If Mars One makes you skeptical, you might be dead inside—like me

[struggle4progress]

Op-ed: Do we scoff at dreamers because we lack imagination, or are they actually crazy?
by Lee Hutchinson - May 8 2013, 1:30pm EDT

... The running budget of Project Apollo from 1960 to 1969 was $16,130,420,000 ... Mars One's estimate of a $6 billion price tag seems ludicrously low in light of what other government-funded space agencies across the world have spent to accomplish far smaller goals ... Altogether, Mars One's $6 billion will need to cover multiple Falcon Heavy launches, multiple Dragon vehicles, and at least one Mars Transit vehicle to ferry the crew from Earth to Mars (which, at least so far, sounds like it will have to be designed from scratch). Also, Mars One will need to design and manufacture environmental suits (nothing in any existing space agency's inventory will work for them, as every "production" spacesuit in the world is currently geared for short-term microgravity extravehicular activity, not long-term planetary exploration), rovers, and all the other things listed on the its site ...

... with one exception, every human being who has walked on another world has been an extremely skilled test pilot or naval aviator ... This kind of background made the astronauts not just adept at flying planes and lunar landers, but also powerfully sharp observers and communicators, able to process lots and lots of inputs simultaneously and make extremely quick and informed decisions in response to rapidly changing situations. Beyond being incredible pilots, most were also brilliant ... In contrast, Mars One is holding a popularity contest for random Internet applicants ...

Maybe I'm having such a hard time with it because it seems fantastic and silly, and in real life, fantastic and silly plans usually meet with harsh and unfunny ends; maybe the mention of "reality TV" automatically poisons my entire picture of the project ... I do know that .. the US spent more than $100 billion in adjusted 2010-era dollars to send the very best people it could find to the moon ... and now we're going to canvas the Internet for folks who want to go die on Mars and make a TV show out of it ...

http://arstechnica.com/staff/2013/05/if-mars-one-makes-you-skeptical-you-might-be-dead-insidelike-me/

[Warren DeMontague]

1. I give "Mars One" very slim odds of actually happening as they are talking about it.

OTOH, humans will visit Mars, and eventually live there. I give that proposition very good odds.

[MADem]

2. Live...like...the suburbs? Isn't the atmosphere a bit thin?

I can see visiting and working for a bit, but the joint can't really support life forever and a day.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. I'm talking eventually.

In terms of practical places off-Earth for humans to live, Mars has a lot going for it. Nearly 24 hour day, for one..

Long term... VERY long term, I suspect people may get serious about terraforming it. We've already demonstrated that we know how to warm up planets.

[struggle4progress]

4. No magnetic field, so background radiation from space is much higher than on earth.

Low gravity, so atmospheric gases like oxygen and water vapor escape the planet much more readily than on earth: you want to breathe there, you either wear a suit or you build a pressurized living space

Farther from the sun, so there's less solar energy than one earth; little atmosphere, so there's no real greenhouse effect; little water, so temperatures are unbuffered and swing quickly between highs and lows -- a warm day on Mars will get up to 70F, but a cold night goes down to -200F, and the average temperature is around -80F, so it makes Antarctica look like a warm sunny vacation spot; keeping the living space suitably warm will require significant energy expenditure

No real atmosphere, so there are no thunderstorms fixing nitrogen, but that's a vital nutrient for plants you want to use for "terraforming," and they need carbon dioxide too -- so plants have be be grown indoors, with fertilizer brought from (say) Earth: they need sunlight, so you need a transparent roof that lets sunlight in without leaking heat, and you have to keep that farm-space well-insulated and heated, cuz it's usually frickin cold outside

Little water also means typical weather is a dust storm that further limits solar intensity at the surface

That's probably just the beginning of the issues

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Tons of issues; no doubt.

Terraforming- if it were done, if it were possible, (BIG ifs) would probably be a project on a Millennia-timescale; and yes, I'm aware that that is longer than your normal human plan to do something.

It is worth noting, though, that far brighter folks than me have looked at this idea, and not dismissed it out of hand. Warming the atmosphere with CFCs, which can function as super-greenhouse gases, would free up the CO2 in the polar caps; there's a quick and easy way to increase the atmosphere and then the temperature further.

[Sirveri]

9. terraforming mars isn't really feasible IMO.

The big problem there is that mars has a dead core. Without a magnetic dynamo and field the current field is piecemeal and consists of a variety of pockets, any atmosphere you create would get trapped in these pockets and then blown off by the solar wind. Another issue is the orbit of phobos, which might decide it feels like crashing into Mars in about 50,000 years.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. Feasible next week? No, absolutely not.

Feasible over the course of the next 1000 years? Who knows.

Neither of us is going to live long enough to get a definitive answer. However, I'm pretty wary of "can't be done".

[Sirveri]

11. Restarting the dead core of a planet? Sure, it's "possible".

If we add enough mass to Mars quickly enough it could theoretically restart the core. Will we desire to do that or reach that point in time... ehhh...

This assumes we successfully navigate the upcoming ecological problems, energy resource depletion issues, economic disparity, all without destroying ourselves. The way things have been going my view of our navigation of those issues is quite dim.

[jeff47]

13. You don't have to restart the core

Yes, a magnetic field generated by a spinning nickel-iron core provides some features. But it's not the only way to provide those features. It's the only practical global system we know of right now.

But we're talking 1000 years in the future here. It's extremely likely that things which are impossible to do today become practical in that timeframe. For all we know, 800 years from now covering the entire planet in a transparent sphere becomes easy.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I also think your assumptions about exactly how essential the magnetic field is to retaining an

atmosphere, may not be correct.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/env99/env99340.htm

Long-term, there may be some effect, and certainly there are radiation issues related to not having an atmosphere, however it is fallacious to imagine that the lack of a strong magnetic field is going to somehow cause any Martian atmosphere to 'blow away'. (Mars does have an atmosphere, as it is, just a thin one)

[Sirveri]

19. It's about trapping water vapor.

Venus doesn't have a magnetosphere either, however it also doesn't really have any moisture in the atmosphere from the limited probings we've done. Without the ability to establish a water cycle, which requires atmospheric water vapor and hydrogen and oxygen, we can't really call it terraformed.

The issue with Mars is that it does have a magnetosphere, it's simply fragmented, this creates pockets of gasses that are then blown away into deep space.

But hey, move all of the asteroid belt along with both martian moons to mars, and it might gain enough mass to restart the core...

[Warren DeMontague]

20. Do have links on this, re: the magnetosphere being critical to water vapor?

Venus has a bunch of things which conceivably could have contributed to it going horribly wrong AFAIC- episodic planet-wide volcanic resurfacing, for one (as opposed to the gradual release of that energy through plate tectonics)

I'm not being snarky, I'd just be interested in reading where you're getting this. I looked a bit, Wikipedia has some stuff on what you're talking about;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus

However, I'd imagine it's also worth noting that any solar effects on the atmosphere of Venus are going to be far more pronounced than they would be on Mars, due to the distance.

[Sirveri]

21. Most of the wiki stuff and other stuff I've seen over the years.

Sun is a point source so intensity is reduced by a square exponential proportional to distance, that's from my Navy Nuke days. But really it just doesn't make sense, build it underground, it's cheaper and we can do it right now. Want to expand, dig. Only reason we build on the surface now is because it's cheaper, on Mars it would be cheaper to just build underground. Cheaper meaning, easier and less energy intensive.

[MADem]

5. Will they do the dome thing, ya think? nt

[Warren DeMontague]

6. I don't know. I expect I'll see people visit in my lifetime, but any real settling down

will probably have to wait for my grandkids' grandkids. There will probably be Antarctic style research stations long before that, though.

Predictions are tough but I do think there is a drive in humans, or some humans, to go. We can debate the merits or morality, wisdom or folly of it, but I think it will happen sooner or later no matter what anyone does, at least if there are still people.

[MADem]

7. I agree with you about the drive to explore. More power to 'em.

Hey, no guts, no glory....I just hope they try to plan for as many contingencies as they can think of.

[DetlefK]

12. No, they don't have to design an interplanetary spaceship from scratch.

There are dozens of think-tanks, science-enthusiasts, companies and organizations out there, just waiting to see their blueprints come true.

About a year ago I told a speaker from the European Space Agency my idea to improve the life-support-system of an interplanetary spaceship. He answered, that he had already seen this idea incorporated into several designs.

[wet.hen88]

17. yes

You're right, I see this in my science forum. Different science and tech guys popping in there all the time to bitch about the waste of money on the drawing boards.

[greiner3]

14. My heart soars;

When I think of human's soon to be guarantee of continuation in the face of probable extinction.

WITHOUT our colonization of the Solar System, we may be one more extinct species caused by our species.

Wouldn't that give rise to so much amusement to eventual landings of alien spacecraft.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. A colony on Mars is hardly a "guarantee of continuation"

Maintaining life on Mars, or anywhere else outside Earth, needs a level of technology far above maintaining it on Earth. It would be far more fragile.

[struggle4progress]

23. Thank you

I don't know what perpetuates this all-too-widespread fantasy that we'll save life on earth by transporting it to ecosystems we'll engineer on Mars

[wet.hen88]

18. me too

I have a hard time believing in any tech plan they come up with if there going to staff it with just anybody. Its like they're tring to turn it into "Lost" on Mars. I'm too old?? to go now but, even if I weren't, I would be dubious, heck, aghast, of the success. Instead of working on plans for defense AI's, why didn't they work on this?

[Jim__]

22. Reports from "Humans 2 Mars Summit" suggest dust may prevent human settlement of Mars

From phys.org:

(Phys.org) —Reports given by experts in the space-health field suggest it might take longer for humans to build a colony on Mars than has been expected. Such experts speaking to attendees at the recent "Humans 2 Mars Summit" in Washington D.C. expressed concern about the dangers of Martian dust. They believe the health hazards posed by the Martian regolith could prevent humans from colonizing the planet anytime soon.

The announcement comes on the heels of news from Mars One—the Netherlands based group selling tickets for a one way trip to the red planet—announcing that over 78,000 people have signed up so far. Some of those people might change their mind however when they learn of recent discoveries about the content of Martian dust.

NASA's chief health and medical officer, Richard Williams, told those at the summit that perchlorates appear to be widespread on the planet's surface. The fine dust material produced by perchloric acid has been known to cause thyroid problems in people here on Earth.

Just as problematic, Grant Anderson (co-founder of Paragon Space Development) told the audience, is gypsum. The Curiosity rover has found veins of it near the planet's surface. Though it's not toxic, it has been known to cause a condition similar to black lung in coal miners in people exposed to it for long periods of time.

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