New Mars Forums

Yoda

Member

Registered: 2020-04-28

Posts: 17

I finally signed up!

Hi, I've been reading your forum for a little while now; today I finally made the leap and decided to join the party.

I probably won't post to often, but you'll see me around the forum from time to time from here on.

kbd512

Administrator

Registered: 2015-01-02

Posts: 7,826

Re: I finally signed up!

Yoda,

Welcome to the New Mars Forum.  Out of curiosity, what space exploration topics do you find most interesting?

Yoda

Member

Registered: 2020-04-28

Posts: 17

Re: I finally signed up!

Hello kbd.

I love all aspects of space exploration, but the life support systems are my favorite to study. To me, how and what we'll eat, drink and breath is always fascinating.

Orbital mechanics is neat too, but insanely complicated. I've just recently began to scratch the surface of it.

kbd512

Administrator

Registered: 2015-01-02

Posts: 7,826

Re: I finally signed up!

Yoda,

Well, you'll find plenty of topics on both here.  Reliable ECLSS truly is a lynchpin technology for any future deep space exploration missions with humans.  That's long been a missing technology set required to explore Mars, but many years of concerted development are finally coming to fruition.  NASA has a number of documents on their life support systems technology development roadmap for any who are interested.

CAMRAS (already tested aboard ISS for just shy of a year, I think) and IWP (can't recall the schedule on this, but should be tested soon- I'm pretty sure it's not ready yet) technologies, combined with radiation mitigation techniques, will all be required to live on the moon and Mars.  Knowledge of how fires spread in microgravity environments from the SAFFIRE experiments is also badly needed.  Fire is the bane of all ships' crews, but particularly lethal to spaceship crews.  Until those technologies have been thoroughly proven during endurance testing of at least several years, with heretofore unseen levels of reliability and efficiency at recycling the air and water consumed by the crew, then no matter how fancy our rockets happen to be, there still won't be any missions.

In fact, I don't think we need fancy rockets.  Workhorse rockets like Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy / Atlas V / Vulcan will be entirely sufficient and cost-effective for exploration purposes as part of a realistic exploration campaign.  For colonization, then rockets the size of Starship Super Heavy, or perhaps far larger, will become a hard requirement.  We need to do the exploration missions first to nail down precisely what's available for ISRU efforts and the best methods / technologies to obtain those resources.  The extraction of H2O and N2 are minimal requirements for the exploration missions.  The exploration missions should also experiment with farming techniques if NASA is serious about wanting to colonize Mars.  At a minimum, we need a full dress rehearsal mission to the moon.  Namely, 6 months of flying around Earth in deep space to simulate an outbound transit to Mars, an orbital insertion and landing on the moon, followed by a year long surface stay in a small habitat module, a return flight aboard a lander filled using lunar water obtained via ISRU technologies, spending another 6 months flying around in deep space, and finally a return to Earth at interplanetary reentry velocity.  If we can pull that off, then we can pull off a Mars mission.  If anyone says that's too complicated, then they're really saying we're not ready to go to Mars without directly admitting it.

Terraformer

Member

From: The Fortunate Isles

Registered: 2007-08-27

Posts: 3,904

Website

Re: I finally signed up!

I love all aspects of space exploration, but the life support systems are my favorite to study.

Probably the most accessible, too. Rockets are expensive. Contributing to experiments in growing food, on the other hand... there's also more spinoff possibilities. If you can grow potatoes on Mars, you can grow them on Helluland (Baffin Island). Developing means of providing what we need with far less labour (expensive in space) is another obvious benefit. Figuring out how a small community can be nearly self-sufficient has ramifications for existential risk management...

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Use what is abundant and build to last