compared to hydrothermal vents although as far as we can tell it has no liquid water, and water moons like Enceledus and Europa are next to arctic conditions but lack sunlight or any other chemosynthetic energy source that we are currently aware of. Any indigenous life will likely outcompete if not destory Earth bacteria. But any biological material (organisms or waste) may be confused for signs of indigenous life. The best bet to get clean signs of hypothetical Martian life is by using remotely operated/autonomous probes and rovers which can be sterilized to the maximum possible extent, and particularly larger and more powerful ones with the means to extract core samples going down to at least 2 or 3 meters below the regolith surface.
That’s all well and good but, like I said, look at the timelines here. We’re either going to figure it out, or just not give a shit, human ambition/hubris being what it is.
For people saying we won’t overcome the technological hurdles, I’m pretty sure we have the technology right now to do it. It’s just that it would cost a huge amount of money and there isn’t the political will to spend it.
Actually we don’t. The entry, descent, and landing problem for a large enough craft to support crewed missions is the most obvious technology gap, but our experience and capability in various issues, from long duration spaceflight outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere, extended duration zero gravity exposure followed by unaided functioning in a fractional gravity field for extended duration, mass propellant transfer in orbit, propulsion sufficient for a crewed Mars vehicle of >100 T with thermal protection and radiation systems sufficient to protect the vehicle and crew with margin, issues with operations on the Mars surface (known problems with abrasive regolith and unknowns about health and safety concerns with perchlorate salts and other potential toxins), crew health (physical and mental) and safety for such a long duration mission beyond the ability to abort or provide material support, not to mention the capablility gaps in high bandwidth interplanetary communication and power on the surface to support a stay of over a year.
I’ve worked on adjunct studies for the NASA Mars Design Reference Mission (DRM) 3.0 and 4.0, and have looked through DRM 5.0, and it is my opinion that there are some major gaps in capability that are not solved by simple maturity of existing technology. We could potentially deliver a small team of astronauts to Mars using conventional chemical rocket propulsion and hope-and-prayer landing using the most heavy configuration of purely propulsive landing resulting in a minimal payload, but I would not give good odds on even getting astronauts safely to the surface and even less in returning them to Earth.
Many people have the idea that a crewed Mars mission is like a longer Apollo mission with maybe twice or three times the complexity, but this is actually orders of magnitude beyond what the Apollo program attempted. And the Apollo program cost in excess of US$110B in current dollars for less than 200 person-hours of EVA surface time. Even a pretty lean Mars crewed mission is going to run a minimum of about US$500B even assuming nonproblematic development of technologies, and likely running up to US$1T or more by the time you can actually put boots on the ground. For those costs, you could pepper Mars from pole to equator to pole with a few hundred increasingly capable rovers and probes that can cover more ground than any single crewed mission even if we assume that astronauts can do things that rovers cannot. And the reason rovers have moved so slowly and have not been able to dig below the Martian regolith surface has to do with mass and power limitations, which would apply to a crewed mission in even greater magnitude with most of the energy and effort dedicated to just keeping a crew alive and returning them at end of mission, something that we don’t have to worry over with probes and rovers.
Interesting. I figured issues with ship size and supplies could be solved by launching them separately (expensive but still doable) but I guess there is more to it. That document is an interesting read.
That’s a common assumption, and a lot of enthusiast proposals are predicated on just being able to throw more mass (propellant, shielding, consumables) at the problem along with the assumption that someone is going cause space launch costs into the $100/kg range, but even if shipping stuff to orbit were completely free there are still some fundamental technologies that need to be developed, notwithstanding uncertainties about human physiology in a long term interplaneary space environment.