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Robert Walker
I'd say of all of those, Elon Musk with SpaceX seems the most likely to be able to deliver the mass needed to Mars.

But there is a lot more than mass needed. You need to send living breathing humans there.

That should be your top priority - to have a closed system habitat and to prove it works in space for longer than a few months without constant input from Earth. That rules out the ISS system - so has to be something new innovative - and nothing has yet been flown into space that could do the job.

But that's also a major challenge. Nobody has figured out how to do that yet, especially in space conditions.

You also have to deal with the spare parts issue. Especially with the Mars One and SpaceX ideas where they expect to have a rapidly expanding population on Mars. Every new member of the population means more supplies to be sent there. A recent MIT study found that with just four crew members on Mars you would already be stretching the current launch capabilities of Earth. You need 15 launches of the falcon heavy to get as far as the first crew of four.

Then you need to continue with more launches for the first crew just for spare parts - this is an ongoing continued commitment. They took account of reduction of the mass of spare parts by using a modular construction with smaller components than are used for the ISS. By the time you get to crew 5, ten years down the line, with 20 colonists on Mars, then you would need 41 Falcon Heavy launches - and by then, with crew on Mars so the mass is needed urgently for their continued survival, these all need to be launched within a short window of opportunity to send the mass to Mars. We just don't have the capability to do that, even with all the launch facilities of the Earth. So - seems not possible with current technology, was their conclusion. See An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan and scroll down to number of launches and recurrent cost estimates. And this is a lower bound on the number of launches required.

That's assuming present day technology. 3D printers could potentially change that, but we are far from the level of technology needed for 3D printers to make a significant impact on the launch mass needed for these components.

On food, they found, surprisingly, that you have least commitment to launch mass, and least cost, if you supply all their food from Earth.

CONTAMINATION BY EARTH LIFE ISSUE


This though I think is the most significant issue, which few studies address at all.

They also have to prove that they can start a colonization of Mars without contaminating it with Earth life or greatly increasing chance of that happening.

I think that's where they will all fail myself. Mars One for instance said, they have consulted with the Planetary Protection Office - but what is their plan? How do they plan to avoid contaminating it? Especially in event of a crash of a human occupied ship on Mars -what is their plan to make sure that Mars is not contaminated?

Or if not, what is their rationale for changing planetary protection rules to permit contamination?

Or - do they think that all the biologists in the world and other space agencies like ExoMars, and India, Russia, China, Japan etc will suddenly lose interest in the prospect of finding life on Mars as soon as someone comes up with a viable plan to send humans there?

Or do they think that humans somehow can carry trillions of microbes to Mars without contaminating it or confusing the search - while robots can't? If so - what is it that's so special about a human occupied ship that makes it less of an issue than a robot?

Or what is their rationale for permitting the mission - moral, legal and scientific - and why?

DETAILS


Human factors should have top priority - as important as mass requirements.

Contamination issues also should have top priority - as if they can't address the planetary protection requirements - then they can't hope to go at this stage of exploration of Mars.

GENERAL HUMAN FACTORS


That's including

  • What level of gravity is needed for health, and what forms of artificial gravity can humans tolerate (spin rates, radii etc)  - nobody knows, and none of these groups seem at all interested in researching it at present - at least - not in space - plenty of work on the ground but you can't duplicate space artificial g conditions adequately on the ground, and there is no way to generate sustained levels of gravity less than full g here.

    There is some interest in researching drugs to reduce the harmful effects of zero gravity - but they are probably only of limited value. There are low cost experiments we could do in space, costing only millions, to find answers to many of these issues. But so far no-one shows any interest in them which to me suggests they are not really serious about their plans.
  • Can we create a closed system habitat or nearly closed system able to sustain humans for years on end without resupply? And not just on the ground, but in space conditions? Again there's been almost no research on this since Biosphere 2 and the early Russian experiments with algae producing oxygen. Why is nobody working on this, if they are serious about interplanetary human flight? This surely should be top priority for Mars One Space X, NASA etc, but it isn't, which again, suggests they aren't really that serious about the human side of it.
  • Can space systems be made so reliable that you don't have to replace damaged and worn components from Earth? Or can we make those components in situ?
  • Can we do anything about the radiation - well there is some interest here - but not so much being done.
  • How reliable are the systems once you have humans on board, with all the complications of dealing with human wastes etc?
     
    We surely need a precursor mission with humans on board, to somewhere closer to hand - but most of these proposals suggest sending humans directly to Mars on the first trip.

Perhaps they are working on this, but not heard of any committed program to develop a closed system habitat that will work long term in space without resupply from Earth - or to solve the zero gravity issues. As a private company SpaceX could be working on that privately and surprise us all of course with a solution.

But at some point they will need humans in space to test the systems.

The ISS had  teething problems early on needing emergency resupply from Earth - something you obviously can't do when the spaceship is on its way to Mars or orbiting Mars. And they can't use the ISS systems on an interplanetary flight, because they need continual supply from Earth.

A new environment control system based on novel technology more or less closed system would need to be tested close to Earth first, surely, as would any artificial gravity solutions they might have in mind to do. And for full duration spaceflights, not just for a few days or weeks or months.

I think they could solve all this. But not sure how much work they are putting into it and how serious they really are about solving these issues. Time will tell there, I suppose.

CONTAMINATION ISSUES - THESE WOULD BE A SHOW STOPPER IF THEY CAN'T BE SOLVED SO HIGHLY RELEVANT


This one though is the biggy, I can't myself see how they are going to find a way through it. So for that reason predict that none of them will succeed. At least not within a timescale of a decade or two, far too soon to know enough about Mars to know what effects the microbes introduced in a human landing would have on the planet.

Though if they planned to send humans to orbit around Mars then that could be done.

NOBODY has yet worked out how you could send a human to Mars without contaminating it with Earth life if the spacecraft crashes.

And nobody has worked out a road plan ahead for a transition from our present regime where under the OST and COSPAR we take great care not to contaminate Mars with Earth life to some future where we decide that's no longer necessary.

What's going to change in 10 years to make that different? Will we find out so much from Mars that it doesn't matter? Given the complexity of the planet and variety of terrains and possible habitats there - land area as large as Earth's land area and many different types of terrain and possible habitat - not likely

Will we find that Mars and Earth life are essentially identical? Some space colonization advocates think we will (more on that below, under Zubrin's ideas) - but it seems pretty unlikely to me that their conclusions will be confirmed - and in any case 10 years is far too soon again to expect to be able to prove this conclusively in the (I think unlikely) case that they turn out to be right on this.

All the reports and workshops on this so far have concluded that there is some potential for harm both ways - of Earth life having harmful effects on Mars and vice versa. Zubrin saying that that is not the case doesn't immediately upturn the results of those studies.

 Will we decide it just doesn't matter what happens to the planet? Just let it go any way whatever, and if it means we can't do good science any more, and if it causes problems for future colonists - again - well just let that happen?

Well some small group of people might decide that - but hard to see it being agreed generally as policy for the world as a whole.

Will some government go rogue and just decide to go to Mars in defiance of the Outer Space Treaty? Seems unlikely since it's the main thing that helps maintain peace in space.

THIS SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY - WITHOUT IT HOW CAN THEY SUCCEED?


Given that the contamination issues are simply not discussed normally, or dismissed with a few words - I don't think any of them are likely to succeed in the near future.

And unless some of them do put a lot of work into the human factors - then again that would be a show stopper also.

And in any case I think a mission to orbit around Mars makes a whole lot more sense than a mission to the surface, costs less, and lets you do better science, and eliminates many of the risks to the crew - and most importantly - bypasses the issues of contamination, we can find out more about Mars first and leave that decision to later.

If any of them had a major program around the human factors for interplanetary flight - and also if they had a step by step approach like the Apollo - Apollo had 10 precursors plus all the Gemini precursors as well - well the NASA plan do have more of a step by step approach - but still not many precursor steps - and if they also could say exactly how they plan to deal with contamination issues - or else - if they planned an orbital mission and telerobotics - well that I could take more seriously.

But - to date none seem to be doing that.

As for planetary protection, then the workshops all recommend that the public be involved in the debate, and most of the papers also on the topic of planetary protection also similarly. So when is that going to happen?

And does anyone have a road map that makes human landings on Mars acceptable for planetary protection a decade from now?

We need to know how that will happen in a legal, moral and scientific detail.

NEED FOR PUBLIC DEBATE


If we do decide to contaminate Mars with Earth life, or do something that risks that, then the general public needs to be involved in the debate, as we are all impacted if Mars gets contaminated, all scientific research by all nations on the Earth are impacted, and any benefits that might come from that research.

The workshop reports I've read, and papers - they all mention importance of engaging the public at an early stage in the proceess.

So anyone who is keen to send humans to the surface of Mars and who thinks it is possible as soon as a decade from now, and consistent with planetary protection - should be doing a vigorous job of investigating this and engaging the public in the debate on the planetary protection implications - and started on that with some urgency already - as high priority as the technical issues getting the required mass to Mars and the human factors keeping the humans alive and healthy - just in case we spot something that's an issue with their ideas that they haven't spotted themselves. And also to engage us in the debate from an early stage so that it is a decision made by everyone and we are all on board for the ride.

And instead of that - it's the opposite - the issue is just not mentioned at all in public interviews, news stories etc.

The planetary protection office does do a lot of outreach I know, Cassie Conley frequently talks about planetary protection issues and works on engaging the public. But - it doesn't seem to have spread to the higher levels of decision making as a top item on their agenda for human missions to Mars, as it should be.

If you have any papers, interviews, news stories, at all recent like last couple of years on this, do say, in the comments, I'm really interested in anything.

ROBERT ZUBRIN'S ANSWER - MINORITY VIEW NOT SUPPORTED BY ANY EXPERIMENTAL DATA TO DATE


The only answer I've seen to this that tackles it head on is Robert Zubrin's, and also the article by astrobiologists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Alberto Fairén in summer last year, basically saying the same thing - that there is no need to worry about contaminating Mars.

For a recent popular account of it, see It's Time to Stop Babying Mars

But - this is a minority view, not supported by any experimental data from Mars to back up their predictions.

We don't have any evidence at all yet that there is life on Mars and that it is identical to Earth life in the same habitats on Mars as on Earth, after all don't have any evidence yet of whether there is life on Mars at all, or what it's like if it is. And no evidence yet of life transferred between planets.

Only a few extremophiles on Earth have that capability (theoretically, not actually shown in practise of course), same probably true on Mars if there is life there, and opportunities are rare.

From Earth, to get material to Mars through our thick atmosphere and against the Earth gravity, it has to be a big hit like the one that ended the dinosaurs. It's easier from Mars with thinner atmosphere and less gravity - but most of the material from Mars on Earth came from regions of Mars thought unlikely to have life, and impacts on Mars also able to send material to Earth only happen every 1 or 2 mllion years, with the last impact able to do this hundreds of thousands of years ago - still sending debris to Earth every year - but almost all debris from that impact must now be thoroughly sterilized of life by cosmic radiation, and it probably didn't hit an area of Mars with life in it - or if there was life in the surface dust or regolith at the impact site - chances of that getting to Earth intact may be remote.

There might for instance be a cyanobacteria with a common ancestor ten million years ago on Mars, or more likely a few billion years ago exchanged in the early solar system - that much seems - if not certain, - probable  enough to be a decent hypothesis for now - but that's far from saying that Mars and Earth microbial lfe has to be identical and can't have harmful effects on each other, and that there is no indigenous - and possibly non DNA based life on Mars. Indeed that's what the exobiologists would most like to find there, if there is any life there not based on DNA - or some life form that split from Earth life at a very early stage in evolution - and it hasn't been ruled out as a possibility.

So, might be that these ideas inform thoughts about human exploration of Mars, and that the planners have been convinced by Zubrin's arguments. If so that also needs to be explained and debated and the public involved and other scientists not of this view brought into the debate, and invited to comment and treated with respect - to see what they say.

Whatever reasoning there might be, we need it carefully and thoroughly examined by experts with a wide range of backgrounds, and to have wide ranging public debate on it. We need to unearth any issues there may be with the ideas before they are used as a basis for action.

We shouldn't base it on a minority view in the field of exobiology by Robert Zubrin, Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Alberto Fairén which, to date, has no experimental evidence in support of it - if that is the reasoning.

 Mars One haven't given any details of a road map or why they think it's possible -  that's the only view I can think of that would permit it - and few subscribe to it. If they have some stronger reason than that, it's not been made public yet as far as I know.

For more on this, see
Could Microbes Transferred On Spacecraft Harm Mars Or Earth - Zubrin's Argument Revisited

THIS IS ALL RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION


Without tackling these human factors and the contamination issues in a direct and straightforward way - and without engaging the public - then it's not going to happen. Unless some group or government goes rogue and acts outside of the Outer Space Treaty. But that's not going to happen either, I'd be very surprised as it's the one thing that keeps peace in space.

And under the OST then the governments are responsible for the actions of their citizens, so even if some private individual launches from sea or from some small country - unless they renounce citizenship, then their government is responsible for overseeing what they do to make sure it complies with the OST. And full responsibility of harmful results of their actions falls entirely on their government if they fail to prevent something that is later found to harm scientific interests of other parties to the treaty.

For that reason I don't think any of these initiatives will succeed unless they solve the human factors and contamination issues - apart from any moral or scientific reasons - for legal reasons alone.

For more about this,

Imagined Colours Of Future Mars - What Happens If We Treat A Planet As A Giant Petri Dish?

About the Author

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.
Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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