Why haven't we left for Mars?

TJohn · 2003-05-29 21:48:00

http://cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov/CMEX/data/ … Table.html

Most if not all of you have probably found this page at one time or another. My question is if we can have this much detail in this type of mission, why couldn't we launch the first manned mission within the 2007 - 2014 time frame? Shouldn't our technology advance enough to develop a heavy launch vehicle within 3-11 yrs?

Glancing through the site, it mentioned a problem about depending on one launch facility. We probably will have the shuttle flying (unfortunately) so that's one launch facility. We could bring in the Russians or the ESA to help with the other. I believe the US could do it on our own, but why not get international help. The US will more than likely be the biggest contributor anyway.

It just bugs me to see this much planning and details in a manned Mars mission and it seems like nothing is being done. I could be wrong. I hope I am.

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-03 09:20:10

I believe the reason we have not is because the poltics of our time are not very accepting of such a mission. I do not think it will happen for a very long time if the government assumes the lead. I do not think it will happen for a long time if the private sector takes the lead in manned exploration. I believe only a massive PR drive could capture the imagination of americans at large during these times will provoke both sectors to spearhead this mars direct mission.

rgcarnes · 2003-07-04 18:19:11

While it should be realized that while selfish motivations for doing something negative (even hindering something positive) do not necessarily mean that actions will be taken in those directions, I continually wonder what other reasons there could be for our lack of progress out of low earth orbit and on to Mars.

May I suggest that, whether political or not, a possible motivation for official silence on bits of knowlege pointing toward the need for extending manned space exploration is that those in the robotic camp know that they will loose a portion of the funding pie?

RobS · 2003-07-05 00:57:16

I think an argument can be made that manned exploration of Mars is good for the robotic research folks. Robots and people are a much more effective combination for exploring Mars than either alone. Mars rovers could be driven by people on mars much more easily than by people in Pasadena. I'd favor putting a team of six on Mars, and devoting several hours a day by two or three of them running six or so rovers elsewhere on the planet. Solar-powered aircraft based on the Helios that just crashed could be used to retrive samples. The Helios wouldn't need to land; it could snag a sample return cannister while flying past a rover, the drop a spare cannster that the rover could place in its sample cache with its remote-controled arm. When a crew returned from Mars, they could bring samples from many areas they only explored robotically.

The bigger obstacles to Mars exploration are these:

1. The Space Shuttle community, that wouldn't want to see their machine replaced by another one.

2. The ISS community, which wants to see ISS built before anything else is done.

3. The lunar science community, which wants a return to the moon first, and exploration of the polar areas where there is almost certainly ice.

-- RobS

TJohn · 2003-07-05 10:17:45

Don't get me started on the ISS!! A waste of money! This group has a better idea and they borrowed it from NASA!

www.spaceislandgroup.com

Bill White · 2003-07-05 10:31:35

While it should be realized that while selfish motivations for doing something negative (even hindering something positive) do not necessarily mean that actions will be taken in those directions, I continually wonder what other reasons there could be for our lack of progress out of low earth orbit and on to Mars.
May I suggest that, whether political or not, a possible motivation for official silence on bits of knowlege pointing toward the need for extending manned space exploration is that those in the robotic camp know that they will loose a portion of the funding pie?

Here I go again. . .

IMHO - settling space will produce winners and losers in terms of Terran geopolitics and economic/corporate competition. IMHO, all humanity will benefit, yet some will benefit more than others. Those with the many billions of dollars needed to "do Mars" won't do Mars until they can assure themselves they will "win" this new space race.

Qui Bono (who benefits) from doing Mars? Answer that and you will know when we will go.

colonist · 2003-07-05 21:47:57

The lunar camp can be placated by the fact that the proposed Ares booster can be used without modification on lunar missions.

The other camps will work against any attempt to realise the Ares because it threatens everything that they have worked for. Contractors and scientists will benifit but political apointees who have built their careers around an obsolete concept will loose everything.

If those of us who want mars to be explored stp up and begin building the hardware (and it will NOT cost anywhere near NASAs estimate) and developing what we need to get the mission off the ground we can have our mars mission. Even a small unmanned mission carried out successfully will cause those in the public to question NASAs stranglehold on access to space and their ever increasing costs and missed completion dates.

If WE get even a small portion of what we talk about here done, we will generate the publicity and credibility thet we need to acomplish more. What we need to prove is that it CAN be done and that we have the will to see it through.

Free Spirit · 2003-07-06 00:02:21

Don't get me started on the ISS!! A waste of money! This group has a better idea and they borrowed it from NASA!
www.spaceislandgroup.com

I like their ideas for a Mars mission. Unfortunately it makes too much sense. It's a little ironic that the shuttle completely wastes what would make the best modules for a space station.

believe the reason we have not is because the poltics of our time are not very accepting of such a mission.

People who advocate a manned Mars mission need to be more persuasive as to why we should go. People aren't going to think it's a bright idea to blow $500 billion to go to another planet just because it's there. Mars proponents need to invent practical reasons and lay-off the idealistic 'it's to spread the horizons of mankind' type of rhetoric. Tell people why it's so pressing that we work toward this goal right now.

RobS · 2003-07-06 23:20:43

NASA's "follow the water" strategy is a good effort to find a reason to send people to Mars. If they can find evidence of past life on the red planet, there will be a reason to send people there. Mars may be the key to understanding the origin of life on Earth. In a novel I'm working on now, I'm postulating a whole new field called "eobiology"--biology of the origin of life--made possible because of the study of the ancient remains of organics in martian paleolakes and paleoseas. I'm also assuming that life evolved on Mars; in fact, that it may have evolved there first and been blasted onto Earth by a meteorite (perhaps that's why some of us want to "return" so much!).

Of course, if we fund current life, the effort to send people is made more complicated because of contamination of both worlds (and contamination is not just a scientific issue; like nuclear power, it is a political and emotional issue as well).

-- RobS

Ian · 2003-07-07 12:53:48

I think that there will be a lot of objections to a human mission to mars. I think that this will happen because I heard somewhere that there was a whole group very much opposed to humans going into space and this was back in the 1960's before the apollo moon missions and the first space mission. What can be done in case groups like that organize against a mars mission?

Shaun Barrett · 2003-07-07 19:52:29

Maybe that's why NASA is appearing to eschew plans to prove there's life on Mars today. (The MERs aren't equipped to look for life - they're basically robotic geologists)
If the luddites and ultra-greenies get absolute proof of a Martian biosphere, however poor it may be in comparison to Earth's, they'll start the mother and father of campaigns to stop all future exploration.
Even if the organisms are found to be related to terrestrial microbes (and I'm sure they will be), it'll make no difference.
These people will use any excuse to halt progress.

Maybe NASA isn't as dumb as it looks! ???

sethmckiness · 2003-07-08 00:14:12

Maybe NASA isn't as dumb as it looks! by Shaun Barrett

Hmm, must be a coincidence..

Ian · 2003-07-08 08:52:41

If people find microbes on mars, then maybe they'll want to investigate it more.

Bill White · 2003-07-08 09:27:25

Check out the Mars Society website - one key speaker at the August convention will discuss how to retreat from Mars if we find life.

RobertDyck · 2003-07-08 10:06:34

Check out the Mars Society website - one key speaker at the August convention will discuss how to retreat from Mars if we find life.

I know, I have been thinking of a rebuttal already. Most sessions do have an opportunity for the audience to ask questions after, maybe I should have a written rebuttal prepared. I argue that if we do find microbes on Mars (probably archae) that gives a very strong requirement to explore Mars and establish a permanent science base.

I suppose the argument is that life independently evolved on another world could eventually evolve into sentient life, so we should leave it alone. But life on Earth took 2 billion years before multi-celled organisms evolved. That was in ideal conditions for bacterial life. It took another 2 billion years and a little more before humans evolved. Scientists estimate that in about 5 billion years our Sun will die; it will expand into a red giant and incinerate all the inner planets, including Earth and Mars. In fact, it will probably expand to engulf the inner plants. In the current dessert conditions of Mars, life is evolving much more slowly. If Archae is the most advance life on Mars, it would have to evolve into prokaryotic bacteria, then into eukaryotic cells, then into multi-celled organisms, then all the way up the evolutionary ladder to intelligent animals, then to sentience. There is insufficient time for any archae to evolve into sentient life on Mars.

So if primitive single-cell organisms are all that will ever be on Mars, then we are justified in not only studying it, but colonising Mars. In fact, the exchange of rocks between Earth and Mars has probably resulted in life from each planet impacting the evolution on the other. If life from Mars has introduced diseases on Earth, or otherwise affected life on Earth, then we need to study that life.

Bill White · 2003-07-08 10:55:18

My rebuttal has been put forth at NewMars already, in bits and pieces in a discussion with Adrian and others. Buried deep in these threads.

As I recall, I argued that any Marsian life must be the hardy survivors of a warmer wetter past not the precursors of a future Marsian Gaia. Mars lacks the dynamic geology and dynamic variable climate needed for vigorous evolutionary processes. Earth has so many Goldilocks conditions - so many factors are not "too this" or "too that" but just right not only to sustain life but to facilitate robust evolution. The Earth is dynamic,not static. Mars climate and geology is very static/stagnant by comparison.

Our Moon, for example, creates ocean tides. Millenia ago numerous poor sea creatures got stranded at low tide and died, until a random mutation allowed one to breathe air. Plate tectonics has also played a role in Terran evolution.

Mars lacks such processes and lacks the circumstances to drive evolution. Marsian life, * IF * any there be (and I am skeptical) is trapped in a dead end with no where to go. If Mars life exists such life has value yet its long term survival probably requires human intervention.

Is it "better" for us to leave Mars alone and allow the hypothetical Marsian microbes go extinct sooner or later or is it "better" for the Marsian microbes, trapped in a dead end existence, to be rescued by Terrans and remain living for as long as Terran life survives in the solar system?

Mars climate and geology has been stagnant for a long, long time (or so I read) - if Marsian life is capable for creating a Marsian Gaia and engulfing the Red Planet it would have happened already. The lack of an obvious Marsian Gaia tells me there is (a) no life on Mars; or (b) only fossils; or (c ) a few straggling survivors remaining from a past Gaia and those survivors * NEED * our help.

We must be damn careful not to contaminate potential niches of Marsian life but we cannot stay away.

clark · 2003-07-08 10:58:44

Well said Bill!

Ian · 2003-07-10 08:45:16

If mars every had water, did it ever have an ocean and if that ocean existed, were there tides, possibly from the moon or phobos and deimos? Were phobos and deimos once one moon or did they break apart in some asetroid collision that may have broken up the moon into phobos and deimos? Or were they captured asteroid's?

RobertDyck · 2003-07-10 09:27:53

There might have been an ocean. The depression in the north is large enough, and has a coastal slope like the banks of an ocean. There was some debate whether that is actually the remnant of an ancient shore line, or a geological feature such as a fault line. I myself was sceptical of the claims that it is without doubt a shore line. However, with the hydrogen discovered by Odyssey's gamma ray spectrometer, there appears to be enough water in permafrost to fill that ocean basin. Odyssey found where the water went.

Tides are something else. Phobos and Deimos are too small to cause tides, at least tides like we are used to on Earth. Furthermore, Phobos has an orbital period of 0.31910 days; that is it orbits Mars once every 7 hours 39.5 minutes. Mars rotates beneath it, but its orbit is so quick it would rise and set several times each day and in the opposite direction (rise in the West, set in the East). Any tides from Phobos would rise and fall twice in that time; it would rise once when Phobos is on the same side of Mars as the astronaut is standing, once when on the opposite side. The tide would fall when Phobos is 90? to the line of longitude the astronaut is standing on. I don't think there is enough time for the waters of an entire ocean to move that quickly. Furthermore, Phobos is 1.06*10^16 kg while Luna (Earth's moon) is 7.35*10^22 kg. That means Luna is 7,000,000 times as massive. The tides caused by gravity from Phobos would be so slight you would require high precision instruments to detect it.

Deimos is farther from Mars and smaller; only 1.80*10^15 kg with an orbital period of 30 hours 17.9 minutes. Tides from Deimos would not only be insignificant, they would be out of sync from Phobos.

The surface spectrum of Deimos and Phobos both match C-type carbonaceous chondrite asteroids. They were separate asteroids that were captured by Mars.

Bill White · 2003-07-10 09:32:09

Without tides, ocean life evolving into dry land life would seem more difficult to accomplish. Not necessarily impossible, just far more difficult.

Thoughts on this?

dickbill · 2003-07-10 10:18:49

processes. Earth has so many Goldilocks conditions - so many factors are not "too this" or "too that" but just right not only to sustain life but to facilitate robust evolution. The Earth is dynamic,not static. Mars climate and geology is very static/stagnant by comparison.
Our Moon, for example, creates ocean tides.

Not just the tides, they are many other factors that we shouldn't ignore or underestimate.
The presence of a massive Jupiter, for example, influences the rate of fall of comets on the early earth. Jupiter has sucked a great deal of comets, no doubt that without Jupiter, Earth would have enjoyed a higher rate of sterilizing impactors. Still, comets are necesssary, they bring water and organics molecules to the early earth prebiotic soup, without them, not sure life could have developped. Other factor: the sun itself has a high, quite unusual content of metal and heavy elements, so the primitive nebulae composition may have been beneficial to the earth composition.

If we consider just the Earth-system caracteristics and exclude all these extra-earth factors, then I would say that the presence of the moon, providing tides and stabilization of the earth axis of inclination at about 24 degres, is very important. Still, IMO, it is impossible to state that even without the moon, even without tides, tectonic, comets etc, life on earth could not have happened and evolved.

RobS · 2003-07-10 23:22:52

We really have no idea whether tides were crucial for the origin of life. There is an argument to be made that they greatly help the movement of life from the water to the dry land, because tides provide a zone where marine organisms are exposed to drying twice a day. But no one is talking about Martian land plants and animals anyway, just microorganisms.

-- RobS

Bill White · 2003-07-11 07:20:26

We really have no idea whether tides were crucial for the origin of life. There is an argument to be made that they greatly help the movement of life from the water to the dry land, because tides provide a zone where marine organisms are exposed to drying twice a day. But no one is talking about Martian land plants and animals anyway, just microorganisms.
-- RobS

All life is precious yet life's greatest value, in my opinion, is it potential to grow in complexity, to bootstrap complexity.

If Marsian circumstances do not permit Marsian microbes any hope of evolving future complexity (multi-celled, sentient, etc. . . ) I am less distressed by the propect of preserving those microbes in a human made environment after we alter their "natural" environment, which is Mars.

Whether Marsian microbes are the precursors of a future Marsian Gaia (or a past Gaia that might return) or whether they are the straggling survivors of a warmer wetter past that can never return greatly affects the moral calculus raised by Dr. McKay with his proposal to retreat from Mars if life is found.

IMHO

dickbill · 2003-07-11 09:58:41

We really have no idea whether tides were crucial for the origin of life. There is an argument to be made that they greatly help the movement of life from the water to the dry land, because tides provide a zone where marine organisms are exposed to drying twice a day. But no one is talking about Martian land plants and animals anyway, just microorganisms.
-- RobS
All life is precious yet life's greatest value, in my opinion, is it potential to grow in complexity, to bootstrap complexity.
If Marsian circumstances do not permit Marsian microbes any hope of evolving future complexity (multi-celled, sentient, etc. . . ) I am less distressed by the propect of preserving those microbes in a human made environment after we alter their "natural" environment, which is Mars.
Whether Marsian microbes are the precursors of a future Marsian Gaia (or a past Gaia that might return) or whether they are the straggling survivors of a warmer wetter past that can never return greatly affects the moral calculus raised by Dr. McKay with his proposal to retreat from Mars if life is found.
IMHO

Recognizing life might be more tricky. What if Mars never went past the stage of prebiotic soup, with barely some autoreplicative molecules present. The equivalent of that putative RNA world present on earth before the DNA world took place or even something more primitive.

Would you call a martian organic molecule of some hundreds atoms, capable of limited self replication, alive ? and redraw of MArs for that reason. There is a long way for that molecule before it becomes an information coding device.

There is something very perturbing, for me at leat, to see how much people care about some bugs because they are martian, while in the same time, human life on earth is treated like ch' right now.

Don't kill the martian bugs, OK, but don't make ridiculous grand statement making a bug equal of a man.

sethmckiness · 2003-07-11 11:15:45

With the geologic history of Mars being farely slow, a very high resolution photo survey, or, albiet it me to say it, a manned geologic expidition will be able to prove it by stream sedimentation. even without a tide, there will still be wave, these waves will create sandstone sedimintation in such a pattern that is easily recoginable, looks like sand dune only and inch across. I have seen examples in Wisconsin that are 1.9 billion years old. The water question will answer itself upon signifcant investigation either byt .25" resolution camera(yes we have the technology) or by manned flight investigation.

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