After Mars - And why we should go indirect.

ANTIcarrot. · 2004-05-14 14:57:52

Let's say everything goes to plan (for the most part) and sometime in the next thirty years a bunch of humans get to mars, say as long as the mission dictates and then get back home again. What then? The more successful the first or second mission is, the lesser need there is for later missions. The less successful they are the harder it is to justify more. And I feel fairly confident in saying that NASA isn't going to cough up for colonising the place.

So again, what next? How do you keep the space programme going? How do you stop another Apollo crash? It's a big problem, especially with the philosophy of, "Go To Mars. Go Directly To Mars..."

Hence I think that we should go to mars indirectly, and after going to the moon. Firstly because it will force the adoption of more generic designs which can be used in places other than the red planet. And secondly it will plant the idea in the minds of the public and politicians that the hardware can be used for other things.

<rant>And personally I think a luna base would be a good thing, as the moon has bulk materials we might be able to exploit in the near future. Like HE3 & LOX to LEO. Yes I know, small might. But a still a better prospect than mars. At the very least such a base should act as a break to stop a backslide in launch capacity.</rant>

Anyway, back to the core questions:
1) What next after mars?
2) Would Mars Direct contain the same flaw Moon Direct did in Apollo?

ANTIcarrot.

Ian Flint · 2004-05-14 16:55:43

Would Mars Direct contain the same flaw Moon Direct did in Apollo?

It may contain some of the problems of Apollo, but there are some big differences in Apollo and Mars Direct.

Apollo missions lasted less than two weeks each while Mars Direct will be 2 1/2 years. With Apollo everything was made to be disposable. With MD some things, like the Ares rockets are disposable, but the Hab and all that is left on Mars is meant to be reusable. Assets will be built up on Mars with each mission. So, even if Mars turns out to be an albatross (sp?), like ISS it will be hard to just drop without a backlash from its supporters. And, unlike Mir or ISS a Mars Direct base will continue to grow with each visit, making it more and more of an asset over time.

What next after mars?

The MD Habs are built to operate not only on Mars but also on the Moon, asteroids, interplanetary space, or in planetary orbits. They can hold up to 3 years of consumables without resupply. So, after (during, or before) Mars they can be used for just about anything.

So, it looks like the Mars Habitat is the answer to all your questions. It is a leave behind, versitile, reusable, space asset. So, when your going to the Moon or an asteroid don't just ride the ERV. Take along a Hab so you'll have something to go back to next time.

Ian Flint · 2004-05-14 17:00:46

Here's another thought.

The Hab can fill in the gaps of the Mars indirect/SEI approach. After the Habs are used on Mars for a mission or two the powers that be might want to fill in the infrastructure. Since the Hab is fully space rated it can be used as the core modules for space stations.

Dook · 2004-05-14 18:46:06

Zubrin's Mars Direct idea was not just about how to get to Mars quickly and efficiently once. It was about how to do that and continue doing that in an effort to eventually make mars liveable.

MarsDog · 2004-05-14 20:15:25

The motivation is to occupy something far away, permanently. Sooner and further the better. ISS is too close - several space stations should be orbiting around the Sun, resupplied occasionally. Motivation for Moon occupation is to supply materials for spaceship building. Mars is conveniently there, with all the raw ingredients, just waiting for the technology to develop.
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The safety play is to orbit Space Stations around the Sun, soon as possible. The technology for permanent Mars occupation would develop from it.

GCNRevenger · 2004-05-14 20:56:02

I have serious misgivings about the "Habs = Colony" concept... as far as pressurized volume go, they are a terrible investment for the mass & money, and the way MarsDirect is designed, there is no way to go without one. Secondly, the actual amount of mass brought to Mars by the Hab and ERV that isn't involved with leaving or returning to Earth is pretty small, and I personally don't think that its enough to do more than keep the crew alive and maybe do a little science... MD has pretty optimistic mass estimates as it is.

Then there is the direct flight itself, which without the use of an expendable and expensive NTR rocket limits the mass of any vehicle manned or unmanned by the size of the Ares rocket. It isn't likly that any HLLV bigger than Ares will be built, overall limiting what you can send to Mars per-flight. Then there is the issue that MarsDirect is unreuseable essentially in its entirety, which makes a high fixed cost for mass sent, the real determining factor of what you can do... This is all assuming that MD can accuratly put down the payloads close together time and time again at all.

I think a cycler ship of some sort... NTR engines with advanced Tantalum ceramics for multiple firings, aerobraking on both ends of the journey, fueled by HLLV, loaded by HLLV or EELV/EELV+, and crewed by CEV flights... The way to avoid a Martian Apollo is to have the hardware available to do "after Marsfall" before you go the first time, so its only a small step fiscally and technologicly, rather than having to throw it all away and start over.

Edit: In fact I think this is one of the weaker parts of the whole MD schema, and the Hab thing tastes to me as a veiled excuse to defend the "Mars! Mars now! Now now now!" that surely lurks in Dr. Z that MD apears to be designed for... It is a Martian Apollo, the fastest and barest minimum plan for a manned flight that is practical to pull of.

Dook · 2004-05-14 22:09:16

Reply to Marsdog: I don't think the motivation is to simply occupy something far away. I have no interest in a space station orbiting the sun and would not support it unless there is some significant science that can only be conducted there and not from earth or otherwise. Mars holds my interest because, it's Mars! Earth like in so many ways but dead because of some unfortunate cosmic roll of the dice.

I think the basic purpose of the Mars Direct idea was to jab a finger in NASA's eye. All of NASA's great minds and leaders came up with an impossible $450 billion concept to get there. Exactly what you would expect from a government agency that's unable to think outside the box. Then along comes this scientist who's got it all figured out for one-ninth the cost. Sigh no wonder NASA fought it. It made them look like idiots. The surprising thing to me is that President Bush Sr didn't fire the NASA administrator on the spot.

idiom · 2004-05-14 22:25:27

A huge part of continued Mars work, is native creation of heavy raw materials, Pig Iron, Steel and plastics.

If you don't have to import your living space then the whole project gets a lot easier. But you have to get all the foundry stuff up there real soon, like third mission. Otherwise your Cycler has to bring everything for building domes, tunnels roads and rails. And any sorts of Glass being imported on mass is a dream.

Tonnes of Solar panels will have to be imported for a start, along with any elements Mars turns out to be deficient in.

On the other hand I think the MD habs may be more suited to the Moon than to Mars anyway. Landing one and you have a three year stay on the moon just like that! You probaly want to dig a big hole and bury the thing in the first week or so though cuz of the rads and stuff. But really any colonization project is going to start with tuna cans to support the real development.

In earth-side construction of large project the first things that get built are Fences and Port-a-coms and Port a Loos. Before the even dig the holes for foundations, they build a lot of temporary infrastructure to support the long term effort.

There were plans to follow on from Apollo but they got killed. Half of Apollo itself got killed.

I think the first mission there needs to be one way. Otherwise its entirely possible long term stuff might be left for mission 18.

ANTIcarrot. · 2004-05-15 06:15:17

A small clarifacation: I wasn't talking about Mars Direct, but rather the feeling amongst some that we should get to mars as quickly as possible and screw everything else. I was also talking about NASA, not the Mars Society, since for the forseeable future they will be the ones going there and paying for it.

Why would they want to go a second, third or forth time?
If they wouldn't, where should they go next?
How do we stop congresss and the public yanking the carpet out from under like they did with Apollo?

ANTIcarrot.

deagleninja · 2004-05-15 07:28:26

It is a common misconception that the Earth will be doing everything as far as exploration goes. The main reason to go to "Mars now now now" is that our future martians will be much better suited to explore and settle the solar system than we are.

A colony on the Moon will not be able to devote resources to exploration anytime soon. The larger a Moon colony gets, the more resources it is going to need. If we place a colony on the Moon now, it is likely that they will be out of native water in one hundred years, assuming of coarse that it has any. The Moon will always be under the control of its sponcering countries because of its dependance and close proximity.

Mars on the other hand, offers so much more. Mars is the only place in the solar system that can provide a real home for humanity. A mission to Mars will be nothing like Apollo. The Moon is dead. Everywhere you go it looks pretty much the same, this is not true for Mars. I know that if we go to Mars we won't stop going, because the public won't allow it.

Apollo died because let's face, the Moon sucks. It is an oversized asteroid with the same benefits and more drawbacks. Also, people were under the impression that we could and would go back any time we wanted, so let's deal with Vietnam first.

Mars, being further away, is protected from that kind of chop-logic. We will have to support our people there, it won't be a choice for Congress to make. A colony on Mars will be the start of humanity becoming an interplanetary species and this is totally different than a few visits to the Moon.

Our first colony on Mars is going to have a profound psycological effect on everyone. Suddenly, anything will seem possible: Europa, Mercury, the Moon, asteroids. These are the future after Mars.

AntiCarrot, you ask what's next after Mars? Everything. The technology we develop for Mars is going to open up the entire solar system to us. Should KBO's become homes to humanity, the stars are even within our grasp, or at least the closest stars.

idiom · 2004-05-15 08:23:41

Whatever Mars offers, it would offer the same fifty or one hundred years now.

The fear presented is that once we have gone, we will return too soon to discover what Mars offers and never return to find out.

Is there anyway to garuntee that the first mission or two will be followed up by anything substantial? Or will they run into "budgetary constraints".

Maybe if the crew simply didn't light the return candle...

GCNRevenger · 2004-05-15 10:36:12

Well MarsDirect is the embodiment of the "now now now!" philosophy, but you get the idea. MarsDirect and any other direct plans - which I define as payload sent direct from the Cape' with total fueled vehicle + TMI stage mass not exceeding the throw weight of the launcher, no orbital rendevous except for crew - will essentially prevent colonization because you can't send much mass this way without getting very expensive. A reuseable vehicle powerd by somthing with substantial thrust superior to LOX/LH (almost certainly an advanced Nerva-NTR) for the first mission would reduce the "fiscal friction" to subsequent missions especially since little extra vehicle development would be needed.

I don't think its really sinking in how little industrial capacity any Martian settlement will have for the next century or two, deagleninja. Martian settlers will be doing great just to maintain their average life span on parity with Earth while accepting new colonists at all... All materials will be sent from Earth initially because of the huge advantage of Earth's capacity, and the goal should be for the colony to subsist without life support assistance so future flights can focus on growth.

All exploration for the forseeable future will almost certainly be based from the Earth, barring a breakthrough in nuclear fusion or the finding of a semi-intact comet on the Moon, because Earth's industrial capacity makes it easier to travel from Earth than it does from anywhere else. Also, no propulsion technology, even Nerva-NTR, exsists that can make a trip to Jupiter or beyond practical from Earth or Mars.

I think that it is a valid concern that people, especially legeslators, will get bored with Mars just like we did the Moon: the Moon race, to see the destination rise every night visible and captivating, to set foot on this new world... was not enough to even televise the third trip. The idea that we stopped because the Moon has nothing to offer is a poor argument I think considering this, and even if it is true Mars has nothing immediate to offer either except pictures, rocks, and bugs. The pictures from the Moon are capitivating and pretty too, how will the ones from Mars strike Earthings differently?

I see no compelling case that makes a small journey to Mars, like MarsDirect, any different than Apollo. If we build a larger reuseable ship capable of limited colonization work, then the argument changes; instead of asking "why should we go on?" it becomes "we have the ship, why not?"

deagleninja · 2004-05-15 13:48:42

GCNR, you make some valid points and please don't take offence when I disagree with you, but I think you and many others here are underestimating technological growth. Most of the concerns about the successfulness of a martian colony are grounded in technology of today.

Put another way, does it seem reasonable that colonists are going to spend most of their time watching their gardens grow or factories work? No, they will not. Of coarse a biologist will have to moniter the garden and a constructioner will have to do some manual labor.

With a decent digging machine and nuclear powered kiln colonists can make sizeable underground habitats in no time. The most difficult part is going to be creating an airtight door from indigenous materials. And one door could be sent.

I fail to see why a decent colony cannot be started with a dozen people (two manned missions of six). Their primary job will be the creation of an underground habitat and growing food. Hardware they need can be sent much cheaper than any manned mission would cost and software uploads are basically free. Their primary mission would be to provide enough shelter, air and food for themselves and one other. Now you have acceptable living conditions for a dozen more people.

Think of the ISS. How many countries are now participating in this project now that they see it being built? Once NASA, ESA or RSA builds the initial base others will gladly chip in 5 billion to be represented on Mars.

And idiom I also disagree with you. What Mars offers now that won't be offered in 50-100 years is a challenge. Today it is a challenge, in the future it will not be. Unfortunately, the best reason to send people to Mars isn't a reason countries want to hear. That reason is independance. A colony established now has a chance of being independant of Earth. Independance means a whole new way of thinking. A new voice, if you will, to add to the collective group-mind we call humanity.

If we wait too long to go to Mars, then we will simply be taking Earth with us. We will be taking all the negative attributes that come with a society with too much time on it's hands: racism, greed and apathy.

ANTIcarrot. · 2004-05-15 18:35:33

Deagleninja, GCNR and I are talking about politics, not technology. A colony on Mars could probably work. With a decent nuclear reactor of conventional design (modied for low gravity and cooling problems) could easily be sent to the martian surface; at which point you can brute force life support to work almost indefinately. Such lifting capacity has been available on paper for a long time. The Boeing LEO design for SSPS applications is a prime example.

But it requires money and political will. NASA doesn't want to colonise mars, and so NASA will not colonise mars. The MArs Society wants so, but it won't because it can't afford to and doesn't seem to be in favour of any kind of prior foundation work.

One of the orrigonal ideas I had for this post is would it be better to Go to Mars, or do something else and got to mars as a side trip? Plan Bush II is going to cost some $300B over the next thirty years. For that ammount of money we could build a dozen SSPSs, shove a 500kT asteroid into LEO, or make the DH-1 work. (And I don't care how impractical GCNR thinks it is, for $300B you *could* make it work.

The sensible first step for two of the projects would be a cheap HLLV launcher. (Though they could be done with conventional shuttle capacity at less than $300B and the third is a HLL-system.) At that point Mars becomes easy and cheap; something which I do not believe will happen as long as people fixate on it tunnel-vision.

The other problem wth tunnel-vision is that when you get to the light at the end of the tunnel you usually run out of tunnel. And as GCNR has highlighted, I'm worried the same thing will happen to NASA funding unless steps are taken to avoid it.

ANTIcarrot.

idiom · 2004-05-15 19:24:30

Well Plan bush seems to call for a universal Manned Exploration Vehicle which could land, in theory, pretty much anywhere except maybe Venus. It also sets a lot of principles that are generic rather than mission specific.

The Moon is really not practice for Mars but by going to both with the same infrastructure you ensure the infrastructure is flexible enough to support pretty much any long term space endeavour.

After Mars, the funding will be cut back, but NASA will continue to recieve Billions a year, just fewer billions. And they have to be piped into something. Apollo couldn't be sustained on a reduced budget, because the hardware had to be bought new every time.

The trick, I think, is to make sure that an ecconomic flight system is in place that can be operated on the inevitable reduced budget. I also tend to think Plan Bush lends itself to that fairly well.

GCNRevenger · 2004-05-15 19:54:43

The matter isn't entirely technology-less, since technology influences how difficult and expensive it is to colonize, but the politics is the big question mark. Legeslators are notoriously without vision, and will be a hard matter indeed to convince them that going to stay is worth the billions of dollars it would cost.

Technologicly, building a Mars colony is not all that hard. Domes made of polymers can be brought from Earth and partially burried to provide shielded housing or put on the surface for food and the whole thing fed by Martian water and nuclear energy, but the trouble is getting there which is where the technology comes in. Sort of.

Right now if we go and do a small science mission using a HLLV rocket and shoot the whole thing directly, the mass of stuff you can send in a shot is limited by the rocket's size, which isn't practical to build greater than ~120MT to orbit throw weight, the TMI stage and lander propulsion, and the length of travel time. Overall, this limits the amount of mass you can send per-flight and per-dollar with a MarsDirect style shot (I would figure 25-30MT for a $1.0-1.5+Bn shot), because nothing is reused and the system uses LOX/LH2 chemical fuels.

Hence, the only way to get substantial masses to Mars using MD is to launch more rockets more often, and that will run headlong into the limit of how fast you can launch Ares during the 2-year launch window and that the cost per-flight won't drop much for each additional shot. This is where a reuseable vehicle, initially fueled/loaded by HLLV/EELV and a reuseable lander burning Martian-made fuel comes in, so you can decrease the cost of each additional payload and hence aren't limited to what MD can send.

deagleninja · 2004-05-16 07:07:47

Anticarrot, I wasn't really talking about technology either if you look closely. We all argree that people will go to Mars and one day it will be settled, the question is when. Will we see it in our lifetimes?

By its very nature, a manned mission to Mars won't be like Apollo. The Apollo program was very repetitious offering little new except the occasional golf swing. That is what bored the american public after the newness wore off. Apollo astronauts didn't build anything. They traveled but every destination looked the same. As Oppertunity and Spirit have begun to show us, Mars is a very varied world.

I believe that colonization is a must for holding the public's attention, and more importantly, Congress'. I know that colonization isn't on anyone's books that have a chance to go. All I can say about that is, I hope NASA gets ten year budgets instead of one in this new restructuring. Stable funding is the biggest problem for NASA.

GCNRevenger · 2004-05-16 09:57:56

It would be nice if the general populence + Congress shared your enthusiasm deagle, but I think you ought to take a step back and look at Mars in the context of history...

If that is what Apollo was, repetitive and just seeing the same craters that all look the same, how will this be any different than a trip to Mars? The Moon was just as new and mysterious, including the question of life, especially given the anticent history of it in world cultures. And it was even more present in people's minds since it is so visible and the drama of beating the Communists to it for some degree to decide the future of Earth. And that was not enough.

And what have the rovers brought? Pictures of craters that all look the same! Big deal. You don't see the news raptly following the MERs every move and snapshot do you? The initial Mars missions likly aren't going to see any fantasic vistas for landing site safety and if this is your argument why its not Apollo, then people will scream and wail about wasting billions not sending robots to take the pictures.

Which pretty much leaves only the human exploration and construction of a Mars base as the only "defense" against a Martian Apollo, and I have my doubts... people don't care much about science stations in Antarctica, and don't care much about the ISS, and after we "do Mars" I fear the short attention span and lack of vision will make those billions needed evaporate to fix Earthly roads and buy more pills.

As much as I hate pointing out anything positive about the ISS, which there isn't much, it should be noted that it managed to be actually be built after narrowly (read: less votes than you have fingers on one hand) surviving cancelation repeatedly, even with its high cost in money and blood... ISS managed to survive because it started fairly big and ambitiously, and then once started it could not be stopped... Setting up a perminant base on Mars must be what is sold to congress FIRST, and then send short-term missions to work up to that goal, not send dinky Martian Apollo MD tuna cans and argue for a perminant base after the fact. This will at least make people think about perminant settlement and not a "mission" with a clearly defined end (astronauts get in ERV and come home)... How to make this sell though, I don't know.

quasar777 · 2004-05-16 10:20:30

i wholeheartedly agree w/ the idea mars isn`t the be-all it`s being touted as.

quasar777 · 2004-05-16 10:30:27

& The Moon too often gets glossed-over. it`s extremely easy to as there are obvious deficits in moon efforts.

deagleninja · 2004-05-16 11:54:46

Again, GCNR, many good points.

Yes, a bigger mission is preferable to a smaller one and colonization preferable to exploration. Beyond colonization is of coarse terraforming which would get the greatest support from the general population.

About ISS, yes and no. I would disagree that it has survived solely because it is a big expensive project. It ceratinly hasn't survived as Space Station Freedom which would have been the sole property of the US. The interantional community had come to the rescue there. I know that they can do it again with Mars.

We build our initial base on MD or something derived from it. The plan is sold as a 'cheap' means for occuping Mars.....oops we went over budget...help help! In comes the international community to chip in 5 billion here, 10 billion there, in exchange for representation on Mars.

Antartica is both a good analogy and a poor one. Yes, you are right, people aren't excited about stations there, but why? Because Antartica is 'hands-off' territory. It is protected from industry. And it is important to note that research does go on regardless of a lack of public support.

Landing sites will be choosen because they are safe, but our colonists will not stay put. Mars has canyons, mountains, craters, dune fields, ice caps, blue sunsets, pink skys, two moons, frost and many features that the Moon cannot offer. It is a world with a surface area equal to Earth, not an overgrown asteroid. I would even venture that we will find lakes of liquid water as orbital images suggest.

Unfortunately, NASA hasn't done enough to paint a true picture of Mars. Where are the sounds of wind blowing? Where are the time-lapse images of moving dunes? Where are the movies of sunset on Mars? NASA must work harder to include exciting moments into their missions if they want the public to be excited. From the still images they send back, Mars looks like the Moon only red and just as dead.

How do we keep public interest in Mars? Easy, show change. Show habitats going up (or down?), plants growing in martian dirt, the base expanding. In short, bring industry to Mars or don't go at all.

Mars_Maniac · 2004-05-16 12:05:31

blue sunsets? what you smoking man???

Mars_Maniac · 2004-05-16 12:06:43

hello fellow mars nerds! this is my second post....

Mars_Maniac · 2004-05-16 12:09:44

...and this is my third....ok you get the idea

i got an idea to get people to mars. we can just fly the shuttle up and refeul it then fly it to mars and land it. make spirit clear a runway because its pretty useless anyway. poor thing cant find water

deagleninja · 2004-05-16 12:17:59

Welcome to the forum Mars Maniac.

I haven't actually seen any images of a blue sunset on Mars, but I've heard thats what it would look like. It is apparently very hard to get true-color images from Mars.

Spirit clearing a runway eh? Maybe with future rovers. I don't think that Spirit is up to the task. Also, I believe that the sands of Mars are rather soft and wouldn't support a shuttle landing. Needless to say, the atmosphere of Mars is much thinner meaning that the shuttle would have problems using is for air-resistance and would probably come in too fast.

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Re: After Mars - And why we should go indirect.

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Re: After Mars - And why we should go indirect.

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