Topic: Mars One - What do you think? (Read 1942 times)

Passive shielding alone will likely involve too much mass to be practical. A combination of passive and magnetic shielding (the latter provided by superconducting rings or large permanent magnets) will likely provide the best protection against high-energy charged particles (the most troublesome component.) I don't hear much discussion of such options yet.

Long periods in free-fall are probably a bad idea. All experience points to this. A vessel which can be rotated to give some kind of pseudogravity enroute is the most likely solution--but no one is discussing this; they are acting as if the problem can simply be ignored. Not good.

Conventional chemical rockets have specific impulse that is too low to be suitable for interplanetary boosting of large loads (and a manned interplanetary vehicle is a very large load.) Higher specific-impulse boosters (NERVA, salt-water) are almost untested (salt-water rockets are untestable in the vicinity of a planet due to highly radioactive exhaust.) More work needs to be done here.

In summary, the whole thing is like trying enter a Formula 1 race when you have not yet invented the automobile.

Okay.  Well, basically the answer is that we well understand that travel in space requires radiation shielding for humans and likely for even plants.  How much shielding is of course the question.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57586958-76/mars-rover-confirms-dangers-of-space-radiation/

Not kidding at all.  If you move away from a flame, it will be cooler as well.  Simple physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

You can look at their website: mars-one.com.

Are you planning on applying for the trip? 

Where I can get more info about the Mars One project? I'm interested in details

Radiation decreases?  You are kidding right?  That's an eight month trip more or less.

"Look...if you just move from the center of the burning house ten feet toward the door, it'll be cooler"....

I may add as an example the construction details of the comparably miniature, old MIR space station.

Just the base module clocked in at 20.4 tons alone - with dimensions of only 13.3 meters length x 4.4 meters cross section . Hardly the stuff you'd send away from earth.

It was operated only in low earth orbit at an average altitude of about 360km, well inside the protective earth magnetic field - with a total mass (construction complete) of 129.7 tons - and was supplied with all needed resources from earth.

Reports from the astronauts reveal that getting used to sleep in the station was quite a challenge for new inhabitants.
The reason was due to high energetic/ionized particles which were easily able to penetrate its otherwise very robust hull design.
So robust, its main body mass basically survived its re-entry when it was abandoned; some may still remember the news channels/-papers discussion what could happen if the russians failed to achieve trajectory and it impacting on land mass.
These particles, when penetrating the human body, caused (in darkness) an undesired "lightshow" in the eyes of the astronauts, as the particles injected random neuronal signals into the eye nerves. Reportedly, this (apart from getting used to zero gravity) was among the hardest to get used to.

Now imagine leaving earth magnetic field and exposure to sun's raw mix of lethal radiation and frequent particle storms of highly various intensities & duration...
Then you'll get a very rough glimpse of what massive type of protection we'd need and the resulting total departure mass we're beginning to talk here.

The shielding is minimal. The earth's magnetic field is the shield against high energy particles.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2956-space-station-radiation-shields-disappointing.html

How does the ISS shield the occupants from radiation?

Also, keep in mind as you travel further from the sun, the radiation decreases.

If you build a ship that consists entirely and only of the living quarters and equip it with a technique that replaces the burned fuel with a replacement fluid to absorb the radiation - this might work at least against the radioactive radiation components.
Especially for highly ionized energy particles, that layer sure would need to be pretty damn thick (plus you'd have to replace any burned fuel i.e. with Deuterium Oxide D2O or a comparable ultra high density fluid), of which an almost full load would need to be carried along as well.
I don't see any realistic weight saving using that option.

If you were to go for the option of shielding only a fraction of the ship, you'd be hard pressed finding any volunteers to operate and maintain it (= a guaranteed death penalty). These types of "heroes" would find it much safer to assist TEPCO operations in Fukushima.

That would mean an exponentially declining level of protection related to time from origin.

Would not work very well.

Shields may work pretty well, some research being done on them, based on deductions from the electromagnetic anomalies on the Moon.

Nonsense.  You just surround the living quarters with layers of tanks of fuel - which is needed anyway.  The fuel absorbs the radiation.

What you propose is fairly realistic.  However for specifics on the Mars issue review Zubrin, Mars Direct.

I am afraid we will...perhaps have been...encountering a fundamental problem in our planning for manned exploration of space, with some exceptions.

That is we take a planning horizon for manned exploration given our estimates of future robotic capabilities.  A third of the way through that planning horizon, the entire plan has to be scrapped or revamped as then-current robotic capabilities were evident.  Over and over.

But yeah, a long term presence in orbit...think an economically self sufficient presence, which would mean a commercial, not a government system...would be the first true step in going off planet. 

As far as materials, all you really need to protect from impacts is a water or ice barrier.  It is particularly well suited since in vacuum, ice sublimates to gas, thus leaving no cloud of micrometeorites of its own making.  Ice would only have to be contained within plastic bags that could withstand the vapor pressure of sublimation, and shielded from solar, of course.

And in that above paragraph is a hint of the essential problem in long term LEO or anywhere else human presence:  Materials.  Where do you get a thousand tons of water?  Launch ten or twenty at a time.  That's one answer.

Moreover, any such system could not be at LEO, but would have to be higher, likely way higher.  Ultimately, one of the Lagrange points would be perfect.  As the satellite weight increases, manuevering the station becomes virtually impossible.  Hence it must be in a permanent orbit, which LEO is definitely not, being good for a decade or two.

The general vision for this was laid out in O'Neill, "High Frontier".

I don't think anyone will have the cash to design, build and launch so many modules needed for assembly in space (way too heavy for just a few launches, let alone sent in one piece).

The radiation protection required to let 4 people survive the trip to Mars alone clocks in easily at dozens of tons total weight, even if their living space is kept to an absolute minimum (psychological limits for trip duration).
Additional radiation protection against solar flares will require a specially hardened shelter in the spacecraft, taking several tons of additional weight all by itself (short of anyone developing a star trek-like shield in the meantime).

Then add oxygen supplies, food, water, regenerative supplies, sensors, minimum required equipment and spare parts for emergency repairs etc.... And that super-heavy construction still needs all the fuel to be carried along.

That's like sending something far heavier than the ISS to the Mars (which would be entirely insufficient, especially concerning radiation protection). And we all know how much cost, effort and time went into that alone.

IMHO sending people to Mars with current technology is severely far more unrealistic than sending a man to the moon. Both could in theory be achieved with todays technology - but the costs to mars would literally be near-insane. Easily far more than all international space agency budgets combined.

I just don't see any nation or even group of nations being even remotely able to channel hundreds of billion dollars into such a project, definitely not under current (and forseeable) economic conditions.

Considering i.e. NASA's budget of the last years, they could expect a launch not before the year 2050+ unless we see major technological breakthroughs (or the USA somehow growing filthy rich) in the meantime...
(additionally, I haven't even considered the numerous robotic mars missions needed to construct a 4-person habitat to afford survivability on mars for a few decades as a launch prerequisite; that as well would suck in ALOT of time and money).
Would be a pretty bad idea to send 4 people to Mars just to see them dying within months.

Therefor, to me these plans seem more like fairytales coming from dreamland (I very well remember being more than surprised hearing George W. Bush making that original announcement, I was like... WTF?!).
Would be cool if someone could pull it off but I don't expect to live to see that day.

PS.
IMHO, a far more realistic (and yet still unaffordable) plan would be to build a real, expandable and permanent space station with assembly or even construction capabilities as an autonomous launch platform.
As far as I can see, that would be man's first, actual and real step into manned space exploration with reasonable and lasting potential.

Maybe one of the keys of future space developments would be completely new generations of materials - lighter and significantly more resistant than anything we know and use today for our superstructure/hull designs. A material that preferrably would withstand the hyper-kinetic impact effects of typical small space debris or objects. To date, mankind has no such material, making a single such collision potentially catastrophic in nature.

Dude, those skills are the most important ones of all.  Have you never seen the movie Alien?

It took place on a planet that was not Earth - exactly like the one you would be going to!  

I will secretly send my robots to Mars first, and there they will covertly create mysteries that make Earth people curious about the Red Planet.  These mysteries will astonish the unenlightened and create a meme of The Others.  The Earth people will then go, as they always would, seeking answers.  But whatever they find they must find within themselves, as there will be no answers out in the endless red desert.

i have no skills (unless you count shotokan karate instructor...not to useful in a closed capsule going to mars) and/or
my ablity not to kill people in close sardineline space

hmmm...come to think of it perhaps the above is needed to get sent to mars as spam in the can for years on end

Searing

I wanted to apply to this mission, I think it is amazing

Achieving something like that is a blessing

It would be great to be among the first people who will come to Mars...
and detect traces of long lost Mars civilization...

She won't stay hot forever with all that radiation and dust blizzards on her delicate photogenic skin.