Yes. The US is responsible for making sure they comply with the Outer Space Treaty. The most tricky thing for them is to comply with the requirement to protect Mars and Earth from harmful contamination. The requirements for mechanical rovers are formidable - you have to sterilize any lander on Mars to the point where there are at most 500,000 viable spores over the entire spacecraft.
Given that a typical human has ten trillion microbes on our skin. in our stomachs and so forth and we can't be sterilized - and then you've got the food, water, air etc as well - then that's obviously way beyond any possibility for a human occupied spacecraft - especially since it has to be safe in case of a hard landing on Mars.
I can't see any way forward through this myself. I think when the time comes, there is just no way the international COSPAR committee can approve changing the requirements to permit a human landing unless they decide that we no longer need to protect Mars from Earth life which seems unlikely.
There are ideas for landing humans in an area of Mars without any possibility for life there - i.e. without water ice, somewhere in the very dry equatorial regions and far from any potential habitat like the RSLs. But then - what if it crashes and lands somewhere else? Everyone agrees that the first human landings, if we send humans there, would be risky, at least a percentage chance at some level of a hard landing.
How can that be made consistent with planetary protection with present day technology? Especially bearing in mind that Mars is a connected system with dust storms every two years that reach global proportions, cover the entire planet - that can spread any spores anywhere over the planet after a crash on Mars.
The image on the left shows Mars as it is normally. The one on the right shows it after a global dust storm which happens every two years, potential for a global dust storm anyway. The Perfect Dust Storm Strikes Mars
And dust devils
The Fact and Fiction of Martian Dust Storms
How can you suppose that dead astronauts and their belongings, scattered over the surface of Mars after a crash, won't be a contamination risk for the entire planet?
I don't know. Nobody has yet explained anyway how it can be done safely. These ideas date back from some years back when they thought the surface of Mars was pretty much sterile and any life would be beneath the surface. With that idea of Mars - I still think it was somewhat dubious - after all why are we sterilizing our rovers if there is not a risk of introducing Earth life to Mars? But now since Phoenix in 2008 and many other discoveries since then, it seems increasingly - not exactly likely - but certainly possible that Mars has habitats for life right on its surface, and if so a human landing has to be a contamination risk.
And the one thing we don't want to do is to go to Mars searching for life just to find life that we brought there ourselves. So I don't think myself, that when it comes to the crunch, that the international group of exobiologists and such like who would be responsible for signing off on a human mission to Mars, put their reputation on the line and say that it is going to be safe for the search for life to send humans on Mars - I don't see how they could possibly do that. They will surely just say that more research is needed as they have done in all the workshops on this topic to date.
There are many other things that they would have to comply with such as safety of launch etc. But this is the biggy I think, as it could easily be a complete show stopper.
It's not as if Mars is particularly habitable anyway. Antarctica is far more habitable than Mars. There are many places on Earth we don't colonize.
See also Why We Can't "Backup Earth" On Mars, The Moon, Or Anywhere Else In Our Solar System
Ten Reasons NOT To Live On Mars - Great Place To Explore
And my favoured expedition to Mars if we do send humans there
I am not actually convinced yet that SpaceX will be able to make human rated spacecraft. They have already shown that they can send unmanned cargo to the ISS. But one of those missions was a disaster destroying all the contents, and that was because of a quality control issue, using an inferior part in the spacecraft.
I know that a human occupied spacecraft would have survived that particular crash as they didn't include the extra safety systems a human rated craft would have. But the reason for the failure is a concern - do they have sufficient quality control for a human rated spacecraft?
Of course it lead to an immediate review of their quality control - but it shouldn't have happened in the first place. Is there anything else like that which could come up in the future and cause issuees? There was a review after the first Space Shuttle accident, but still there was a second one.
And there's a long history of problems with human spacecraft on the space shuttle - showing it is not an easy thing to achieve the 100% safety record required for human crew. It's a major challenge, and I am not yet convinced they are up to it, case of "watch this spot".
Don't say this because I want them to fail - but they have plenty of people saying they are sure they will succeed, so one person injecting a bit of healthy skepticism is surely not going to derail their efforts. I think they have already proved themselves for unmanned cargo but yet to prove themselves for humans. I have the same concerns about Richard Branson's Virgin Galactica. I think it is just too risky at present, surely much more risky than base jumping. The problem is that unlike an aircraft, they can't afford to do hundreds of test flights before they send humans into space. So in effect, when you go into space on one of those missions you are still in the early test flight phase of a totally new design of spacecraft. That's why it is so dangerous I think, potentially, as we saw with the space shuttle. Not that they are doing anything wrong or that they are not taking all the precautions they possibly can, and not that it is inherently more dangerous than, say, a car. It's just that it is so expensive to fly, that you can't possibly have adequate test flights to be anything like as confident as you are for a car or an airplane.
Even the Soyuz has had far less test flights than a car or plane would have. I'd see that as the safest way to get into space at present, seems very robust with many safety systems - but not as safe as driving in a car or flying in a plane.
I'm not sure if the celebrities booking their flights with Virgin Galactica quite appreciate that. So - it's not that I have a thing against SpaceX :). I think he is doing pretty amazing things. It's rather that I think what they have taken on is maybe bigger than anyone can do easily. Which means that even with the best care you can manage, it can still go wrong easily and it is a long way between where they are now and having a very reliable spacecraft reliable enough so you are sure it is okay for humans.
The way he is doing it is good, testing in unmanned flights means he can do many more test flights than he could otherwise - and his cargo vessel is even pressurized and temperature controlled as would be needed for a human flight. But even then it will be many unmanned flights before he has got as far as, say, a hundred test flights of the system. Will it be adequately tested by the time he needs to send humans into space?
And his idea for re-using the first stage - that will reduce the cost - but it also is the thing that lead to the Space Shuttle's demise - that they kept re-using it and it turned out that it wasn't quite up to the task, twice over, for different reasons. So will his re-used rocket first stages fair better than that? Fine for unmanned flights but not so sure about manned flights, again something that has to be proved and I think it will take a while to prove it adequately.
So I've got many questions there, general questions. Will see what happens.
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