[Closed] Will we get man on Mars in our lifetime?

How old are you?

It's actually easier to get to Mars in some ways than it is to go to the moon - you can just use a parachute to slow your descent, so much less fuel is required.

Unless of course you want to come back.

No.

So getting there isn't the issue. It's carrying the fuel to get home that is. There's a few I'd like to nominate as captain of that ship then 😆

How old are you?

I'm guessing [i]very[/i] early forties?

I did like that film, but the phrase
“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this” made me cringe a bit.

5 Internet pounds to coyote 😉

I missed the end of the film as my plane was landing.
Assuming the rescue mission failed and everyone died.

Did Quaid start the reactor?

CAPTAIN SCARLET reached mars in the late 60,s but then he was indestrucable

I think so, aye, probly when i'm in my 60s though. I'm 38.

I was having a debate in a pub with some planetary science friends of mine (we share some geology modules) and the consensus was that yes, we will get to Mars within the not too dim, distance future, but the timescale depends on how committed the main players are.

What actually became the main focus of the conversation was the sex of the people who should go: The main assertion by the PS guys (and gal) was that they should all be women: This is because whatever psychological traits women have, they tend to be less domineering than men, and therefore more likely to work as a team. With men, you tend to get the person with the most dominant personality winning out, who may not always be the right person to be making decisions. On no account should it be a mixed sex group who goes.

I missed the end of the film as my plane was landing.
Assuming the rescue mission failed and everyone died.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but.....

The ship hit an iceberg. Sank. Terribly sad.

Yes, at the rate Space X is going and the driving force of Elon Musk.

I think I can confidently predict not in my lifetime. Which is a shame, I grew up through the race to the moon and it was a huge "thing". Even if it was filmed on a Hollywood set.

No. Its far too big a cost in energy to be possible unless some vastly improved way of storing energy is found. fusion power perhaps if it can be harnessed but with chemical fuels - not a chance. Its orders of magnitude more energy needed than the moon shots.

Even if it was filmed on a Hollywood set.

I assume you forgot the winky emoticon there?

Getting people to mars, well within our capability. Getting them back, not so much. That'd be a much bigger job.

Still need to ask the question, why. Much more orbiting and maybe lunar capability would arguably make more sense- get us out of the gravity well rather than trying to do everything from the bottom of a hole.

Getting people to mars, well within our capability. Getting them back, not so much. That'd be a much bigger job.

Still need to ask the question, why. Much more orbiting and maybe lunar capability would arguably make more sense- get us out of the gravity well rather than trying to do everything from the bottom of a hole.

I think most people agree it would be a one way trip, or at least a long-term stay.

Why? Exploration, technology development, eduation: No other reasons are required.

Why? Exploration, technology development, eduation: No other reasons are required.

[img] [/img]

tjagain - Member

No. Its far too big a cost in energy to be possible unless some vastly improved way of storing energy is found. fusion power perhaps if it can be harnessed but with chemical fuels - not a chance. Its orders of magnitude more energy needed than the moon shots.

Not necessarily the case.

You need to reach escape velocity, which is the same in both cases. For visiting the Moon, you need to haul a load of fuel to slow you down on your descent; going to Mars you just need a parachute.

But going to Mars takes longer, so you need more to keep your passengers alive. You need some shielding from all that hard radiation.

But while that adds up to more, it doesn't add up to orders of magnitude more.

And we can only do that on Mars? Near earth construction is always a stepping stone further on, in the forseeable future travel to Mars is always building stuff in order to throw it away. And there'd be no shortage of technological development and inspiration with close-to-home operations.

There's also a basic moral argument to be settled; what [i]right [/i]do we have to go to another planet when we're still making an absolute arse of this one. This isn't a resources thing, we could un* earth and go to mars. But we're not especially un*ing earth, right now. So what's the gameplan? Resources? Mining corporations in spaaaaaaace? Space travel is a first world job really and right now the first world is mostly about making sure everything is owned by as few people as possible, that's no attitude to take off your home planet. And do we go to Mars to explore it or to change it?

Still need to ask the question, why. Much more orbiting and maybe lunar capability would arguably make more sense- get us out of the gravity well rather than trying to do everything from the bottom of a hole.

Easy: in the future, Amazon, Disney, Apple and Google will need a new source of wealthy consumers to buy their products. They will fund putting people on Mars so that they can grow their share price.

OK maybe a bit hyperbolic but its not just a bit more. You need to lift a lot more into orbit and you need a much bigger more heavily fueled lander. Plus I would think more than a 3 man team plus all the supplies for a trip of months not days. Kilo of food per person per day minimum. thats several tonnes of food.

I then you get into the situation that parasitic weight on the earth launcher gets out of hand - ie the extra fuel to lift the extra weight means a stronger rocket that weighs more and you quickly reach the point of diminishing returns - so actually you will need multiple launches to get all the stuff you need into space. Then you need people in orbit to assemble it all even before you set off to mars

Then the issues with recycling air. Gonna take plants to make oxygen? Or split it out of water by electrolysis? People turn oxygen into water - got to get it back to O2 somehow. Plants - heavy hydroponics or electrolysis - lots of energy required and energy weighs a lot unless you use nukes wehich require heavy shielding

!ts certainly not just double or triple the energy of the moon shots- its many times as much

Its far beyond any realistic hope with current tech

Personally I think robotics is getting so good that there is little point anyway in sending people.

You need to lift a lot more into orbit

Reminds me of a once popular tag on this very forum!

#tjagaingoesintoorbit

😉

@ flashheart

I'm sorry, you're going to have to explain that one.

@ NW:

Whilst I completely agree we shouldn't be settling on other planets until we learn to look after our own, we aren't talking about settlement: We're talking about a field trip, to explore.

I'm sorry, you're going to have to explain that one.

Reed the wordz thut ewe tiped.

Eduation. 😀

Edukation my dear boy!

Ah! The irony. I blame the red wine (it is my birthday, after all). My fingers move faster than my brain at the best of times

😀

Happie burthdae.

Haha cheers [hic]

WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIMS HE SERVED 17 YEARS AT SECRET MARS MILITARY BASE

http://exopolitics.org/whistleblowers-claims-he-served-17-years-at-secret-mars-military-base/

Just getting to mars isn't the end point though, is it?

Developing the technologies that will enable us to get to Mars will bring far more gains than what we do on Mars.

It's a pretty inhospitalble place, despite what the Pop-sci brigade would have us believe, Bugger all atmosphere to use, for a start. Then there's radiation levels well beyond anything a human can tolerate long term, even in suits and shielded habitats you'll be carrying the dust in with you which you can't just wash off easily.

The best we could hope for is a manned mission that orbits and sends down lots of robots and drones that they control directly to do the interesting stuff more efficiently than the current ones. The time delay limits our interaction with the current explorers massively, though they have done amazing things up there.

The moon was only visited a handful of times as the cost of getting there didn't justify what we could find out about the place, sorry to burst the bubble, but scientifically speaking, it's just not that interesting.

seadog101 - Member

Developing the technologies that will enable us to get to Mars will bring far more gains than what we do on Mars.

Might as well just develop them then not go 😆

I'd be more worried about their chances of coming here first. I remember there old documentaries with Marvin the Martian, he seemed a pretty violent guy

How about an enormous space catapult, either in orbit, or on the moon (which with its low gravity might still work, and at least you could screw it down to something)

Mr Musk if you're listening, and haven't thought of that yet, I'd be happy to fly to California and show you a diagram / Lego prototype

seadog101 - Member
Just getting to mars isn't the end point though, is it?

Well I guess that's the question isn't it. Is it really viable to send people to live on mars for a year the very first time? tbh, first time, you'd think a few weeks would be the best bet. Gain the experience to plan for a 2nd/3rd journey.

Edit, though i guess first time will just be the journey there and back, mind you.

😆 @ princejohn

He definitely seemed to have anger issues. I didn't like the look of his friend, Gossamer, either. Competency was not his strong point, though.

Plans for two separate trips:NASA 2030, spaceX 2024.

As above. Space X is on track for the 2024 launch and a little after that it'll only cost you $0.5m to get a ticket.

[url= http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html ]http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html[/url]

Sell your London house. Go live on Mars.

I still don't understand why we haven't been back to the moon.

There's still an awful lot we don't know about space travel beyond low Earth orbit. There's evidence to suggest that cosmic radiation does serious damage to human heart valves. Astronauts in LEO have some degree of protection from radiation because they'll still be within the Earth's magnetic field, the Apollo missions were no more than a few days in duration, but missions to Mars may take months or even years to complete.

[url= http://observer.com/2016/07/space-radiation-devastated-the-lives-of-apollo-astronauts/ ]The Observer[/url]

If we do return to the moon, it has to be with a long term goal in mind. This could be to exploit mineral resources, or to collect Helium 3 deposits which could power Fusion reactors in the future, but this would require considerable upfront investment in infrastructure. We would need to construct habitats, tap sources of water, figure out how to shield astronauts from dangerous radiation. We've also got to figure out how to economically and reliably send and return human crews and cargo.

I still don't understand why we haven't been back to the moon.

They discovered that it wasnt made of cheese after all so lost interest. No commercial point if you can't mine the cheese and bring it back.

I still don't understand why we haven't been back to the moon.

Poor reviews on Trip Advisor, plus you can only get an 'Explorer' badge by reviewing new places.

thought this article about the Mars One project was a good read, especially about what it might actually be like to live there:

https://medium.com/matter/all-dressed-up-for-mars-and-nowhere-to-go-7e76df527ca0#.p6dnogktb

Hope not, huge waste of money and resources. Making solar power cheap and efficient enough to replace fossil fuels, improved power storage would bring huge benefits to mankind. Someone stepping on Mars? Not so much.

What about the Mars One mission that was planning on sending people and pods there to set up a colony? Has that all fallen apart recently?

[url= http://www.mars-one.com/ ]http://www.mars-one.com/[/url]

I estimate I've got about 25 years left of my lifetime, and I don't expect to see Humans on Mars within that timeline.

I then you get into the situation that parasitic weight on the earth launcher gets out of hand - ie the extra fuel to lift the extra weight means a stronger rocket that weighs more

Not really, cos it doesn't have to all go up in one go. We could build an orbital spaceport easily enough. The ship might have to go up in a few big pieces, but we can take fuel up in as many trips as it takes.

Then there's radiation levels well beyond anything a human can tolerate long term, even in suits and shielded habitats you'll be carrying the dust in with you which you can't just wash off easily.

The dust isn't radioactive though. The radiation comes from the sun.

Not sure. I think we could get to the point where we [i]could[/i] send someone, but I'm not sure whether we will. I'm not sure I see people getting sent off to die on Mars even though I think there would be no shortage of people willing to go, and a return trip is probably stretching it a bit.
But I think ultimately it will come down to whether somebody decides it's worth the money and has the resources or (if it's a government) the political will and clout to make it happen. Unless some game-changing technology comes along in the near future I reckon that's the real obstacle, not the tech.
I'm 45 BTW.

Surprised no-one has mentioned Zubrin yet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin

I suppose the answer is: yes, we could do it, it wouldn't be that dear in relative terms, but I don't think we want to do it somehow.

If we do it, it will be the likes of Musk who'll pay for it.

They discovered that it wasnt made of cheese after all so lost interest. No commercial point if you can't mine the cheese and bring it back.

That was actually a US TV commercial, I saw it on holiday once. Something like,

"We used to think the moon was made of cheese.
Then we went there and found it was made of rock.
We haven't been back since.
...
The National Cheese Marketing Board." (or some such)

[quote="Northwind"]Might as well just develop them then not go 😆 Except all those little developments that got us to the moon (and flight, and the motorcar, and the internal combustion engine, and the steam engine) were made up of lots of solutions to lots of little problems that stopped the BIG problem being solved.

Think it was one of the US tech companies found that by setting one big (huge.....massive) task they got a lot more done than by setting 20 or 30 smaller tasks.

And sometimes you don't even know what the little solutions are until you've broken down the big problem.........

They discovered that it wasnt made of cheese after all so lost interest. No commercial point if you can't mine the cheese and bring it back.

I understood it was something to do with problems negotiating trade agreements with The Clangers.

Mars One mission though........? Anyone......?

Just to correct the assumption that you can "just use a parachute".

You can use one but not on its own, the atmosphere is just not thick enough.

Which is why probes have used various combinations of heat shields, parachutes, rockets, inflatable bouncy balls etc. etc.

See [url= http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=10776 ]7 minutes of terror[/url] for the curiosity probe, and then imagine a vehicle with 10 or 20 (?) times the mass and with people on board.

Mars One mission though........? Anyone......?

the article I posted above was substantially about that.

the general tone of it was that they're not much better than shysters and subsequent revelations (ie losing the tv deals they had set up) means they basically don't have any cash

So, here are the facts as we understand them: Mars One has almost no money. Mars One has no contracts with private aerospace suppliers who are building technology for future deep-space missions. Mars One has no TV production partner. Mars One has no publicly known investment partnerships with major brands. Mars One has no plans for a training facility where its candidates would prepare themselves. Mars One’s candidates have been vetted by a single person, in a 10-minute Skype interview.

https://medium.com/matter/mars-one-insider-quits-dangerously-flawed-project-2dfef95217d3#.xupank2mf

I think it's a bit like climbing up Ben Nevis in crappy weather. It is doable with a bit of effort but when you get there, there is just a bleak rocky landscape and nothing else to do other than return back home.

And we can only do that on Mars? Near earth construction is always a stepping stone further on, in the forseeable future travel to Mars is always building stuff in order to throw it away. And there'd be no shortage of technological development and inspiration with close-to-home operations.

There's also a basic moral argument to be settled; what right do we have to go to another planet when we're still making an absolute arse of this one. This isn't a resources thing, we could un* earth and go to mars. But we're not especially un*ing earth, right now. So what's the gameplan? Resources? Mining corporations in spaaaaaaace? Space travel is a first world job really and right now the first world is mostly about making sure everything is owned by as few people as possible, that's no attitude to take off your home planet. And do we go to Mars to explore it or to change it?

India has a bigger space programme than the UK; are they a first world country, or third?
I honestly can't remember.
And what moral argument are you thinking of? It's not like there are lots of innocent little green people we can corrupt with our first-world ways, or a fragile environment with lots of startlingly rare plants and animals we can destroy, eh?
Mars, at least from orbit, is quite staggeringly beautiful, but that's likely a macro-scale thing, the patterns of dunes caused by the thin atmosphere and winds are unlike anything on Earth, but at a surface level, the photographs sent back so far show Mars to be a very barren place, and there's little or no chance to terraform it, realistically, because Mars lacks a molten core and mass to hold a thicker atmosphere, so any long-term habitation is almost certainly going to be in domes.
Although, with the lower gravity, domes could be constructed from light composites and be much, much bigger, so it's not impossible.
We may not get there in my lifetime, I'm 62, but when you consider that there were people who lived to see man go from basically a horse-and-cart society to a lunar landing, then it's not unlikely, if the will is there.
Going back a bit to the comment about technological development, a project like a Mars mission would be just the thing to get tech development going in new areas, the miniaturisation of electronics was driven by the need to save weight in space, along with communication gear, assembling a large craft in orbit, like has been done with the ISS, is perfectly feasible now, with the likes of Musk's re-usable lifters, and fuel doesn't have to be an issue if you're building outside the gravity well, solar sails are a valid form of propulsion for long term missions, once the initial burn has moved the vehicle out of earth orbit, and there a new developments in ion-rockets, which give slow but steady acceleration with low fuel needs; they're already in use on some satellites, IIRC.
Yeah, ion thrusters were developed in the 1960's!
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html

ion-drives?

pfft, it's all about microwave resonance these days...

Anyway, to answer the question: i'm 38 and my answer is 'No' - i don't see any public support for the £500billion it'll cost.

edit: maybe China...

thecaptain - Member
Hope not, huge waste of money and resources.

Not really, we're going to have to learn to live on an uninhabitable planet and ultimately, terra-form it, at some time in the future anyhow, might as-well get an early start on that kinda learning.

I hear you say... why not just go to the moon? Well looking further down the line, we're going to have to level( 😆 edit leave) the solar system in a billion or so years, so really need to get this long distance travel patter down too, mars is a decent start there.

tis all about perspective! 😆

ahwiles - Member
i don't see any public support for the £500billion it'll cost.

Hmm, hundredish quid a head over the next 20 years?

i'm in! 😆

7 minutes of terror

Sounds like the aftermath of my first date with a girl from Hetton-le-Hole after she invited me in for coffee.

I'd walk to Mars before i'd consider a second.

CountZero - Member

India has a bigger space programme than the UK; are they a first world country, or third?

Space travel, I said.

ahwiles - Member

Anyway, to answer the question: i'm 38 and my answer is 'No' - i don't see any public support for the £500billion it'll cost.

Which is why, thankfully, these things are being done by private enterprise now, rather than governments.

Musk will get there. Just look at what he's done in the last ten years, the next will be very surprising.

that Exopolitics.org website is hilarious

like some really bad 1950s sci fi novel

Musk will get there. Just look at what he's done in the last ten years

Create a niche gadget car that goes fast? And..?

We already have the tech to get a lot of mass and people to Mars and back, it's just VERY dirty. It's called an Orion, and if we had a need to get there fast that's what we'd have to use.

The current Simpsons episode on Sky 1 is a kind of take the piss on the whole Mars One thing!

😀

Season 27 Ep 16

tjagain - Member
...Plus I would think more than a 3 man team plus all the supplies for a trip of months not days. Kilo of food per person per day minimum. thats several tonnes of food...

Couldn't they just eat Mars bars?

Snicker... 🙂