Why it’s doomed to fail?
It’s never looked technically/economically realistic to me.
9 thoughts on “The One-Way Trip To Mars”
Comments are closed.
Why it’s doomed to fail?
It’s never looked technically/economically realistic to me.
Comments are closed.
Any colony plan depending on an indefinite ongoing supply stream from home is at best dubious. And best case assumes a high value export to pay for the supply stream.
So, …it’s not that one way trips to Mars are infeasible, but that Mars One’s scheme for it is infeasible, …on the time schedule they have laid out. Not only would 6 more years help a lot, but certain design criteria for total concept and individual equipments would help as well:
1.) Not only should equipment for use on Mars be designed for replication by 3-d printers and CNC machines taken along. Equipment should be designed for replacement using the CO2, the Nitrogen, and the water, and the Iron that Mars has in or near its atmosphere, as well as processing equipment to make those into raw materials fit for use in 3-d printers.
2.) Lone colonies seldom made profits without some equivalent of a Gold strike. What made colonies without Gold profitable was *not* single strand dependence on the home country, a la Spanish Trade Monopolies, but a trade network, that allows colonists to get the cheapest price they could for the resources they need. That means a lone Mars colony will sooner or later end up like Roanoke, rather than Plymouth. Stations on Phobos, to plug the resource holes that Mars cannot supply will make a great difference in Mars’ economic viability. So will Lunar resources transported by either mass drivers or lunar space elevators. These need not become all functional at the same time as a Mars colony, but a network of trade must be encouraged, rather than walled off.
3.) The best thing to come from Earth, besides colonists, to a Martian settlement, is design information, arrived at through bidding and design competition networks here on Earth. No single set of minds can be allowed to dominate what designs go to Mars, and settlers are the ones who will pay, once *they* decide which design fits their use best. That will demand miniscule transport costs.
With those changes, a Martian settlement through NOCHO (No One Comes HOme) is quite feasible.
I see three obvious fails right away. They aren’t bending metal, there’s no incremental testing, and signs of poor planning.
For the first item, I note that there is not a single story in their press releases about actual construction of anything. The closest they have come is an announcement of plans to construct a “simulation Mars home” and appointment of a manager to the project. Given that they allege to put people on Mars by 2025, they should have already started.
For the second point, it’s a moonshot with no in flight testing of any of the parts of the mission aside, particularly long duration manned spaceflight and landing of a large object on Mars, aside from a little operations testing for a proposed 2018 unmanned mission using an unrelated platform (a copy of the Phoenix probe’s system, I gather). This point was also brought up in Rand’s linked article.
Third, the most obvious aspect of poor planning is that the astronaut selection for the Mars mission has been underway for some time. What is the point of selecting astronauts now for a mission 12 years or longer from now when there will be nothing to train on for years? It’s not just selection of testers for the simulation Mars home, but allegedly for the real flight to Mars with the associated strenuous criteria. This puts the cart before the horse especially if the mission comes late enough that the original astronaut team has to be scrapped.
In comparison, I consider the technology development issues discussed in the article to be relatively minor. For example, excess oxygen production is a problem with ready solutions. Most likely the oxygen will be filtered out by simple thermodynamic processes (it condenses before nitrogen or argon and long after carbon dioxide and water vapor freeze out) and then vented to the outside (or perhaps stored for future use as propellant or reactant).
As to the alleged growing stream of spare parts, it shouldn’t be that hard to set up a furnace and machine shop to recycle broken parts and an incinerator to burn much of what can’t be recycled. That should significant reduce the need for stuff from Earth, especially, if you can also do some simple ISRU, for example, mining iron rich meteorites or making glass/ceramic wares.
An easy solution for the excess oxygen problem would be to extract it and use it to refill the EVA suit tanks. There’s no need to throw it away. In fact, you wouldn’t want to throw away much of anything. Recycle, reuse, repurpose. 3D printing can greatly reduce the need for spare parts but you’ll still need critical components like integrated circuits that you wouldn’t be able to produce on your own. Design your printable components to be made from materials you can easily find on Mars and you’ll further reduce your resupply needs.
I never looked at it as a colony proposition. But sending one person there on a one-way mission for exploration purposes would certainly work, with Delta-II class resupply coming on a regular basis. I would go there in a heartbeat.
The only way I can see plants producing a dangerous excess of O2 is if they also produce a large amount of biomass which isn’t recycled, and CO2 and water are being introduced from outside to feed the plants. With a closed carbon/oxygen cycle the oxygen and biomass are dealt with.
this idea, that everything is easy because it’s been done before, that’s an incredibly dangerous mindset
That is an incredible strawman. Nobody is saying it will be easy or not dangerous.
The chance of getting things wrong is high. I do consider the current plan to be a suicide mission, but not for the reasons MIT guy gives (which even he admits; why make a huge issue out of minor changes they can easily implement after they arrive? T)
Because MIT guy correctly points out that resupply is unsustainable why doesn’t he also point out the obvious correct solution? It’s not 3D printers (that’s a tool, not a solution.) The solution is to go back to fundamentals and start with mars solutions which do not to rely on parts from earth at all.
Everything brought from earth should be considered emergency backup only. The very day they land they should begin implementing low tech martian solutions. 1) they must include a chemist with the first crew. 2) they should include a machinist.
Doctors and scientists are non essential for survival. Learning to survive is the ONLY THING the first crew needs to focus on.
First job on landing is to create a new habitat completely from mars materials. They should not leave earth at all if they are not prepared to do that first. This is an essential adjustment to thinking about mars. Only non essential luxuries should be coming from earth and those should be the personal property of new colonists giving them a good start on their new life.