Astronomy Mission to Mars

Will we see a manned Mars mission within 10 years

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Can we get to Mars within 10 years? Absolutely.

Will we? Perhaps, but while I'm sure some science will be done, it'd largely be a token 'we got there' mission. Go, stay for maybe a week, come back.

A real trip would involve quite a few lead up missions to deliver facilities and supplies and have the astronauts stay for months. Hell, make it a permanent mission, with the staff turning over akin to what happens on the ISS.

Of course, there are issues with that, both in terms of the commitment and finances involved in sending many, sizable, cargo loads to Mars and that the orbits means there is an optimal time to travel, meaning all those loads would head off around the same time, as would the crew(s). The crews would also have to be there until the next window opened (they're close roughly every earth year and a half, although the direction and travel time would change the optimal times) making for round trips of 2-3 years, which would be quite a load mentally and physically.

All of that means 10 years isn't all that likely.
 
I used to think we should have a manned Mars mission, but on reflection it would be better to develop faster and more efficient propulsion systems first. Otherwise it's a long, one-way trip requiring a huge rocket and enormous cost :eek:
 

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Kram said:
I'd assume it would also be ****in dangerous with current technology in the next decade (like the moon missions but far worse), imagine the embarrassment of sending people there an upon arrival something fails and they are just condemned to the loneliest death in humanity.
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I think you underestimate the things that can go wrong. For anyone taking this on its a one way trip and death is real possibility and most likely outcome
 
TheFourPillars said:
I think you underestimate the things that can go wrong. For anyone taking this on its a one way trip and death is real possibility and most likely outcome
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To be fair, Death is also the most likely outcome here on Earth.

That being said, I personally would love to be one of the people who get sent there, One-way trip, yeah so what? I'll be on fricken Mars!

it would also make my use of this meme far more delicious.

3cd8a33a.png
 
We really need bots to set up the infrastructure first.
Build the houses, set up other plants.

I am not going to mars unless they have an ice making machine!
How silly not being able to make an expresso martini in the morning?
They are there for the commodities, so banging people there is a constraint, a chicken before the egg.
If they can remote drive 8 hallpacks at a time, sending humans before the watercooler is set up seems rediculious.

IMHO

Abasi said:
Mars is the new black.

If the movie 'the Martian' didn't get you excited for a life of potato eating in a small lifeless chamber listening to a playlist of 70's disco, then maybe you're hanging out for Elon Musk's push towards the Red Planet with SpaceX and some soon to follow terraforming(on a major scale).

It seems that we are now pushing hard towards manned missions to Mars, with Musk quite unequivocal that this is where the future of humanity lies.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/elon-musk-mars-spacex-human-mission-space-science/


What say you?
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First the stupid humour: I tried to open a bar on mars, but had to shut it down eventually, the place just had no atmosphere.

Now, on that topic. One major problem with terraforming another planet is biomass. In The Martian, every time he opened the hatch out onto the surface of Mars, he would have let a little bit of CO2 out, reducing the total biomass available. eventually that would all go. Fortunately Mars has PLENTY of CO2, most of its polar ice caps are CO2, but it's atmosphere is so thin that the atmospheric pressure is low enough for water to sublime on Mars. Not good. One way to perhaps alleviate this, is to paint the polar ice caps black, heating them up, releasing the CO2, increasing available biomass, and increasing atmospheric pressure allowing water to be a liquid. Just a thought.

The one big thing the movie got wrong (and the writer freely acknowledges this but needed something to add early complication) is the storm at the beginning. On mars, cyclone Yasi wouldn't have moved your hair, there just isn't enough mass in the atmosphere to generate the kinetic energy to throw rocks around.
 
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grumbleguts said:
First the stupid humour: I tried to open a bar on mars, but had to shut it down eventually, the place just had no atmosphere.

Now, on that topic. One major problem with terraforming another planet is biomass. In The Martian, every time he opened the hatch out onto the surface of Mars, he would have let a little bit of CO2 out, reducing the total biomass available. eventually that would all go. Fortunately Mars has PLENTY of CO2, most of its polar ice caps are CO2, but it's atmosphere is so thin that the atmospheric pressure is low enough for water to sublime on Mars. Not good. One way to perhaps alleviate this, is to paint the polar ice caps black, heating them up, releasing the CO2, increasing available biomass, and increasing atmospheric pressure allowing water to be a liquid. Just a thought.

The one big thing the movie got wrong (and the writer freely acknowledges this but needed something to add early complication) is the storm at the beginning. On mars, cyclone Yasi wouldn't have moved your hair, there just isn't enough mass in the atmosphere to generate the kinetic energy to throw rocks around.
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I think I read somewhere a theory about nuking the poles on Mars.
 
Abasi said:
I think I read somewhere a theory about nuking the poles on Mars.
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However they do it, it will raise the temperature of the surface of mars, give plants something to nibble on, and increase air pressure to allow water a liquid phase.
 

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so the rationale is its because we will stuff up the earth.

Answer is don't stuff up the earth

Don't wait till its too late to take action, the requirements and consequences will be less

And the effort and technologies we might dream up to make Mars habitable would magnitudes upon magnitudes more than similar approaches taken on earth

closed environments proposed to be built on mars could be built on a poisoned earth at much less complexity and cost. The chances of rehabilitating a poisoned earth are far higher than that of habilitating a dead world. by many magnitudes

In fact the resources consumed by a mass migration to mars would denude the earth further

By all means explore and investigate other planets etc, but use drones or AI they make a far better proxy for controllers on earth to use. Its the controllers on earth who do the captaining not the drones on board, human or android

Musk is in showbusiness not exploration. There's money to be made from gullibles
 
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Pessimistic said:
so the rationale is its because we will stuff up the earth.

Answer is don't stuff up the earth

Don't wait till its too late to take action, the requirements and consequences will be less

And the effort and technologies we might dream up to make Mars habitable would magnitudes upon magnitudes more than similar approaches taken on earth

closed environments proposed to be built on mars could be built on a poisoned earth at much less complexity and cost. The chances of rehabilitating a poisoned earth are far higher than that of habilitating a dead world. by many magnitudes

In fact the resources consumed by a mass migration to mars would denude the earth further

By all means explore and investigate other planets etc, but use drones or AI they make a far better proxy for controllers on earth to use. Its the controllers on earth who do the captaining not the drones on board, human or android

Musk is in showbusiness not exploration. There's money to be made from gullibles
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There's a fair bit wrong about this post.

Mainly, the earth has been squeezed of resources for decades and in a lot of cases the damage is irreparable.

Secondly, Musk is arguably leading the world in innovation at the minute. You call it showbusiness, but the fact all the other major car companies are now coming out with their own fully electric prestige vehicles to combat Tesla just goes to show that he is much more that "showbusiness", and that's without taking what he has done with SpaceX and SolarCity into consideration.
 
Abasi said:
There's a fair bit wrong about this post.

Mainly, the earth has been squeezed of resources for decades and in a lot of cases the damage is irreparable.

Secondly, Musk is arguably leading the world in innovation at the minute. You call it showbusiness, but the fact all the other major car companies are now coming out with their own fully electric prestige vehicles to combat Tesla just goes to show that he is much more that "showbusiness", and that's without taking what he has done with SpaceX and SolarCity into consideration.
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So squeeze it some more to transport millions of people to a dead planet in much worse shape?

My point is the technologies to habilitate mars would be similar to those needed to rehabilitate the earth, no matter how badly we have stuffed up the earth by then. And would require magnitudes less of
 
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Pessimistic said:
So squeeze it some more to transport millions of people to a dead planet in much worse shape?

My point is the technologies to habilitate mars would be similar to those needed to rehabilitate the earth, no matter how badly we have stuffed up the earth by then. And would require magnitudes less of
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You're underselling the size of the job to "rehabilitate earth".

If Musk gets a crew to Mars he only has Mars to contend with, no fossil fuel companies pulling strings, no governments putting up red-tape, no foundations with their own agendas, no regional cultural issues impacting projects, no ingrained reliance on industry from locals trying to feed their families.....just a dead planet with atmosphere issues.

It's a blank canvas.

"Fix earth" is easily said, but clearly not easily done.
 
Pessimistic said:
Madness sending people to Mars

What possible reason?

Just as human lab rats
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same reason people want to climb everest ie. because it is there. human desire to explore, gain knowledge and just to do something that has never been done before. many scientific advances that will benefit us would in all likely hood be a by product of such a mission as well.
 
jason pm said:
same reason people want to climb everest ie. because it is there. human desire to explore, gain knowledge and just to do something that has never been done before. many scientific advances that will benefit us would in all likely hood be a by product of such a mission as well.
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Can be achieved better quicker cheaper by using robots as proxies not useless humans
The difference is increasing as time goes on
Send humans, you are actually harming the program
 
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Abasi said:
You're underselling the size of the job to "rehabilitate earth".

If Musk gets a crew to Mars he only has Mars to contend with, no fossil fuel companies pulling strings, no governments putting up red-tape, no foundations with their own agendas, no regional cultural issues impacting projects, no ingrained reliance on industry from locals trying to feed their families.....just a dead planet with atmosphere issues.

It's a blank canvas.

"Fix earth" is easily said, but clearly not easily done.
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If it's ever at the point that most people see the desirability of sending mankind to Mars to preserve the future of mankind ( and I'm pretty sure most see the flaws at this point in time) mankind will already be disposed to expend the resources to save itself.
Even then, with the earth itself looking bleak, the task to fix it up will still be magnitudes less than the Mars option. Even without the massive drain on resources to actually transport people there
 
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Pessimistic said:
If it's ever at the point that most people see the desirability of sending mankind to Mars to preserve the future of mankind ( and I'm pretty sure most see the flaws at this point in time) mankind will already be disposed to expend the resources to save itself.
Even then, with the earth itself looking bleak, the task to fix it up will still be magnitudes less than the Mars option. Even without the massive drain on resources to actually transport people there
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Mars doesn't need desirability from "most people", the owner of SpaceX wants to send people there a terraform.

Whether you think it would be cheaper to fix earth is not the point, Musk wants to be the person to put people on Mars.
 
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