by Rod Pyle
When he looks into the future, Zubrin is optimistic about the ongoing role of the Mars Society. NASA is another story.
“We're going to continue [our program]; we've got ten crews lined up for this year. We're also looking to have a significant fraction of the desert station become an educational program in conjunction with some educational institutions. They could send students to them and become a program that gives out credit and has professors involved. That's another aspect of this that we will open up.”
And regarding NASA?
“I think that with this extremely difficult budget environment about to descend upon the whole discretionary part of the government, the NASA program is going to have to be made much more defensible to adequately fund it. The situation is so bad that even the ExoMars robotic missions are in great peril, and currently their plan is to run a spaceflight program in the next ten years without any discernable objective. It's hard to understand how that could survive in the difficult environment we're about to face.
“I think frankly that NASA needs to formulate a program for a human Mars mission, because that is the human spaceflight mission that's worth doing. [They need to] propose this not as a ten-year trial but a project to achieve the mission, and say, ‘Look, this is the kind of human spaceflight program Americans want, that they deserve. They really want a space program that's actually going somewhere, and to say we can't afford any kind of space program is in any account a decline.”
And that's the truth, as seen by a visionary. We would be wise to listen.
SHACKLETON BASE, CHRYSE PLANITIA, MARS
REPORT FSC-17785.88
(Personal entry)
SOL 2344
Dr. J Carter, MSPI
It's Thursday the 17th of May Prime*, 2029. What light comes through the window is dun-colored and dim, which matters little because the glass is so sand-abraded that you can't see much anyway.
We' re supposed to finish the installation of Module 6 this month, but this dust storm throws our schedule off a bit. It's a global sandstorm that has grounded all interbase flights, and the Japanese crew will be stuck in orbit for at least a week, so if the Hab Module is a bit late, they won't be here to notice.
It will be interesting having the Japanese here. The US missions first arrived in 2026, with the Chinese joining us on the surface six months later. Phobos base is now just a way station. The two colonies operated separately, until the US base was hit by a small meteorite and became unlivable for a few months; we had to shelter at Guan-Yin Station until repairs were accomplished. Once we and the Taikonauts got better acquainted, it was (wisely) decided to join the two bases with a tunnel. The food got a lot better after that…
Too bad the Russians bugged out three months earlier. The Beijing duck could have gone well with a good vodka! Maybe when the economic situation back home improves, they will return.
So now we'll have Japanese nationals blending into the mix. There are already four nationalities represented on Mars, but this will be only the third official habitation built. No matter; I like hydroponic wasabi too.
We just received word that the windstorm is abating, which is good news after three weeks of howling noise! While high winds are not as nasty as they are on Earth (the low pressure and all), the sand still gets into everything, so we'll have a lot of work to do. We will also have to do a windblown-perchlorate scrub of the airlocks and service areas—that's a ton of work. Then perhaps next week I can take that hike out to Viking Park I've wanted to do, and get a look at the old spacecraft. Hard to imagine that it landed here, big dumb and blind, over fifty years ago!
Signed: Julia Carter
Sr. Atmospheric Scientist
US Mars Program
NOTE: As the Martian year is close to two Earth years, the months have been doubled for calendrical convenience. May Prime (May*) is the second iteration of May in a Martian year.
This is science fiction for now, but not an unlikely scenario for the future. The path currently being traveled by the world's spacefaring powers may well lead to multiple settlements on the moon, and even Mars, within the next thirty years. And while the United States and Russia are likely to be first among them, Asia is catching up fast and moving ahead with great determination. The future of Mars exploration—by someone—seems assured.
A crewed mission to Mars is an enormous undertaking. Planners have been envisioning such a mission since the 1950s. Wernher von Braun, the father of the Saturn V moon rocket, famously laid out his plans for flights to Mars in both Collier's Weekly magazine in the 1950s and later on television courtesy of The Wonderful World of Disney. His vision, vast and optimistic, blazed in the minds of children and adults alike for years.
After the Apollo lunar missions in the 1970s, both US aerospace and NASA had conducted copious studies about the use of Apollo-era hardware for a manned Mars flight. Many thought that it could be accomplished by the early 1980s…and they may have been right, but as it so often does, fate had other plans.
The last of the Apollo hardware, scavenged from the final three (canceled) lunar landing missions of Apollo 18, 19, and 20, was used for Project Skylab in 1973 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. After that, the bulk of NASA funding was transferred to building and operating the Space Shuttle. The remaining Saturn Vs became the world's most expensive museum exhibits. Mars waited…and waited.
Plans came and went, but none were granted the go-ahead for manned exploration. Private groups joined the discussion, but the best they could hope to accomplish was to build public sentiment. Unlike Earth orbit and, perhaps, the moon, Mars is beyond the reach of private enterprise for the foreseeable future.
Then, in 2004, President George Bush declared Mars a national goal. Not soon, for a return to the moon would come first. But the mandate for future crewed space vehicles would include designs ultimately capable of the long voyage to Mars. Planned by NASA as a replacement for the Space Shuttle, this mission was canceled by the Obama administration in 2010, after an expenditure of about $8 billion. The revised program may look something like this:
2010-2015
ORION (UNITED STATES): NASA's first post-shuttle program includes the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and unspecified boosters; as of now, only the capsule is under active development. Tests of a new booster based on the shuttle's solid booster have been canceled, but others are still on the drawing boards. The most current is the Space Launch System, a Saturn V-class heavy booster that would be capable of hurling the Orion capsule and associated Mars-class hardware out of Earth's gravity well. This capability would be the first time since the mid-1970s that we would be able to leave Earth orbit.
SPACEX (UNITED STATES, Private): Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, is the brainchild of Elon Musk of PayPal fame. This private enterprise is already completing work on the Dragon® capsule, slated to provide resupply missions to the International Space Station and, eventually, manned access. Future plans for SpaceX include a heavy-lift booster, utilizing a cluster of engines for its tremendous lifting capability. Also in the general realm of the Saturn V, this rocket would most likely be ready far earlier than NASA's new booster and at a fraction of the cost. And SpaceX has specifically set Mars as its goal.
SOYUZ (RUSSIA): While the Russian Soyuz capsule is seen today primarily as a shuttle vehicle between Earth and the International Space Station, it should be remembered that this very capable spacecraft was born of the space race and was designed to travel to the moon and back. In fact, it was successfully tested in unmanned flights around the moon. Its current configuration could be uprated for longer-duration travel, possibly even as a part of a Mars-bound complex.
2016-2020
NASA (UNITED STATES): Little is certain at NASA beyond the development of the Orion capsule. With luck, there will be a crew-rated booster available to fly this capsule to lunar orbit and beyond. The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a large booster currently under development, but its ultimate fate is uncerta
in.
SHENZHOU/SOYUZ (CHINA): The Chinese space agency has licensed the venerated Soyuz design from Russia and made vast improvements within. This more modern design has flown Chinese crews into Earth orbit three times (as of press time), and could also be augmented to travel to the moon and beyond. China has made clear its intention to land crews on the moon before 2020, and Mars may not be far behind.
2021-2030
NEAR-EARTH OBJECT (NEO) MISSION (UNITED STATES): Current planning around this manned mission is still in the planning stages, but a voyage out to a large asteroid is currently on the drawing boards. Useful both scientifically and strategically (NEOs represent a significant threat to Earth), this project could be accomplished far easier than a Mars landing, due primarily to the lack of a need to enter and escape the Martian gravity well.
CONSTELLATION/MARS (UNITED STATES): By 2030, NASA may be heading off to Mars on crewed missions using either Orion- or Dragon-type capsules mated with habitation and propulsion units. Little is known at this point what form such a spacecraft might take, but it will likely be used as the basis of a transit vessel and a Mars-lander/ascent-vehicle design.
PHOBOS MISSION (UNITED STATES and/or ESA/ RUSSIA): There is growing sentiment that before a crewed mission to Mars itself is attempted, a small station might be set up on the larger of the two Martian moons, Phobos. This would allow for close-in observation of Mars without the added complication (and launch mass) of a crew module capable of atmospheric entry, landing, and ascent. Operating on Phobos would be only slightly more difficult than landing on Earth's own moon, a feat we accomplished forty years ago. Such a mission would further serve as a demonstration of the ability to make the long voyage between Earth and Mars, which is bound to be quite taxing on both crew and spacecraft.
The prospects for missions to the Red Planet have never been great. Always, these long-term, big-vision programs are subject to delays, cancellations, and political wrangling. Indeed, since the days of the Kennedy moon challenge and the space race, there have been few space programs that flew as initially planned, and fewer still that have reached fruition without massive cost cutting and mission shrinkage. Even the now-discontinued space shuttle was a mere shadow of NASA's original vision.
Mars beckons to all humanity. The United States hears the call, as do Russia, China, India, Japan, and Europe. Someone will go at some point. Who goes matters less than the fact that we do go, because without some kind of new goal, the spirit of exploration and “reaching out” may well leave our species.
As the nearest planet to ours, and the only likely candidate for colonization in our solar system, Mars is the next logical step. As Ernest Shackleton, the famed British polar explorer, once said: “Optimism is true moral courage…difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.”
Who among us, which nations among the ever-growing cadre headed for space, will summon the courage and fortitude to go?
CHAPTER 1. THE FIRST MARTIAN
1. The Soviet unmanned Mars program was spectacular in its persistence and its failures. While successful with other planets, notably Venus, Soviet-era Mars missions were notorious in their failure rate. Two years prior to the successful landing of Viking 1, in August 1974, the Soviet Mars 6 and 7 entered Martian space. Mars 7 failed before descending, but Mars 6 actually “landed” on the surface of Mars, transmitting a few minutes of data, mostly unintelligible, just prior to touchdown. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, and with increased cooperation with the European Space Agency, the program has seen some shared success. Yet as recently as November 2011, the Russian-led Phobos-Grunt sample return mission to the Martian moon Phobos failed after launch.
2. Among other things, the lander was baked in swirling clouds of nitrogen gas for over forty hours. The goal was to make sure that no earthly organisms polluted either Mars or the life science experiments. In fact, NASA/JPL had devised an entire program of “planetary quarantine” leading up to this mission. Ironically, in the intervening decades, it has become clear that the Martian environment is so very toxic, with high levels of solar radiation and powerful oxidizing agents present in the soil, that most anything that could have hitched a ride on the lander would have been dead shortly after touchdown.
CHAPTER 2. MARS 101
1. The “Goldilocks Zone,” also known as the “habitable zone,” is a unique combination of circumstances that must combine (it is thought) for a planet to be able to sustain life. These include: a proper distance from the star it orbits to be able to sustain liquid water on the surface, a size generally similar to Earth's, a star that is not hostile to life-supporting conditions, and a position within the larger galaxy that is not hostile to life (i.e., does not have radiation levels that are deadly to life-forms). This does not necessarily imply that the planet itself can support life. The environment needed to sustain carbon-based life-forms is a different set of conditions and variables. (The name of this zone comes, of course, from “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” in which Goldilocks tastes three bowls of porridge and rejects two for being too hot or too cold, but determines that the third is just right.)
2. In the early 1960s, mascons were first encountered by the early unmanned orbiters, whose orbital paths were affected in unexpected ways over certain regions of the moon. They were of much concern to those planning the descent paths of the Lunar Modules, and that was one reason for the “barnstorming” flight of Apollo 10, in which astronauts approached but did not land on the lunar surface. They wished to further explore the effects of these anomalies on descent trajectories.
3. The “terrestrial” planets in our solar system are, in order from the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are characterized by rocky composition, a solid surface, and roughly similar sizes.
4. Mars suffers from what is termed low thermal inertia, which means that the surface heats quickly in sunlight. There are no oceans present to dampen these effects with clouds or their own weather systems. Martian versions of trade winds can cycle around the planet at very high velocities, though in the thin atmosphere their effects are not the same as they would be on Earth. Wind velocities of over 100 mph are hypothesized. A 30-50 mph blow can cause dust to lift, often for weeks at a time; higher velocities lift more dust. The chances of a planetwide dust storm in a given year seem to be about one in three.
5. One such body of theory is called panspermia. It proposes that life can survive dormant for long periods in space, hitching a ride aboard a meteor or an asteroid. If the transporting body then impacts another planet, and the conditions are right, it could return to an active state and begin to evolve and adapt. Some propose that life started on Mars and was transported to Earth. And while no direct evidence has yet surfaced, meteors of both lunar and Martian origins have been found on Earth.
CHAPTER 3. IN THE BEGINNING: A SHINING RED EYE
1. Anonymous source from Middle Ages Europe (ca. approx. 1400 CE), in Willy Ley, Mariner 4 to Mars (New York: Signet, 1966).
2. Retrograde motion can be thought of this way: imagine that you are driving on a racetrack on the inside lane. Mars is driving on the outside lane. For most of the lap, if you take your eyes off what's in front of you and look over at Mars, the background is moving the same direction relative to the planet. However, as you complete your lap (you are moving faster than Mars, about twice as fast), and you approach and pass Mars, it seems to move in the opposite direction for a brief period. Now picture Earth's orbit and Mars's orbit outside of it—a similar situation applies. Retrograde motion of Mars appears every two years.
3. English astronomer, 1860.
4. Camille Flammarion, Popular Science 4, no. 9 (December 1873): 189. English translation from the French.
5. G. V. Schiaparelli, Osservazioni astronomiche e fisiche sull'asse di rotazione e sulla topografia del pianeta Marte, vol. 4 (Rome, Italy: Coi Tipi del Salviucci, 1896).
6. G. V. Schiaparelli, “Schiaparelli on Mars,” Nature 51 (November 22, 1894): 89.
7. John
Michels, “Review of ‘Mars’ by Percival Lowell,” Science 4, no. 86 (August 21, 1896): 233.
8. Percival Lowell, Mars (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895).
9. Ibid.
CHAPTER 4. THE END OF AN EMPIRE: MARINER 4
1. The number of unmanned explorations sent to Mars is nearing forty, yet almost half have been failures. Of these, the vast majority were from the Soviet Union. While successful with many of their missions to Venus, Russian plans for Mars exploration have yielded little success.
CHAPTER 5. DR. ROBERT LEIGHTON: THE EYES OF MARINER 4
1. Dr. Robert Leighton, interview by David DeVorkin, August 5, 1977, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist74738_1.html (accessed July 2011).
CHAPTER 7. DR. BRUCE MURRAY: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE IMAGE
1. Dr. Bruce Murray, interview by Rachel Prud'homme, March 1984, courtesy of the Caltech Archives, the California Institute of Technology.
CHAPTER 8. AEOLIAN ARMAGEDDON: MARINER 9
1. Mariner 9 would be the first of JPL's Mars missions to set the high benchmark to which all now seem to be held. Its primary mission was set at ninety days, just two months longer than the dust storm raged. But the spacecraft sent back images and data for almost a year, extending the mission duration by a factor of four.
CHAPTER 9. DR. LAURENCE SODERBLOM: THE EYES OF MARINER 9
1. Dr. Laurence Soderblom, interview by the author, August 2011.
CHAPTER 10. VIKING'S SEARCH FOR LIFE: WHERE ARE THE MICROBES?
1. The Soviet Mars missions for the 1973 opposition were Mars 4, 5, 6, and 7. Mars 4 and 5 were orbiters; Mars 6 and 7 were landers. Mars 4 made its way to the planet, but an error in the computer allowed it to flyby the planet as earlier craft had (by design), and the images it returned were a repeat of previous missions. Mars 5 made it to Mars but failed in orbit after less than ten days, returning some data. Mars 6 was a lander, and apparently made it to the surface, albeit at a higher rate of speed than intended. It transmitted data for a few minutes, but the onboard computer seemed to have suffered degradation during the flight and the data returned were unusable. Mars 7 was another lander, but it separated from its carrier spacecraft about four hours early and missed the planet altogether. These four failures must have been even more heartbreaking than most, as they represented a huge investment in time and resources for the Soviet unmanned program. The loss in national prestige cannot be overestimated.
