Well - the first thing is - should that be our objective anyway? Is that the best use of humans in space, to send them to Mars? Now? Or are the other things that would be better ways of using humans in space right now?
For me one strange thing about the report is that it doesn't mention the Moon at all. I did a search of it to be sure, only mention is of the Martian moons.
It's like, they think that the only possible next destination for humans is Mars. But - is that the best place to send humans anyway at this stage?
And why not the Moon?
The Moon is a much more achievable place for humans to explore. We know for sure we can do it. On the Moon, or in orbit around it, we can get back to Earth in days - a major step beyond the ISS where we can get back in hours - but not such a major step as another planet where it takes many months to get back. It's the obvious intermediate place to go to.
And we've only had a few days of exploration there per visit. And just a few visits. Ever. All back in the 1960s and 1970s.
I think it would be better to take a much more open ended approach, and to have it driven by the science objectives.
That we first find out what humans can do, and how easy it is to do it, close to Earth. Which I think should include study of artificial gravity and closed systems involving growing plants for oxygen.
If long term interplanetary human flight is really hard to do - maybe it is better to continue to send robots for now and continue to send humans to closer places. While if it is really easy - well then we can have humans exploring to Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter even, or further afield. If we can get really efficient closed systems working, and artificial gravity, who knows, that might be possible. But we can't know that either way until we try.
So that's why I think we shouldn't plan either Mars or Jupiter or Pluto human missions until we know what humans can do and how hard it is.
And while doing that - there is one place we know we can send humans as we have already done it - the Moon.
And there are many things they could do usefully there. And much yet to understand about the Moon. Including the ice at its poles, the lunar caves, lunar rilles and other features that have never been studied in detail on the ground. There may be many discoveries to be made on the Moon.
Here the idea is not to go to Moon just as a staging post to Mars. I've no idea if a base on the Moon would be of value for supporting Mars missions. Maybe, maybe not. I've heard arguments both ways.
Just studying the Moon - as a place to explore in its own right. We can learn a lot about the Moon and also learn a lot more about how humans work as explorers in space.
For instance I think we might well find that telerobotic work is more efficient than using spacesuits for everything for long term missions to the Moon. Far safer - we might be able to completely prevent many potentially fatal accidents if we have robots rather than humans on the surface for much of the time. Experienced directly, via telepresence, but with no frail human bodies just a few millimeters of suit away from a vacuum and depending on getting back to oxygen resupply regularly.
We can also look at the effect of humans on their surroundings.
For one example - can a human mission to the Moon keep it reasonably clean for instance? Or is it like Mount Everest - will a long term human space colony inevitably get surrounded by human trash and wastes? If so how easy is it to clean it up again and what can you do in that situation? We haven't really encountered this with the ISS as they dump many tons of waste into the Earth atmosphere every year - but on the Moon all of that waste would have to go out onto the lunar surface instead - or do we have to ship it all back to Earth?
Can humans explore the solar system with minimal impact, or do we have to be careful about where we go?
And what are the risks of biological contamination of Mars? That also is something we need to know about first. It might well be a "no go" for Mars, so whatever plan you have should account for the possibility that the mission might not pass planetary protection I think.
While exploring the Moon we may learn more about what are the levels of contamination by Earth microbes on the surroundings of human occupied spacecraft. But without the risk of contaminating a planet with reproducing life. And meanwhile find out more about Mars also through robotic exploration.
I think it is good they are doing it step by step and aim to do long term missions nearer to Earth first before going anywhere further. But why not the Moon? People like Elon Musk say what's the point in going to the Moon as it has been "done"? You can kind of understand that for adventurers and explorers - the virgin peaks have most appeal for mountaineers until they are all "done". So for some types of explorer - they have a keen hunger to continually visit new places never visited by anyone ever before.
But for scientists, it's not only not been "done", we have hardly begun to study it. And if you think of the Moon as "done" after just six visits, then Mars would be "done" also a few years after the first humans get there.
Even for explorers - well the Moon is hardly explored at all.
It just seems so myopic to totally ignore the Moon.
I know there are historical reasons for this, with the US previously planning to go back to the Moon, but recently had a major change of direction to go to asteroids instead - but though that may have made political sense - it doesn't make much scientific or logical sense, to me; it seems a totally political decision.
I mean - asteroids are interesting too, not that is is wrong to study them - but so is the Moon, why ignore it?
Another thing not mentioned is artificial gravity. Easy to test with tether spins, also small arm centrifuges inside space stations.
This could totally change the best designs for interplanetary spacecraft if humans function well in artificial gravity, or find it beneficial for health when sleeping or eating - and if not, the sooner we know that for sure the better also. There are so many designs involving spinning stations, tether spins, centrifuge sleeping compartments etc, and no experimental data from space yet to ground any of them.
I am glad however that they are taking things reasonably slowly. Wherever we head, that's surely the key for success. Nobody wants an interplanetary mission where everyone dies. With Apollo, then we had all the Gemini flights first, then the earlier Apollo flights, and without them could never have sent humans to the Moon. Even Apollo 10, if it had had enough fuel and landed, after all the experience they accumulated to that date, turned up some "last minute hitches" and might well have killed the crew if they had chosen to skip the testing and just land.
For interplanetary flight, surely it is the same except that the voyages are multi-year so many of the earlier stages will need to be multi-year as well. So the whole thing is bound to take longer.
The premises you have to accept are:
If you accept all that, which of course many people do in human spaceflight circles, then the rest makes sense. The report will then seem totally sensible and you'll wonder why I find it curious and myopic :).
Anyway, if the US ignore the Moon, well, the signs are that many other countries are interested in it and we'll get robotic missions to it soon, and then probably human missions also.
And if they find interesting things there, and if NASA has a well developed program by then exploring Near Earth Asteroids - I expect they would start to have some interest in returning to the Moon at that point.
And as for artificial gravity, as we get more people exploring space, maybe eventually some will be interested in exploring these ideas, if the main space agencies aren't interested to do it. E.g. perhaps the breakthroughs there - or the proof that it is not useful - might come from AG used in tourist hotels in LEO or some such....
I think tourist hotels are bound to attempt AG, just to make eating food and using toilet facilities more agreeable if nothing else. Which could be tested with short term centrifuges. Also for physical recreation, exercise facilities and so on. The Skylab astronauts seemed to enjoy jogging around the inside of Skylab. So we know that's possible at least, at about 10 or 12 rpm for half a minute, experiencing about a third of a g AG. But not an experiment and no medical measurements to see what effect it had on them.
Plant cells change gene expression in response to as little as a hundredth of g in centrifuges in zero g - astonishingly, and change within seconds of starting the spin. So it wouldn't surprise me if even those short jogs may well have had health effects on the astronauts. But no measurements were made AFAIK.
This is of course not to deny at all the immense scientific interest in Mars.
Or the probably huge potential for humans in space, including interplanetary exploration, once we sort out the many issues involved in human spaceflight. And find out more about what humans can do well in space, and what perhaps robots can do better, which I think we may need to learn mostly by trying it out.
I think probably any long range plan right now involving humans, and interplanetary flight is bound to need to be rewritten as we go along.
For me one strange thing about the report is that it doesn't mention the Moon at all. I did a search of it to be sure, only mention is of the Martian moons.
It's like, they think that the only possible next destination for humans is Mars. But - is that the best place to send humans anyway at this stage?
And why not the Moon?
The Moon is a much more achievable place for humans to explore. We know for sure we can do it. On the Moon, or in orbit around it, we can get back to Earth in days - a major step beyond the ISS where we can get back in hours - but not such a major step as another planet where it takes many months to get back. It's the obvious intermediate place to go to.
And we've only had a few days of exploration there per visit. And just a few visits. Ever. All back in the 1960s and 1970s.
I think it would be better to take a much more open ended approach, and to have it driven by the science objectives.
That we first find out what humans can do, and how easy it is to do it, close to Earth. Which I think should include study of artificial gravity and closed systems involving growing plants for oxygen.
If long term interplanetary human flight is really hard to do - maybe it is better to continue to send robots for now and continue to send humans to closer places. While if it is really easy - well then we can have humans exploring to Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter even, or further afield. If we can get really efficient closed systems working, and artificial gravity, who knows, that might be possible. But we can't know that either way until we try.
So that's why I think we shouldn't plan either Mars or Jupiter or Pluto human missions until we know what humans can do and how hard it is.
And while doing that - there is one place we know we can send humans as we have already done it - the Moon.
And there are many things they could do usefully there. And much yet to understand about the Moon. Including the ice at its poles, the lunar caves, lunar rilles and other features that have never been studied in detail on the ground. There may be many discoveries to be made on the Moon.
Here the idea is not to go to Moon just as a staging post to Mars. I've no idea if a base on the Moon would be of value for supporting Mars missions. Maybe, maybe not. I've heard arguments both ways.
Just studying the Moon - as a place to explore in its own right. We can learn a lot about the Moon and also learn a lot more about how humans work as explorers in space.
For instance I think we might well find that telerobotic work is more efficient than using spacesuits for everything for long term missions to the Moon. Far safer - we might be able to completely prevent many potentially fatal accidents if we have robots rather than humans on the surface for much of the time. Experienced directly, via telepresence, but with no frail human bodies just a few millimeters of suit away from a vacuum and depending on getting back to oxygen resupply regularly.
We can also look at the effect of humans on their surroundings.
For one example - can a human mission to the Moon keep it reasonably clean for instance? Or is it like Mount Everest - will a long term human space colony inevitably get surrounded by human trash and wastes? If so how easy is it to clean it up again and what can you do in that situation? We haven't really encountered this with the ISS as they dump many tons of waste into the Earth atmosphere every year - but on the Moon all of that waste would have to go out onto the lunar surface instead - or do we have to ship it all back to Earth?
Can humans explore the solar system with minimal impact, or do we have to be careful about where we go?
And what are the risks of biological contamination of Mars? That also is something we need to know about first. It might well be a "no go" for Mars, so whatever plan you have should account for the possibility that the mission might not pass planetary protection I think.
While exploring the Moon we may learn more about what are the levels of contamination by Earth microbes on the surroundings of human occupied spacecraft. But without the risk of contaminating a planet with reproducing life. And meanwhile find out more about Mars also through robotic exploration.
I think it is good they are doing it step by step and aim to do long term missions nearer to Earth first before going anywhere further. But why not the Moon? People like Elon Musk say what's the point in going to the Moon as it has been "done"? You can kind of understand that for adventurers and explorers - the virgin peaks have most appeal for mountaineers until they are all "done". So for some types of explorer - they have a keen hunger to continually visit new places never visited by anyone ever before.
But for scientists, it's not only not been "done", we have hardly begun to study it. And if you think of the Moon as "done" after just six visits, then Mars would be "done" also a few years after the first humans get there.
Even for explorers - well the Moon is hardly explored at all.
It just seems so myopic to totally ignore the Moon.
I know there are historical reasons for this, with the US previously planning to go back to the Moon, but recently had a major change of direction to go to asteroids instead - but though that may have made political sense - it doesn't make much scientific or logical sense, to me; it seems a totally political decision.
I mean - asteroids are interesting too, not that is is wrong to study them - but so is the Moon, why ignore it?
Another thing not mentioned is artificial gravity. Easy to test with tether spins, also small arm centrifuges inside space stations.
This could totally change the best designs for interplanetary spacecraft if humans function well in artificial gravity, or find it beneficial for health when sleeping or eating - and if not, the sooner we know that for sure the better also. There are so many designs involving spinning stations, tether spins, centrifuge sleeping compartments etc, and no experimental data from space yet to ground any of them.
I am glad however that they are taking things reasonably slowly. Wherever we head, that's surely the key for success. Nobody wants an interplanetary mission where everyone dies. With Apollo, then we had all the Gemini flights first, then the earlier Apollo flights, and without them could never have sent humans to the Moon. Even Apollo 10, if it had had enough fuel and landed, after all the experience they accumulated to that date, turned up some "last minute hitches" and might well have killed the crew if they had chosen to skip the testing and just land.
For interplanetary flight, surely it is the same except that the voyages are multi-year so many of the earlier stages will need to be multi-year as well. So the whole thing is bound to take longer.
The premises you have to accept are:
- Sending humans to Mars is the top priority for human spaceflight
- Artificial gravity is not worth studying because we already know that humans can't cope with it except in impractically large Stanford Torus type habitats or very long tethers - our tables that we draw up using experiments on the ground tell us everything we need to know there without ever trying it out in space. And anyway the long term aim is to have humans on other planets, not long term in space.
- There is no point in sending humans to the Moon right now, because it won't help us with the objective of going to Mars
- Some way will be found to send humans to the surface of Mars consistent with planet protection
If you accept all that, which of course many people do in human spaceflight circles, then the rest makes sense. The report will then seem totally sensible and you'll wonder why I find it curious and myopic :).
Anyway, if the US ignore the Moon, well, the signs are that many other countries are interested in it and we'll get robotic missions to it soon, and then probably human missions also.
And if they find interesting things there, and if NASA has a well developed program by then exploring Near Earth Asteroids - I expect they would start to have some interest in returning to the Moon at that point.
And as for artificial gravity, as we get more people exploring space, maybe eventually some will be interested in exploring these ideas, if the main space agencies aren't interested to do it. E.g. perhaps the breakthroughs there - or the proof that it is not useful - might come from AG used in tourist hotels in LEO or some such....
I think tourist hotels are bound to attempt AG, just to make eating food and using toilet facilities more agreeable if nothing else. Which could be tested with short term centrifuges. Also for physical recreation, exercise facilities and so on. The Skylab astronauts seemed to enjoy jogging around the inside of Skylab. So we know that's possible at least, at about 10 or 12 rpm for half a minute, experiencing about a third of a g AG. But not an experiment and no medical measurements to see what effect it had on them.
Plant cells change gene expression in response to as little as a hundredth of g in centrifuges in zero g - astonishingly, and change within seconds of starting the spin. So it wouldn't surprise me if even those short jogs may well have had health effects on the astronauts. But no measurements were made AFAIK.
This is of course not to deny at all the immense scientific interest in Mars.
Or the probably huge potential for humans in space, including interplanetary exploration, once we sort out the many issues involved in human spaceflight. And find out more about what humans can do well in space, and what perhaps robots can do better, which I think we may need to learn mostly by trying it out.
I think probably any long range plan right now involving humans, and interplanetary flight is bound to need to be rewritten as we go along.
ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY AND ZERO G HEALTH
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About the Author
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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