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Mars 500 had little to do with anything but the psychology of confinement for long periods in tight spaces.  But that itself is valuable,  so I don't really consider it a joke. 

However,  on the other hand,  the mission model behind it looks like 60's Apollo:  99+% flag-and-footprints,  1% (or less) real science.  One landing for one trip.  What nonsense! 

It is clear that no one associated with Mars 500 learned the lesson of what we did wrong in Apollo.  So few have 20-20 hindsight vision?  Disappointing. 

GW

Martian dirt with human garbage and sewage would be fertile enough to growth Earth-type vegetation,  given water and sufficient atmosphere.  I doubt 0.38 gee is that much a problem for vegetation,  might still be insufficient for human health,  we just don't know yet.  The UV environment there is more than just a mite harsh for the plants.  It would take some kind of transparent dome over your vegetable patch,  one that filters out some but not all the UV.  Tough structural design and materials selection problem;  the "dome" might not end up being dome-shaped.  I dunno what atmosphere might serve;  it might not be breathable by us.  Fair fraction of an atmosphere total,  but less than one,  would likely do.  Lots of experiments could be down down here to see what might work.  Harsh UV can be simulated with lamps.  Even radiation can be used.  Just not the lower gee,  and it ain't zero,  so experiments on ISS won't be very informative. 

Just some odd thoughts.

GW

@louis, again I don't see why there needs to be a government consortium driving this. Elon is not a philanthropist (w.r.t. SpaceX at least). He is a businessman, he has investors backing him, and he has a reasonable expectation of a return on his money. He has chosen to invest his own time, money, and effort into something he firmly believes in, yes, but that's still sound business; he is a principled business man.

I'm not saying we should do it without NASA's knowledge and expertise, I'm just saying there's no need for any sort of formal government program. NASA civil servants already have an obligation to help American businesses (without showing preference), and it's easy enough to get a space act agreement granting at-cost access to facilities and researchers. That's how SpaceX has been doing it so far.

Louis:

Hey,  we're both looking for Musk to lead!  He'll have to,  NASA won't.  Too petrified with gigantic-bureaucracy disease.  The NASA we have is not the NASA we need,  and hasn't been since the 70's.  Excepting upstarts like Musk and a small handful of others,  the contractor base we have is not the contractor base we need,  either.  Same stultification problem as NASA,  just commercial instead of governmental.  Same disease.  A committee is a life form with 6 or more legs and no brain. 

I wouldn't trust NASA to develop the supple space suit we need right now for everything we want to do in space,  not just going to Mars.  They have (or at least did recently have) MIT under contract to work on mechanical counterpressure suits,  but then saddled them with an unnecessary design requirement (1/3 atm equivalent pressure),  so that no material existing can do the job. 

Yet NASA paid (in part) for the late 60's demonstration of the very kind of suit we need (which worked just fine at 20-25% atm pressure equivalent).  Go see my posting for Jan 21,  2011 on "exrocketman" (http://exrocketman.blogspot.com) for an analysis of the proper design requirements for a mechanical counterpressure space suit.  Then check out http:www.elasticspacesuit.com to see what Paul Webb did so long ago,  with nothing more than pantyhose materials. 

You can also check out the paper I gave at the Mars Society convention this last August in Dallas,  Texas,  USA.  You can find it in the Mars Society electronic archives,  or go look on "exrocketman" for a version of it posted and dated 7-25-2011,  and some second thoughts on the back-up propulsion dated 9-6-11.   If you like,  just scroll down to find the first article with "space program" as a keyword,  and click on that keyword.  Then it shows only space-program-related postings.  The order is newest-first.  That's one kind of the different style of thinking that might lead to dozens of Mars landings,  all in one trip,  for well under $50 billion. 

GW

Mark Friedenbach wrote:

NASA (and ESA) missions are massive subsidies to academic planetary science and engineering departments, not to mention the inefficiencies in contractors that have arisen out of cost-plus procurement and regulation compliance. Having NASA involved as a partner will drive up costs significantly. So if it's predominantly a private endeveour, what's the reasoning for involving the national agencies at all?

NASA's vision is "To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind." 
It does this through the fields aeronautics, human exploration and operations, and space science.  It's mandate driven by government policy in these fields. 
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ESA's purpose is "ESA's purpose shall be to provide for, and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems."

Both organisations exist because of the proven historic inability of private industry to provide leadership in these areas.  Nothing as changed.  Private industry does not, will not, and cannot provide the leadership to go to Mars.  Why should they?  There is nothing in it for them at this stage other than contracts. The role of private industry is to provide hardware in response to the requirements of the agencies who doing the pioneering work. 

Once there are proven ways of making money, thanks to the pionering work of gthe agencies, this will change.  This is what has happened with Earth orbit applications.  Private entities round the world not only build the systems they also provide launch and tracking services, manage spacecraft operations, and drive a whole range of spinoff industries in areas like image processing communications, and surveying, they drive innovation in all these fields, with the role of agencies now supporting them in specific areas and providing the statutory framework that allows smooth operation.

I quite agree with the notion of a public-private consortium of some kind.  I quite agree that there are multiple launchers that could mount an expedition using orbital assembly in LEO.  I quite agree that this could be done for well under $100 B,  probably under $50 B,  perhaps as little as $30B,  but the right kind of team has to do it,  and they have to have the right objective,  and use the right approach. 

And Apollo as we did it back then,  is none of those things (hindsight is very 20-20 vision,  I know). 

If the consortium is more private than public,  the politics plays less of a role.  But as long as one of the government agencies leads and funds this,  we will be saddled with politics.  I suspect we're stuck with that for the exploration mission(s) and the first ISRU bases.  After that,  government may phase out of the game.  The trick is to bootstrap through the politics,  and the current economic bad times may be both a problem (no money to do anything right now) and an opportunity (a way to bootstrap out of economic depression).

We in the US experienced boom times in some sectors of the economy during the mobilization required to go to the moon,  back during the 60's.  That sort of thing would happen again,  trying to go to Mars.  It doesn't lift all boats,  but it definitely lifts some of them.  Even the Europeans might jump at the chance to get involved.  It's a way to jump start your engineering and some of your manufacturing back into good times.  They need that as much as we do.  Japan,  too. 

GW

Hmm... are you talking about seeing if it's possible to grow plant's in Martian soil? It's been done, though as I'm on my BlackBerry I can't post a link. The hyperoxide nature of the soil is dealt with by simply wetting it.

If you're talking about getting plants to grow in current Martian conditions, forget it. Ice is permanently frozen - save for when it turns to gas because the pressure is so low.

I don't like this idea that we don't know what exactly is on Mars. We know just about everything that we can know without stepping foot on the surface. Any other major discoveries are going to be done by men and women with shovels, microscopes, etc. We know where the water is. We know where it has flowed in the most recent months, years, etc. We know where atmospheric methane exists, and we know it exists in the air above ground deposits of water, and so we can say with a surprisingly huge degree of certainty that there is life on Mars at this moment - producing the methane; remember Mars is Earth's geological cousin, and nearly all of our methane comes from lifeforms.

we know enough about Mars right now that those of us in the Mars Now community are getting fed up with the delays from international space agencies. Someone once asked me "yeah, but where are you going to find smart people willing to go and die on Mars?"... I raised my hand immediately. There are thousands of scientists who could both pass the physical training necessary to be Mars explorers who would also readily join a program even if it was a 15 year committment to the planet. Even if it was an open-ended committment

Louis, that would suggest we're trying to colonise Mars, which is effectively banned under international law...

So, who has better idea of going and colonizing Mars then Zubrin?

Louis - it doesn't matter what the going rate for cargo is if you're talking about tourism so much as it matters what the going rate for passengers is. Cheapest I think is Dragon, which comes in at about 10M/person?

As for the market for tourism, we've already got information about orbital tourism to go off, from the ISS. Look at it, rather than making conjecture based on suborbital tourism.

Do remember that people want a return on their investment, so the capital cost has to be paid off sometime within the first 5-10 years of the operation. When you add in continuing costs, we're talking about having to generate 500M annually just to break even. While I reckon that's possible, the business case, just like the base, has to be nearly airtight.

I don't think we're going to be able to get a mass driver or space elevator built within the first decade or so (would a space elevator reach to EML1?), but rockets will do fine for now.

ISRU solar power is something to look into, definately. More power is always good, and typically solid state means higher reliability. If it means we could leverage our initial 200kW supply into a 2MW supply without having to import much, we can grow the nascent space hamlet quicker, since imports can be dedicated to things like manufacturing equipment.

@Rune - is it your birthday today? If so, happy birthday.