Mission to Mars Read online

  An initial goal of a settlement is to build up an infrastructure at one location, Mackenzie reported in 2012 at the 15th annual International Mars Society Convention. “Assuming the settlement is located near the resources it needs, such as an ice deposit, we only need mobility to get to those resources. A variety of spare parts are needed for exploration missions. But a settlement should have manufacturing facilities. Since we can manufacture replacement parts, fewer spare parts are needed.”

  Mackenzie stressed that the mind-set of Mars homesteaders versus those taking up short-term residence there is completely different. Explorers plan to return to their families and Earth while settlers are there to start a new community and new families. His research conclusion is that there may be noteworthy inefficiencies if we design systems only for human exploration, only to later adapt those systems for settlement. “We should not waste resources developing equipment only used for exploration—other than mobility systems. It would be unfortunate if settlement were delayed forever due to a perceived need to develop technologies which are needed for exploration … but not needed for settlement,” he suggested.

  Those who take the “deposit, no return” voyages to Mars can begin, I believe, to ascertain what can be done in the way of “terraforming” the red planet. That process would alter the face of Mars, intentionally changing its environment to make it a less hostile, highly livable place for humans and to support homesteading the planet. If feasible, and being such a long-term initiative for those on Mars, actions taken must be in concert with informed opinion here on Earth. Specialists, assessing data available, would advise on projected enabling steps if terraforming is to proceed.

  The surface area of Mars is equivalent to the land area of Earth. Once a human presence on the red planet is established, a second home for humankind is possible. A growing settlement on Mars is, in essence, an “assurance” policy. Not only is the survival of the human race then assured, but the ability to reach from Mars into the resource-rich bounty of the Martian satellites and the nearby asteroids is also possible. These invaluable resources can be tapped to sustain increasing numbers of Martian settlers, as well as to foster expanded interplanetary commerce and large-scale industrial activities to benefit the home planet—Earth. Of course, some will insist on building outer solar system cyclers as humanity continues bounding into the universe at large.

  How Do We Do It?

  Mars is key to humanity’s future in space. It is the closest planet that has all the resources needed to support life and technological civilization. Its complexity uniquely demands the skills of human explorers, who will pave the way for human settlers.

  These words are from Robert Zubrin, a creative astronautical engineer and president of the Mars Society, a group dedicated to further the exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. He is an energetic, effervescent, vocal, and steadfast spokesperson for putting into high gear what he terms the Mars Direct approach—a sustained humans-to-Mars plan that he has scripted.

  As author of the pioneering and highly detailed book The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must, Zubrin advocates a minimalist, live-off-the-land approach to space exploration, allowing for maximum results with minimum investment.

  Although I differ with aspects of Mars Direct—favoring use of cyclers, pre-placement of Mars habitation modules via teleoperation from Phobos—I applaud Zubrin’s spirited nature that is part of a movement that is hastening the day for human settlement of Mars.

  Zubrin’s blueprint for the red planet uses existing launch technology and makes use of the Martian atmosphere to generate rocket fuel, extracting water from the Martian soil, and eventually using the abundant mineral supplies of Mars for construction purposes. As scripted, the Zubrin plan drastically lowers the amount of material that must be launched from Earth to Mars. That’s a key factor to any practical plan for Mars exploration and homesteading.

  The general outline of Mars Direct is straightforward, as outlined on the Mars Society’s informative website, www.marssociety.org.

  In the first year of implementation, an Earth return vehicle (ERV) is launched to Mars, arriving six months later. Upon landing on the surface, a rover is deployed that contains the nuclear reactors necessary to generate rocket fuel for the return trip. After 13 months, a fully fueled ERV will be sitting on the surface of Mars.

  During the next launch window, 26 months after the ERV launches, two more craft are sent up: a second ERV and a habitat module—“hab” for short, which is the astronauts’ ship. This time the ERV is sent on a low-power trajectory, designed to arrive at Mars in eight months—so that it can land at the same site as the hab, in the event the first ERV experiences any problems.

  Assuming that the first ERV works as planned, the second ERV is landed at a different site, thus opening up another area of Mars for exploration by the next crew.

  After a year and a half on the Martian surface, the first crew returns to Earth, leaving behind the hab, the rovers associated with it, and any ongoing experiments conducted there. They land on Earth six months later to a hero’s welcome, with the next ERV/hab already on course for the red planet.

  With two launches during each launch window—one ERV and one hab—more and more of Mars will be ready for human occupancy. Eventually multiple habs can be sent to the same site and linked together, allowing for the beginning of a permanent human settlement on the planet Mars.

  To explore these possibilities, the Mars Society has been running simulated Mars missions in order to test supply requirements, mission hardware, and the ability of crew members to work together under Mars-like settings. Over the years, volunteers have peopled the society’s Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, located on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, and a Mars Desert Research Station, set up near the southern Utah town of Hanksville. Other outposts are in position in the Australian outback and Iceland.

  Simulating Mars exploration on Earth

  (Illustration Credit 7.7)

  The Mars Society’s call to attract volunteers to take part in simulated life on Mars scenarios is as direct as Zubrin’s plan for settlement of the far-off world: “Hard work, no pay, eternal glory.”

  Mars Society activists sense, as I do, the untapped reservoir of individuals who value the psychology of becoming a pioneering settler, ready to jump at the opportunity to leave Earth and reside on the red planet. History shows us that people are willing to risk their lives for great exploits of exploration. Consider the founding of Jamestown in Virginia or the Pilgrims setting foot in Plymouth, Massachusetts—these were daring one-way journeys that led to establishment of permanent settlements.

  Why, then, should the call of a New World Mars settlement be any different?

  SpaceX is developing private Mars operations.

  (Illustration Credit 7.8)

  Here an artist’s rendering depicts Dragon spacecraft on the planet.

  (Illustration Credit 7.9)

  Red Dragon: A Private Affair With Mars

  The reach for Mars need not be a governmental event.

  One private-sector plan is being led by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a U.S. commercial space firm birthed in June 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk. He gained his fortunes, in part, from co-founding and then selling PayPal, the online money transfer and payment system.

  In May 2012 SpaceX made history when its Dragon spacecraft flew atop the company’s Falcon 9 booster to become the first commercial vehicle to rendezvous with and then attach to the International Space Station. Dragon is a free-flying, reusable spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. This space agency initiative was put in place to spearhead the delivery of crew and cargo to the International Space Station—but turning over these tasks to private companies. The SpaceX Dragon vehicle is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used for transporting cargo and/or crew members to low Earth orbit.

  A restless billionaire, SpaceX’s
Musk is devoted to taking his Dragon creation to extreme space, breaking away from the confines of Earth. His target: Mars.

  Under a proposed SpaceX concept, dubbed Red Dragon, the plan is to first send life-looking scientific devices to the red planet using his firm’s Falcon Heavy booster. That mission would be followed in later years by sending a human to Mars on a timetable far faster than NASA’s. Helping to flesh out technical details of the SpaceX Red Dragon enterprise is a tiger team at NASA’s Ames Research Center. They have been sketching out use of the SpaceX craft to search for past or present life on Mars and to sample reservoirs of water ice known to exist in the shallow subsurface of the red planet.

  How this plan evolves over the next few years deserves watching. For the moment, Musk is passionate about the adventure and settlement of Mars. Ultimately, it is vital, he says, that humankind be on a path to becoming a multiplanet species. If that human trajectory is not pursued, he observes, “we’ll simply be hanging out on Earth until some calamity claims us.”

  A Menagerie of Mars Machines

  There are many ways to investigate Mars. A full array of robotic vehicles could be teleoperated by a crew orbiting the planet or stationed on one of its two moons. These same devices might also be deployed and operated by landed crews to boost and expand their exploration presence on the planet.

  Remotely piloted Mars gliders and balloons can take to the air. Ground-thumping penetrators, deep-drilling robots, and slithering android snakes could be let loose. Sensor-laden tumbleweed-like vehicles can roll across the planet like dandelions, propelled by Martian breezes to scout about the terrain of Mars using minimum power. Robot hoppers possibly will jump from one spot to another … and then another—imbued with a “nose for science,” say to use special devices able to sniff the Martian air for traces of biologically produced methane leaking from underground haunts of microbes.

  Early on, specially equipped, sterilized automatons will be set to learn more about water on modern Mars. And where there’s water, there could be life.

  Here is a sampling of inventive and equipment-carrying machines—built to scout out Mars in difficult terrain, hop across the planet from spot to spot, plow into its surface, and even take to the air:

  • The Axel Rover System is a low-mass robot that can rappel off cliffs and trek agilely over steep landscape. It can look into canyons, gullies, fissures, and craters. Axel can operate both upside down and right side up and is built to scoop up material for later analysis. By using a tether, Axel unreels itself from an anchor point, say from a larger lander or rover, to perform daring descents where humans would find such traverses difficult or too dangerous.

  • The Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey of Mars (ARES) robot aircraft is able to wing its way over Mars. Among its many sky-high duties: Search for possible biogenic gases and volcanic gases, measure the Martian atmosphere, and scout out sites for sample-return missions—even help identify spots to land habitats for a future Mars base.

  • The Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources (THOR) project uses projectiles to search out below-surface water ice that may support underground microbial life. THOR aims to use a direct-hit approach to blast out material from beneath the surface of Mars—material that will then be analyzed by an orbiting observer craft.

  • Nuclear-powered “hoppers” leap from one Martian site to another, examining each locale. An armada of these jumping Mars vehicles swiftly charts large stretches of the Martian surface in just a few years. Hauling science gear from point to point, each hopper sucks up the carbon dioxide–rich Martian atmosphere for use as propellant. On cue, stored heat from a radioisotope power source hits the propellant and shoots the hopper in an arcing path toward a new landing area.

  Automated vehicles must be designed to investigate challenging features on Mars. A tethered rover might manage steep terrain.

  (Illustration Credit 7.10)

  On the Books: MAVEN and InSight

  At NASA and elsewhere, sending future robotic missions to Mars remains a cash-strapped activity. However, two NASA spacecraft have been funded to depart Earth for Mars in 2013 and in 2016, respectively. One is an orbiter, the other a lander, and both will add to our reservoir of knowledge about the Mars of the past and how the planet fits into our future.

  The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission is designed to survey the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the sun and solar wind. The goal of MAVEN is to unravel the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time. Where did the atmosphere—and the water—go? Basically, this orbiter is to probe how Mars turned hostile.

  The ARES robot aircraft can test the chemistry of the Martian atmosphere.

  (Illustration Credit 7.11)

  The THOR project plans to use projectiles to search Mars’s surface.

  (Illustration Credit 7.12)

  In circling the red planet, MAVEN’s sensor suite will determine the loss of volatile compounds—such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and water—from the Mars atmosphere. That inquiry will give scientists a way to look back into the history of Mars’s atmosphere and climate, gauge its liquid water status, and disclose just how the planet appears to have become increasingly inhospitable for life.

  Selected in August 2012, NASA’s InSight mission to Mars is scheduled for departure from Earth in 2016. InSight’s snappy name stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport—and that says it all. InSight will get to the “core” of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars.

  Is the core of Mars solid, or liquid like Earth’s? Data collected will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve. Carrying sophisticated geophysical gear, InSight will delve beneath the surface of Mars, detecting the fingerprints of the processes of terrestrial planet formation, as well as measuring the planet’s “pulse” (seismology), “temperature” (heat flow probe), and “reflexes” (precision tracking).

  Once on Mars, this craft will take the heartbeat and vital signs of the red planet for an entire Martian year, two Earth years.

  Drilling underneath the red Martian topsoil, InSight makes use of a stake called the Tractor Mole, within which an internal hammer rises and falls, moving the stake down in the soil and dragging a tether along behind it. The German-built mole will descend up to 16 feet below the surface, where its temperature sensors will judge how much heat is coming from Mars’s interior, and that reveals the planet’s thermal history.

  Proposed nuclear-powered hopper jumps between sites on Mars.

  (Illustration Credit 7.13)

  The InSight lander is outfitted with a seismometer to take precise measurements of quakes and other internal activity on Mars. Radio signals sent between InSight and Earth will allow researchers to precisely gauge the wobble of Mars, a technique to judge the distribution of the red planet’s internal structures and better grasp how the planet is built.

  Building the Escalator to Mars

  My approach for homesteading Mars is via the Purdue/Aldrin Cycler. First of all, keep in mind two terms when considering this transportation system: There are cycler trajectories and cycler vehicles.

  I have long admired and worked with James Longuski, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University. Along with his colleagues, we have forged ways to launch a substantially large vehicle that would provide radiation shielding and spacious quarters in order to guarantee the safety and comfort of outbound-to-Mars and inbound-to-Earth astronaut crews.

  Cycler trajectories are the paths that cycler vehicles travel on. In many ways, they can be thought of as the highways on which space vehicles travel. Cycler trajectories are routes used over and over again on paths around the sun. These trajectories are identified by using the laws of celestial mechanics—essentially Newton’s laws.

  Interestingly, to create 21st-century sustainable space transportation architecture I�
��m counting on laws of motion compiled by Sir Isaac Newton in his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687. Newton’s laws of motion have led to a trio of physical laws that form the basis for celestial mechanics. They describe the relationship between the forces acting on a body and its motion due to those forces. My cycler design depends on these principles.

  The Aldrin Cycler is a cycler trajectory that travels around the sun, making close flybys of Earth and Mars, a trajectory that takes years to complete and then repeats every succeeding years. If a vehicle is launched into the Aldrin Cycler trajectory, it would continuously shuttle between the two planets forever, without requiring a significant amount of propellant to keep on track.

  The cycler vehicle does not stop when it flies by Earth. The astronauts have to board a small but speedy space taxi that catches up with the cycler. The cycler is like a bus that repeats its route over and over, but never stops. As a future space traveler you’ll have to run fast to catch up and get on the bus!

  But once the astronauts are on the cycler vehicle, they can relax and enjoy the ride to Mars. When they arrive at Mars they must board a small vehicle that makes a fiery entry into the atmosphere of Mars. If the astronauts do not get off at Mars, then they will travel back to Earth, getting off years after they first left Earth.

  By using the Aldrin Cycler trajectory it takes less than 6 months to get to Mars. However, any astronaut not disembarking at Mars would spend 20 more months getting back to Earth. My Purdue University associates have identified Aldrin Cycler trajectories that make a short trip—6 months—to Earth from Mars, and a long trip—20 months—to go from Earth to Mars.