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1. There is a very good outlook we will get humans to Mars by 2026 at the latest. 2024 might even be doable.
2. The organisation that will get us there is Space X, founded by Elon Musk - an agency completely dedicated to the idea of creating a second home for humanity on Mars. In other words the people who will get the first humans to Mars are the people on Planet Earth who are the most dedicated to creating huge human settlements on Mars. That is a really an incredibly important point.
3. The idea that a settlement on Mars - a whole planet with resources very similar to those available on Earth - which was endowed with the best technology that Planet Earth can produce could fail is, frankly, ridiculous. It will certainly succeed and grow.
4. The potential for rapid settlement development on Mars is currently completely understated owing to people's inability to embrace the reality of what is going to take place. Essentially something on the scale of Earth's resources are going to be made available to a few hundred people in the first few years. 500 years ago that would have meant nothing because five centuries ago people simply didn't have the technology to harness those resources but now we do: we have energy generation systems (eg PV and nuclear), the ability to build pressurised environments, the ability to grow food under artificial lighting, and the ability to create a small scale industrial infrastructure (e.g. 3D printers and CNC lathes).
5. The difficult bit is getting to Mars. Once there, success is guaranteed.
6. Economic development will be extremely rapid. It will only take a couple of decades before we see a sizeable settlement on Mars.
7. People assume that growing the settlement will be the problem in terms of human health, food, energy, industry and so on. But that's not the case. The real problems that Mars will throw up will be political due to its rapid growth.
8. Another assumption is that people will feel there is something lacking on Mars compared to Earth but that is wrong. Mars will be an extremely attractive place to live within a couple of decades. The people of Mars will create wonderful environments on Mars even before they embark on terraformation. It will be at the very zenith of human achievement.
9. I think the issue of procreation on Mars will be successfully addressed within the first 20-30 years. It is certainly true there are issues of healthy foetal development to be resolved but these will be dealt with more quickly than people think. The first true Mars people will be born by 2050. After that, a true Mars community will be created.
10. We shouldn't think of Mars as some sort of crabbed community dependent on Earth. It will flower early and long. It will very quickly become a symbol of what Earth could or should be. It will be the bright star that inspires Earth. It will ironically become a symbol of peace, not war.
Last edited by louis (2018-04-21 20:00:16)
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Yeah, saying that something will be true doesn't actually make it so.
How have Musk's timelines worked out so far? Why would things suddenly start going according to schedule *now*?
Use what is abundant and build to last
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True, just my observations. Time will tell.
Space X have gone from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 Heavy in 10 years. During that time they have also mastered the art of retro landing stages on Earth for reusability, slashed the cost of launches and come to the brink of achieving human rated flight with the crewed Dragon. Their progress has been phenomenal.
I think maybe because of the Space Shuttle disasters, the failure to return to the Moon and the fact that a new exciting chapter in space flight has been a long time coming, people have lost confidence and cannot see the wood for the trees. The more I have looked into Mars settlement, the more I feel it is going to hugely successful enterprise. The same goes for lunar tourism - and both will be happening at about the same time. It's going to be an amazing new era in space exploration.
Yeah, saying that something will be true doesn't actually make it so.
How have Musk's timelines worked out so far? Why would things suddenly start going according to schedule *now*?
Last edited by louis (2018-04-22 05:58:19)
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Louis-
As the Russian generals of W.W. II used to say: "On the map, the plan looked great, but we forgot about the ravines."
I applaud your enthusiasm, but no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. In this case, going to and colonizing Mars, the plan itself is still incomplete. SpaceX and Musk are concentrating on the "getting there" part with not enough "how to survive when we arrive." Until these aspects are fully addressed--getting there will be the easy part. Shelter/habitat? Transportation? Power required for settlement/research station? Operable Sabatier reactor? Operable Moxie system? Water in sufficient quantities? All unanswered questions.
I'd love to see humanity on Mars in my lifetime. I figure I'm still good for another 10 to maybe 15 years, so Musk is at least showing there's a chance for that to happen.
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The way I see it, Mars isn't the enemy, Mars is our ally which will provide us with significant gravity, water, energy, materials, and food. There are some enemies out there - you might think of them of being like those bands of Indians in the old Western films who used to track, menancingly, the wagon train in the valley below: zero G transit and high radiation doses are the big ones.
But Mars, should really be seen as a huge treasure trove that we can access with modern technology.
Louis-
As the Russian generals of W.W. II used to say: "On the map, the plan looked great, but we forgot about the ravines."
I applaud your enthusiasm, but no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. In this case, going to and colonizing Mars, the plan itself is still incomplete. SpaceX and Musk are concentrating on the "getting there" part with not enough "how to survive when we arrive." Until these aspects are fully addressed--getting there will be the easy part. Shelter/habitat? Transportation? Power required for settlement/research station? Operable Sabatier reactor? Operable Moxie system? Water in sufficient quantities? All unanswered questions.
I'd love to see humanity on Mars in my lifetime. I figure I'm still good for another 10 to maybe 15 years, so Musk is at least showing there's a chance for that to happen.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Mars is a treasure trove of resources but they come with a power required penalty to free up for use. Even underground water/ice comes with a penalty as well if found to be useable and not containing contaminants that require more equipment, power or means to make it useable.
So until a power toehold is created we will not be doing all that much as what we will bring with us will have a limitation for use.
I did post this else where as we can use many of the ideas that it contains.
https://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/index.html
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Louis,
Why would you assume that a settlement on a planet that is absolutely lethal to human life would automatically become successful?
The hubris in such an assertion is mind boggling. The very fist time someone makes a simple mistake with the atmospheric controls for a colony and subsequently kills dozens of people with that mistake, you'll begin to understand why success is not a foregone conclusion. I enjoy your boundless optimism for this endeavor, which I also find fascinating and exciting, but tempering that optimism with an understanding of simple human failings would better suit your cause.
You're talking about these things as if they've already happened, but there was only one time in all of human history when humans left this planet and set foot on a different one. It's not easy or simple and there are no guaranteed outcomes.
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Well I don't accept it's an assumption but what you say about Planet Mars - that is is "absolutely lethal to human life" - is also true of about 85% of the surface of Planet Earth. Homo sapiens is a tropical animal, an opportunistic omnivore. Without easy access to food, without fire, clothes, shelter and sea going vessels no homo sapiens could survive much longer than a few hours in the temperate and arctic zones, in the great deserts, in the vast mountain ranges, on the high plateaus or in the ocean that covers 70% of the planet. It's only technology (fire, clothing, built shelters, weapons to hunt down animals and agriculture) that allowed us to spread over nearly the whole globe.
So it is with Mars: it is the appropriate technologies that will allow us to spread all over Mars: pressurised habitats, life support, indoor agriculture, robotics and terraformation.
Louis,
Why would you assume that a settlement on a planet that is absolutely lethal to human life would automatically become successful?
The hubris in such an assertion is mind boggling. The very fist time someone makes a simple mistake with the atmospheric controls for a colony and subsequently kills dozens of people with that mistake, you'll begin to understand why success is not a foregone conclusion. I enjoy your boundless optimism for this endeavor, which I also find fascinating and exciting, but tempering that optimism with an understanding of simple human failings would better suit your cause.
You're talking about these things as if they've already happened, but there was only one time in all of human history when humans left this planet and set foot on a different one. It's not easy or simple and there are no guaranteed outcomes.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Louis,
Whether you walk outside at the North Pole, the South Pole, or anywhere in between, you can breathe the air, there is vegetation (obviously not much at the poles, but it's still there, even in Antarctica), and animals. There is no liquid water on the surface of Mars that we know of and if it is there, it's a heavy salt solution. Compared to anywhere on the surface of Mars, the most inhospitable places for life on Earth are lush paradises. With all the technology available to humans, people still die of simple exposure. But yes, technology is what separates us from our ancestors. We have a lot of it compared to those who came before us. Those who come after us will have even more technology at their fingertips. I think that's a fantastic thing, but Mars is the most inhospitable place that humans could possibly live unless they're in deep space.
All that said, I see absolutely no reason not to immediately execute a Manhattan style development program that takes us all the way to the finish line, which would be a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Before we do that, we'd better make sure our tech is as reliable as the day is long or lots of people will die and the dream of getting ourselves off this rock will falter in the best case scenario and collapse entirely in the worst case scenario.
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Louis-
Your enthusiasm is commendable, but this endeavor is one of those cases where we need to have a "belts and braces" approach to everything we do. Every life support system must be available with adequate backup, and not simply in duplicate in the actual life sustaining systems such as Moxie for breathing air. The power system is most critical of all, and I suggest that we address that by means of triplicate energy sources. To send either solar grid w/o a duplicate backup of at least 2 nuclear reactors would be to invite failure and death of the pioneers at the first base/research station. Without adequate power, everyone dies. Without power, there is no air, no heat, no research, no liquid water by vacuum distillation or reverse osmosis, and most of all--no way to return to Mother Earth.
So what we need to be doing here instead of cheerleading is making concrete suggestions, and subsequently develop a roadmap of how we get to the point of making a mission successful.
NASA has at least been working on several Kilopower nuclear reactors, and Solar technology is at least advanced enough to make a basic solar system capable of supplying much of the needed power. The energy system will be an eclectic combination of both technologies, since the weight of adequate batteries for energy storage is excessive in initial missions. Solar powers the Moxie units in daylight hours and nuclear in darkness, along with warmth for the habitats. Solar can be used to recharge the vehicle batteries for mobility of Marsonauts in pursuit of research goals.
I adamantly insist we stockpile a massive food supply--enough to feed the entire crew for 2 Hohmann transfer windows and a single return flight. But water will be a problem, even with the most sophisticated recovery systems in place, so finding a supply of that precious resource is of paramount importance. Without a supply of H2O, the Sabatier system will be useless baggage.
I applaud Elon Musk's commitment to making Mars a reality, but there's still an enormous amount of work left to do before we depart.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2018-04-23 10:27:55)
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Oldfart1939,
I see KiloPower as a mandatory failsafe. If electrical power storage fails, then it keeps everyone alive at night, irrespective of any battery or fuel cell failures. KiloPower is one of the simplest heat engines I've ever seen and it's been failure tested in every way DOE can think of. It can operate with the heat pipe system completely removed without melting down, but it wouldn't provide any electrical power output. Mechanically, it has a single servo operated control rod powered by a pair of D cell batteries and four Stirling cycle gas turbines to convert working fluid movement into electrical power. Only RTG's are simpler than that. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of the battery operated servo for the control rod, along with any other electronics, opting for a simpler but heavier mechanical remote manipulator for activation / deactivation and a simple pressure regulator to change the position of the control rod. If it overheats to any significant degree, then the regulator moves the control rod back into the core. If there are no electronics present to fail, then that failure mode becomes impossible.
If the mass was allocated such that the failsafe system was merely designed to keep the lights on and more mass was allocated to solar panels instead of batteries, then we could reasonably expect to provide enough power for ISPP in the day by oversizing the array to match or even exceed production from a pure nuclear power system and keep everything warm (the humans) or cold (the fuel to return home) at night.
I still want to know where we're getting hundreds of tons of water from. Someone better make sure that ice is where it should be, or those people aboard BFR become permanent residents. Even at that, there are so many other assumptions being made about how this is going to work that it's not even funny. I'm beginning to think that SpaceX doesn't have an ORM person on staff.
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I expect Space X are far advanced on all this.
You say that without power there is no life support, but I think the first thing to say in relation to Mission One life support is that Space X appear to be taking three cargo BFSs and one human passenger BFS to Mars. This means that the total cargo alone will be well over 500 tonnes. That is a huge amount. I think with that sort of tonnage allowance does mean you can build in some emergency life support (e.g. oxygen tanks, additional water and so on) and you can build in redundancy.
The weakness for me in the Space X mission design is the need to produce the propellant to enable a huge BFS to return to Earth. That does create a huge burden on the Mission in terms of identifying a water source and processing that, together with compressed CO2. That then in turn requires you to be pretty certain you have a known water source site close to the landing area and to have a hefty power generation element in your design. That's where my concern would lie. Personally, for Mission One, I would have gone for a modified BFS in Mars orbit for the return journey and have an Apollo style ascent vehicle.
I can't think of a single instance of a PV power system failing on a space mission. They seem to be one of the most reliable elements in space missions. The only problem I can see with PV power on Mars (which it appears is Musk's favoured system) is the issue of dust storms. But people have a tendency to exaggerate this issue. Insolation is not completely obscured even in the worst dust storms - rarely does it dip below 20% of normal - and the longest storm I have read about was around 9 months.
This Reddit contributor did a calculation for the amount of energy required for propellant production:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/c … oduce_the/
If the above caculation is right (25.9 GwHs required to produce 1100 tonnes of propellant), over 600 sols that would work out at about
1800 Kws constant on my own calculation.
With high performing PV panels (around 25% efficiency) that might mean about 50,000 square metres of PV panelling.
Musk has apparently talked in terms of 50-60% of power generation being used for propellant production, so maybe make that a 4000 Kws required overall, maybe around 110,000 sq. metres or about 310 x 310 sq. metres. That would be doable. Of course how far you then need to build in redundancy for dust storms scenarios, becomes a serious issue.
At 0.5 kgs per square metre that would be 55 tonnes, well within the tonnage budget. But whether you can get the required efficiency remains to be seen.
Of course the Reddit contributor's calculation might be wrong - other commentators suggest the calculation is an overestimate. But it is perhaps a worst case estimate to start with. My suspicion is that Musk has done the calculations and come up with a much lower figure.
NOTE: This discussion based on Zubrin's analysis suggests a requirement perhaps 30% less than the one given above. So the PV panelling would end up being about 77,000 sq. metres, or 277 x 277 metres (more like an athletics field).
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index … c=36504.20
Louis-
Your enthusiasm is commendable, but this endeavor is one of those cases where we need to have a "belts and braces" approach to everything we do. Every life support system must be available with adequate backup, and not simply in duplicate in the actual life sustaining systems such as Moxie for breathing air. The power system is most critical of all, and I suggest that we address that by means of triplicate energy sources. To send either solar grid w/o a duplicate backup of at least 2 nuclear reactors would be to invite failure and death of the pioneers at the first base/research station. Without adequate power, everyone dies. Without power, there is no air, no heat, no research, no liquid water by vacuum distillation or reverse osmosis, and most of all--no way to return to Mother Earth.So what we need to be doing here instead of cheerleading is making concrete suggestions, and subsequently develop a roadmap of how we get to the point of making a mission successful.
NASA has at least been working on several Kilopower nuclear reactors, and Solar technology is at least advanced enough to make a basic solar system capable of supplying much of the needed power. The energy system will be an eclectic combination of both technologies, since the weight of adequate batteries for energy storage is excessive in initial missions. Solar powers the Moxie units in daylight hours and nuclear in darkness, along with warmth for the habitats. Solar can be used to recharge the vehicle batteries for mobility of Marsonauts in pursuit of research goals.
I adamantly insist we stockpile a massive food supply--enough to feed the entire crew for 2 Hohmann transfer windows and a single return flight. But water will be a problem, even with the most sophisticated recovery systems in place, so finding a supply of that precious resource is of paramount importance. Without a supply of H2O, the Sabatier system will be useless baggage.
I applaud Elon Musk's commitment to making Mars a reality, but there's still an enormous amount of work left to do before we depart.
Last edited by louis (2018-04-23 16:50:12)
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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My hunch, which accords with Musk's probably better-informed opinion, is that we already have the technology. The only thing we have to be timid about is timidity itself.
I'd still much prefer to land on Mars with all that technological back up than be abandoned in the Arctic, naked and with no technology, even if I might be able to breathe the clean, fresh air for maybe a few minutes before I expire.
The Manhattan Project cost about $20billion in today's prices and as far as I know had no commercial sponsor like Coca Cola or Nike.
The Mars Mission is unlikely to cost more than $2 billion* and a hefty part of that will be covered by commercial sponsorship, TV rights revenue, science experiment revenue and sale of material - to name a few revenue sources.
* Note: BFR development costs are being shared between a number of projects.
Louis,
Whether you walk outside at the North Pole, the South Pole, or anywhere in between, you can breathe the air, there is vegetation (obviously not much at the poles, but it's still there, even in Antarctica), and animals. There is no liquid water on the surface of Mars that we know of and if it is there, it's a heavy salt solution. Compared to anywhere on the surface of Mars, the most inhospitable places for life on Earth are lush paradises. With all the technology available to humans, people still die of simple exposure. But yes, technology is what separates us from our ancestors. We have a lot of it compared to those who came before us. Those who come after us will have even more technology at their fingertips. I think that's a fantastic thing, but Mars is the most inhospitable place that humans could possibly live unless they're in deep space.
All that said, I see absolutely no reason not to immediately execute a Manhattan style development program that takes us all the way to the finish line, which would be a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Before we do that, we'd better make sure our tech is as reliable as the day is long or lots of people will die and the dream of getting ourselves off this rock will falter in the best case scenario and collapse entirely in the worst case scenario.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Louis,
You seem to make a lot of false equivalency arguments. Even if you were naked, you'd still live longer on Antarctica than on Mars. Mars is every bit as cold or colder, it has no breathable atmosphere, intense UV radiation, GCR's, lethal SPE's, and no liquid water. Many more people have lived on Antarctica this year than have ever set foot on the moon. Now you think we're going to go from a handful of highly trained military men to hundreds of Joe Blow wrench monkeys traveling tens of millions of miles further from home without so much as a hiccup. I may be the only one here, but I think there are a number of important steps to be completed in between.
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kbd512,
It's not faulse equivalency, it's the point. I agree entirely with Louis on this one. Humans are dependent on technology, in many ways. We wouldn't survive the arctic without a lot of technology. We wouldn't survive winter in a temperate zone without technology. Remember, I live in a city that gets down to -40°C (-40°F) once in a while. Real temperature, not wind chill. When I was a pre-schooler in 1966, it got that cold several nights. The last time it got that cold was one night in January 2005, but it was -31°C New Year's Eve this last winter. Outside without fire, without electric heat, without a parka, you're dead very quickly. At -40°C exposed flesh will get frostbite within 4 minutes.
You won't survive on the ocean without a ship of some kind. A small boat will most likely capsize in a storm. Ocean life rafts are inflatable rings so they will float no matter what, and a water-tight tent integrated with the boat so that not only will rain run off, not fill the boat, but a wave larger than the boat won't swamp it. Those caught in a north Atlantic storm will still need a survival suit, because in rough seas such a survival raft will still get flooded with icy cold water. You will also need some sort of desalination system to produce drinkable water.
Desert: you need water. Requirement for water can be reduced through protection from heat. Sun can cause deep sunburn.
If you drown in 3 minutes, or freeze to death in an hour, or die of sunstroke in several hours, you're still dead. Health websites say once the body's cooling system fails, death by sunstroke can occur in 30 minutes. Dead is dead.
Mars is the most inhospitable place that humans could possibly live unless they're in deep space.
That's a false equivalency. In reality, Mars is the most hospitable, second only to the surface of Earth.
All that said, I see absolutely no reason not to immediately execute a Manhattan style development program that takes us all the way to the finish line, which would be a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Before we do that, we'd better make sure our tech is as reliable as the day is long or lots of people will die and the dream of getting ourselves off this rock will falter in the best case scenario and collapse entirely in the worst case scenario.
I would make the equivalency to Apollo. But we don't even need as much as Apollo. We've had all the basics since Mars Direct in 1990, it's just a matter of doing it. Yes, I have argued for a bit more development than Robert Zubrin called for. For example, I argued for a Mars robotic sample return mission as a technology demonstrator of ISPP. But again, just do it.
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The factor of time we need the power resources and technology to operateover is the issue as that is mass to the surface that we are not capable of delivering to a site of choice. Even if we pick just the right place anything can go on and without the resources we will not survive. Dead is dead and it does not matter by what way it happens..
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Rob,
I'm not trying to make a case for not going. I'm saying Earth is still the most hospitable place for humans to live and Mars is still a very distant second. The hard vacuum of low orbit is even worse, but it's much closer to home if anything goes terribly wrong. All that tech had better function 24/7/365, or we won't have a colony. I would like to start slow and explore first. The first mission should have no more than half a dozen astronauts. We can double that for the second mission, start ISRU/ISPP experiments, and then continue on in that way, until we have a fully functional and self-sustaining second branch of human civilization on another planet. I agree with Mr. Musk on using Mars as our insurance policy. I wouldn't stop there, though. Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would be next on the colonization agenda. If two is good, three is better, and four or more is best. It'd be pretty difficult for a single event to wipe us all out at that point.
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Technically the requirements to keep one person alive on Mars is the same as 100 or a 1000, only just more of everything. If you think we are ready on the current timeline being thrown around, reserve some cargo space for the body bags.
At least we have a name for the first dome. Ranoke.
cheers
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Clark: Ranoke colony failed. Last anyone saw the people there, they were starving to death. A ship left for England to get supplies, but wasn't allowed to return immediately. When it did return, no one was left. There's some speculation of where they went based on a single word carved as graffiti into a tree. The colony was an abject failure. I prefer St. John's, Newfoundland. It was first, the first European house built for a caretaker to overwinter at the fishing camp. That was built 1497. St. John's never failed, it's currently the capital city of Newfoundland. It joined Canada in 1949; was an independent self-governing state under the Monarch of Britain from 1907 until it joined Canada. However, the name came from the fact explorer John Cabot discovered that bay on a holiday of the Catholic calendar called St. John the Baptist day. Mars will have it's own heros, it's own place names.
kbd512: I agree with what you posted. In fact I have argued to keep the first mission to 4 crew. That's what NASA wanted since 1965, and what Robert Zubrin and his partner David Baker designed for. I believe Mars Direct was designed for 4 crew because that's what NASA wanted. NASA chose that number because that's how many could fit in an Apollo capsule when you replace the Avcoat heat shield with PICA, and move supplies to a separate deep space habitat. But we need to keep the first mission affordable. That means keep it small. We can start small and grow. Mars Homestead assumed the first permanent settlement would be built by a crew of 12.
I also agree with more than just Mars. Before the Mars Society was founded, I felt Venus held the most promise. Carl Segan wrote the first scientific paper on terraforming. The atmosphere of Venus has proven much more harsh then believed when he wrote that in 1961, but I felt and still feel a modification of his technique would work. I also believe we should mine metal asteroids for metals, exporting precious metals to Earth. And carbonaceous chondrite asteroids for volatiles, primarily for propellant but also volatiles needed to mine metal asteroids. And mine Mercury for gallium and indium, two rare metals required for high efficiency photovoltaic cells. They're not "rare Earth", in fact gallium is one row on the periodic table down from aluminum, and indium is one more row down. But they are rare. Melting temperature is too low for Mercury, but very useful on Earth. Other metals might be found on Mercury. And yes, the moons of Jupiter. I've posted about that. But Mars is most Earth-like, so the ideal place to start.
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Are we discussing the failed British colony at ROANOKE? Was in Virginia, to my recollection?
I too believe that the first mission should be kept small. Too many unknowns and imponderables remain, and the first scientific exploration mission should settle some of the questions. I argued for a 7 man mission, since anything smaller will find the workload to be overwhelming. But maybe some big dose of reality will come to SpaceX, even though I like Musk's "think big" attitude. We need one or two smaller scale visits before attempting to land a BFS without adequate means to get it home.
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Here's an interesting article on ISRU and fuel production on The Space Review:
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I would just prefer it if you modified your assertion somewhat. Yes, Earth has the most hospitable places for humans to live in the solar system, on that we can agree. But if there were no resupply and you had to choose between being abandoned the middle of Antarctica or the surface of Mars, you would need in both cases substantial technology to survive more than a few minutes. But in the case of Antarctica you would have no easily accessible material resources (since they would be under miles of ice) and if you laid down PV panels, they would soon get blown away or covered in ice and snow. In fact everything you did there would be a huge battle against the elements, compared with Mars.
I think there is a high degree of consensus here that Mission One should be, and no doubt will be, a modest affair with a crew of six being often favoured. I certainly favour six...it seems to offer enough of a skill range: you are going to need a surgeon/doctor, probably two in fact (in case it's one of them who gets sick or trips over a cable and knocks their head...). You are going to need people with good engineering and craft skills, good electronics-based skills and someone with a specialist background in geology. And in each case you want a back up - a crew of 6 gives you that possibility.
Rob,
I'm not trying to make a case for not going. I'm saying Earth is still the most hospitable place for humans to live and Mars is still a very distant second. The hard vacuum of low orbit is even worse, but it's much closer to home if anything goes terribly wrong. All that tech had better function 24/7/365, or we won't have a colony. I would like to start slow and explore first. The first mission should have no more than half a dozen astronauts. We can double that for the second mission, start ISRU/ISPP experiments, and then continue on in that way, until we have a fully functional and self-sustaining second branch of human civilization on another planet. I agree with Mr. Musk on using Mars as our insurance policy. I wouldn't stop there, though. Some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would be next on the colonization agenda. If two is good, three is better, and four or more is best. It'd be pretty difficult for a single event to wipe us all out at that point.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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Why are failed colonies always British but successful ones are American? lol
I would say, in relation to the Roanoke Gambit that the parallel here would be if Europeans had felt too scared about sending people west to discover what lay there before 1860...and then in 1860 one of the first steam powered ocean going vessels was sent off, with much prayer and lamentation to explore (against the advice of all senior Royal Navy officers and all leading geographers). The press were astounded when, contrary to all expectation a few months later the steamship returned with a vast collection of artefacts and wild life from the Americas or rather Lincolnia as it was to become known after the Captain, Abraham Lincoln.
Are we discussing the failed British colony at ROANOKE? Was in Virginia, to my recollection?
I too believe that the first mission should be kept small. Too many unknowns and imponderables remain, and the first scientific exploration mission should settle some of the questions. I argued for a 7 man mission, since anything smaller will find the workload to be overwhelming. But maybe some big dose of reality will come to SpaceX, even though I like Musk's "think big" attitude. We need one or two smaller scale visits before attempting to land a BFS without adequate means to get it home.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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louis, the technology required to survive in Antarctica is a lot simpler than that needed for Mars. In Antarctica, you don't have to worry about your oxygen production system failing. Or your hab de-pressurising. Or piling up enough radiation protection. Complexity matters.
Where would be easier to make a go of it - Antarctica, or Alaska?
Use what is abundant and build to last
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That's only because you have constant resupply. My thought experiment asks you to forget about resupply. Think of the interior of Antarctica as a mini-planet for a moment.
Obviously Alaska is an entirely different matter as it has abundant natural resources available at or near the surface, even in the dead of winter.
louis, the technology required to survive in Antarctica is a lot simpler than that needed for Mars. In Antarctica, you don't have to worry about your oxygen production system failing. Or your hab de-pressurising. Or piling up enough radiation protection. Complexity matters.
Where would be easier to make a go of it - Antarctica, or Alaska?
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