I just watched a documentary last night called The Mars Underground. It was about the Mars Society and how it started, as well as Dr. Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct plan, how it started, and where it is now. The Mars Direct plan is a cheap plan to get humans to mars, within a decade of the programs start. It would only cost a total of 50-70 billion dollars over 10 years, well within NASA’s budget.
The Plan
The first mission, launched say in 2016, would be an unmanned Mars Assent Vehicle. It would be launched on the now planned Ares V rocket and launched to mars, and begin making its own propellant for the trip home, using only the chemicals in the mars atmosphere. That is the key. Make your own supplies, a “live off the land” approach. It’s called In-Situ Resource Utilization. Dr. Zubrin and his team have proven that it could be done on mars, and relatively cheap. The Reaction is as follows:
The Sabatier Reaction (CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O)
To produce the methane on Mars, as a propellant, Oxygen is liberated from the water by electrolysis, and the hydrogen is recycles back to the Sabatier Reaction. The usefulness of this reaction is that only the hydrogen (which is light) will need to be brought from earth.
The process would take about 10 months to complete, making up to about 112 tons of propellant (methane and oxygen).
This means that before the first people even leave earth, they will have a fully fueled Earth Return Vehicle on Mars waiting for them.
The second mission, launched say in 2018, would consist of 2 launches. The first launch would be an unmanned Mars Assent Vehicle. This would be identical to the first one launched, and sent to mars for the second manned mission after the first. This can be used as a backup for the first manned mission as well. The second launch would be the manned Habitat, launched with 4-6 people. They would land on Mars six to eight months later. The crew would then spend a year and a half (earth years) on the surface, waiting for earth and mars to line up again. They would then leave mars on the Mars Assent Vehicle, and make the return journey to earth. Before they even leave Mars, though, a second crewed Hab is sent to mars to continue exploration.
All of this can be done with existing technology, but NASA does not do it. We are going to spend well over 200 BILLION dollars on the return to the moon, and the Lunar Outpost, but we can’t spend 50-70 billion on a crewed Mars mission. Why?
NASA and politics, as well as people for the lunar outpost and other things will state a plethora of excuses. These “excuses” are much like the dragons on old maps.
What do you mean, “Dragons on old maps?”
In the early days before the exploration of the new world began, map makers would draw dragons of sorts in the large oceans that nobody has explored, showing fear that early sailors had of the unknown. Would the world just end? Would there be some monster that kills them all without warning? There were many fears.
This is similar to what we have today. One major dragon on the roadmap to mars is Radiation. Critics claim we don’t have sufficient knowledge of radiation to protect the crew to mars. This is nothing that we can’t deal with. You have a “storm shelter” of sorts in the center of the Hab that has the protections of radiation. Once you are on the surface of Mars, the radiation is something you don’t’ have to worry about. Radiation levels would be well within limits, in fact, your chances of getting cancer are increased by 1 percent. Your normal percentages of getting cancer are 20 percent, so you would now have a 21 percent chance of getting cancer. If you send a crew of all smokers (40 percent chance of getting cancer), and send them to Mars (no smoking allowed), then you are actually decreasing their risk of cancer.
Another Major dragon that you hear about is the Physiological Issues of 3 years alone with only 3 to 5 other people. Critics claim that people could go “crazy” on a long journey like that. Well, that claim is nonsense. Crews in the early years of sea exploration had to deal with a crew of 20 or so, on a small boat possibly with a mean captain, with horrible food, and no sign of land for months. They were truly all alone with no possible way of communicating with their loved ones for many months or years. The first mars crew would have all the comforts of home. TV (sent from earth), email, movies, good food, entertainment, and so on. Now, now it is true, that the crew would experience “rigors” not experienced by most civilians, but clearly survivable.
The biggest dragon that we are facing now is the belief that we need to go to the moon to learn how to work on mars. To test equipment, to learn about long duration stays on another world, etc. The fact is, these are the same scams that got us the space shuttle and the International Space Station, which have cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars. I’m not saying that these programs are pointless, but I am saying that these programs have delayed the true exploration of space that spurred so much technology that the Apollo program brought, as well as inspired the youth like nothing else has sense. The fact of the matter is, it’s easier, in terms of fuel, to get to Mars, than it is to get to the Moon.
The fact of the matter is, we can go to Mars, but there is too much politics in the way. It’s not only politics; it is NASA bureaucracy that is delaying this endeavor. There are too many “pet projects” in NASA that get in the way. If NASA wants to do something, NASA tries its best to incorporate everybody, so that everybody will continue getting funding for their projects. All of these things drive up costs, and complexity, and ultimately doom it to failure; can anybody say Space Exploration Initiative and the 90 day report? The first Bush Administration announced in 1989 that we were going to go back to the moon and go on to Mars. So, in response, NASA put together a group of people to figure out how we could do this. Well, their plan was to triple the size of the then planned ISS, add shipping hangars, send crews to the moon to build a base on the moon, learn to mine the moon, build ships there, launch the ships to lunar orbit, check them out, and send the mars crew to lunar orbit to take this giant ship (critics called battle star galactic) to mars orbit, land on mars, stay for a few days, and return home. A bold endeavor, at a cost, 450 BILLION dollars in 1990 dollars! This failed miserably in congress.
The simple matter is, we can go to Mars, in as little as 10 years, but we are wasting money on the moon. Mars has been pushed back from 1980, to 1999, to 2020, to now no later than 2030, but that will be future delayed at this rate. It kills me; 50-70 billion dollars over 10 years, 5-7 billion per year, and even less after the first mission, and we still are not going. We have the technology. What we have the will. What we do not have is the political backing.
If anybody is interested in the Mars Direct Plan, I suggest reading book called “The Case for Mars” by Robert Zubrin.
If you want to watch a trailer of The Mars Underground, you can watch it here.
