Why colonize the Moon before going to Mars?

[C1ay]

NASA has a new Vision for Space Exploration: in the decades ahead, humans will land on Mars and explore the red planet. Brief visits will lead to longer stays and, maybe one day, to colonies.

 

lefthttp://www.hypography.com/gallery/files/9/9/8/astronaut_dig_thumb.jpg[/img]First, though, we're returning to the Moon. Why the Moon before Mars? "The Moon is a natural first step," explains Philip Metzger, a physicist at NASA Kennedy Space Center. "It's nearby. We can practice living, working and doing science there before taking longer and riskier trips to Mars."

 

The Moon and Mars have a lot in common. The Moon has only one-sixth Earth's gravity; Mars has one-third. The Moon has no atmosphere; the Martian atmosphere is highly rarefied. The Moon can get very cold, as low as -240o C in shadows; Mars varies between -20o and -100o C.

 

Even more important, both planets are covered with silt-fine dust, called "regolith." The Moon's regolith was created by the ceaseless bombardment of micrometeorites, cosmic rays and particles of solar wind breaking down rocks for billions of years. Martian regolith resulted from the impacts of more massive meteorites and even asteroids, plus ages of daily erosion from water and wind. There are places on both worlds where the regolith is 10+ meters deep.

 

Operating mechanical equipment in the presence of so much dust is a formidable challenge. Just last month, Metzger co-chaired a meeting on the topic: "Granular Materials in Lunar and Martian Exploration," held at the Kennedy Space Center. Participants grappled with issues ranging from basic transportation ("What kind of tires does a Mars buggy need?") to mining ("How deep can you dig before the hole collapses?") to dust storms--both natural and artificial ("How much dust will a landing rocket kick up?").

 

Answering these questions on Earth isn't easy. Moondust and Mars dust is so ... alien.

 

Try this: Run your finger across the screen of your computer. You'll get a little residue of dust clinging to your fingertip. It's soft and fuzzy--that's Earth dust.

 

Lunar dust is different: "It's almost like fragments of glass or coral--odd shapes that are very sharp and interlocking," says Metzger.

 

"Even after short moon walks, Apollo 17 astronauts found dust particles had jammed the shoulder joints of their spacesuits," says Masami Nakagawa, associate professor in the mining engineering department of the Colorado School of Mines. "Moondust penetrated into seals, causing the spacesuits to leak some air pressure."

 

In sunlit areas, adds Nakagawa, fine dust levitated above the Apollo astronauts' knees and even above their heads, because individual particles were electrostatically charged by the Sun's ultraviolet light. Such dust particles, when tracked into the astronauts' habitat where they would become airborne, irritated their eyes and lungs. "It's a potentially serious problem."

 

Dust is also ubiquitous on Mars, although Mars dust is probably not as sharp as moondust. Weathering smooths the edges. Nevertheless, Martian duststorms whip these particles 50 m/s (100+ mph), scouring and wearing every exposed surface. As the rovers Spirit and Opportunity have revealed, Mars dust (like moondust) is probably electrically charged. It clings to solar panels, blocks sunlight and reduces the amount of power that can be generated for a surface mission.

 

For these reasons, NASA is funding Nakagawa's Project Dust, a four-year study dedicated to finding ways of mitigating the effects of dust on robotic and human exploration, ranging from designs of air filters to thin-film coatings that repel dust from spacesuits and machinery.

 

The Moon is also a good testing ground for what mission planners call "in-situ resource utilization" (ISRU)--a.k.a. "living off the land." Astronauts on Mars are going to want to mine certain raw materials locally: oxygen for breathing, water for drinking and rocket fuel (essentially hydrogen and oxygen) for the journey home. "We can try this on the Moon first," says Metzger.

 

Both the Moon and Mars are thought to harbor water frozen in the ground. The evidence for this is indirect. NASA and ESA spacecraft have detected hydrogen--presumably the H in H2O--in Martian soil. Putative icy deposits range from the Martian poles almost to the equator. Lunar ice, on the other hand, is localized near the Moon's north and south poles deep inside craters where the Sun never shines, according to similar data from Lunar Prospector and Clementine, two spacecraft that mapped the Moon in the mid-1990s.

 

If this ice could be excavated, thawed out and broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen ... Voila! Instant supplies. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, due to launch in 2008, will use modern sensors to search for deposits and pinpoint possible mining sites.

 

"The lunar poles are a cold place, so we've been working with people who specialize in cold places to figure out how to land on the soils and dig into the permafrost to excavate water," Metzger says. Prime among NASA's partners are investigators from the Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). Key challenges include ways of landing rockets or building habitats on ice-rich soils without having their heat melt the ground so it collapses under their weight.

 

Testing all this technology on the Moon, which is only 2 or 3 days away from Earth, is going to be much easier than testing it on Mars, six months away.

 

So ... to Mars! But first, the Moon.

 

Source: Science@NASA (by Trudy E. Bell, Dr. Tony Phillips)

[infamous]

It's really all about the cheese.

[BlameTheEx]

Why go to ether? Until space flight is orders of magnitude cheaper, or space budgets orders of magnitude greater there is no hope of more than token visits to Mars. Worse there are unsolved, and possibly unsolvable problems for a mars expedition. Can we shield passengers from radiation? Can we protect them from bone loss?

 

The mars rovers are doing an excellent job. If we wish we can send an awful lot of them to mars for the price of one manned mission. Science would be better served. We just don't know where (if anywhere) on mars that a breakthrough in understanding may occur. A single, or even a handful of manned missions may just land in uninteresting places. If ever there is a reason to send men to mars it will be AFTER a very special location is found.

 

Anyway, this is all a political fantasy which will fade fast enough now that Bush is re-elected. If not it will fade VERY fast when the next president is elected and finds that the major budget allocations needed start in his presidency!

 

Am I the only one who sees that Bush is setting up NASA for scrapping in the next presidency? Bush has not allocated enough cash for the preparation towards mars to progress without major cuts elsewhere in the space program. If after that the mars program is shelved there will be very little left. NASA will be left to justify the money spent in terms of the remaining cash strapped projects. It will be easy to argue that NASA is poor value for money and that it should be wound up. Any accountant could put a good case for transferring the remaining projects to private companies.

[paultrr]

Why go to ether? Until space flight is orders of magnitude cheaper, or space budgets orders of magnitude greater there is no hope of more than token visits to Mars. Worse there are unsolved, and possibly unsolvable problems for a mars expedition. Can we shield passengers from radiation? Can we protect them from bone loss?

 

The mars rovers are doing an excellent job. If we wish we can send an awful lot of them to mars for the price of one manned mission. Science would be better served. We just don't know where (if anywhere) on mars that a breakthrough in understanding may occur. A single, or even a handful of manned missions may just land in uninteresting places. If ever there is a reason to send men to mars it will be AFTER a very special location is found.

 

Anyway, this is all a political fantasy which will fade fast enough now that Bush is re-elected. If not it will fade VERY fast when the next president is elected and finds that the major budget allocations needed start in his presidency!

 

Am I the only one who sees that Bush is setting up NASA for scrapping in the next presidency? Bush has not allocated enough cash for the preparation towards mars to progress without major cuts elsewhere in the space program. If after that the mars program is shelved there will be very little left. NASA will be left to justify the money spent in terms of the remaining cash strapped projects. It will be easy to argue that NASA is poor value for money and that it should be wound up. Any accountant could put a good case for transferring the remaining projects to private companies.

 

In the end run there are things that humans can do better than any robot. Eventually, which is something a lot of people tend to overlook, we will have to spread out across space if the human race plans to continue to survive. With all the debate going on about biology related issues in this forum one might consider what is the effect over time of any population that remains on one island to hardship? The reason I mention this is this planet is an island and untill we learn to fully leave this island we are subject to those same problems ourselves. The time to learn how to leave that island is now, not some far off time in the future. New Resouces would be one reason in and of itself to move outward. Population dispersion onto large areas would be another. Along with that I might add biodiversity as another reason in the end run. Simply put not keeping all our eggs in the same basket tends to increase the long term odds of survival of the species.

 

Yes, cost needs to be lowered. I know personally you will get no argument on that out of any of the guys at NASA even. Everyone recognizes that. But some of the cost issues arises out of supply and demand. The smaller the supply and demand generally with spacecraft and with propulsion the higher the cost. There's even examples of such in the auto industry where certain luxery cars tend to cost a whole lot more simply because not as many are demanded. There is also a certain amount of politics that keeps the cost of space exploration high. Its not as cut and dry as some like to picture it.

 

One other reason actually goes back to politics. We got into space in a race with communism. At the current times China has set its sights on going to the moon. I believe that China at present is a communist nation still. They still tend to have military goals in mind in most that they do. Would one care to wake up in the near future and find say America with no presence on the Moon or elsewhere and China way ahead and in control of such. That is about the situation we may face if America does not move forward. The only real human presence we have at this time is with the ISS and that sits in too low of an orbit to serve as a decent space launch platform.

 

Robots are good. But they are only good up to a point. There have been experiments conducted here on earth where humans will spot signs of life long before any robot can. It takes both to make a decent space program and it takes the human presence to learn to move off of this island we call earth.

[C1ay]

Why go to ether? Until space flight is orders of magnitude cheaper, or space budgets orders of magnitude greater there is no hope of more than token visits to Mars. Worse there are unsolved, and possibly unsolvable problems for a mars expedition. Can we shield passengers from radiation? Can we protect them from bone loss?

In order to learn how to do anything and get better at it you have to practice and do. You can not learn to play an instrument by looking at it stand in the corner. You have to pick it up and play it. It order to solve the spaceflight problems we are faced with, we have to take action, we have to do something, not wait idly by by some future generation. By addressing the problems and working on them they will be resolved. Procrastination will not solve them.

 

The mars rovers are doing an excellent job. If we wish we can send an awful lot of them to mars for the price of one manned mission. Science would be better served. We just don't know where (if anywhere) on mars that a breakthrough in understanding may occur. A single, or even a handful of manned missions may just land in uninteresting places. If ever there is a reason to send men to mars it will be AFTER a very special location is found.

 

Yes, the rovers are doing a wonderful job. New capabilities are being developed for the next round of rovers. I think we will send numerous missions of rovers while we work on the obstacles that stand in front of a manned mission. Simply complaining about those obstacles and the possible outcomes will solve nothing. Pessimism is not a constructive approach to exploration.

 

Anyway, this is all a political fantasy which will fade fast enough now that Bush is re-elected. If not it will fade VERY fast when the next president is elected and finds that the major budget allocations needed start in his presidency!

 

Am I the only one who sees that Bush is setting up NASA for scrapping in the next presidency? Bush has not allocated enough cash for the preparation towards mars to progress without major cuts elsewhere in the space program. If after that the mars program is shelved there will be very little left. NASA will be left to justify the money spent in terms of the remaining cash strapped projects. It will be easy to argue that NASA is poor value for money and that it should be wound up. Any accountant could put a good case for transferring the remaining projects to private companies.

This is really unworthy of comment. We are here to discuss science, not politics. FWIW, complaining will get nothing done. If you are unhappy about the background politics then do something about it, take action. Armchair quarterbacks can never win the game if they don't get up and play the game.

[Stargazer]

Indeed, why go anywhere? Let's stay on this planet forever until disaster, or ourselves, strike and we are wiped out. Before that happens though, our civilisation will probably slow down in development and expansion.

 

The benefits of space exploration and colonisation are many.

 

The reason to go to the Moon before going to Mars is, in my view, that we get a chance to practice on longterm deep space missions. We will develop new technologies for life support systems and micrometeoroid shields and how to protect the crew from radition. Obviously space travel is expensive and difficult, but it wont get any cheaper or easier if we chose to sit around and wait for some miracle to happen.

[Kirk Gregory Czuhai]

who wants to almost with 100% certainty commit suicide by being the among the first to try to go to Mars?

Even if the trip was successful, the astronauts probably would be exposed to so much radiation by the time they got back from their trip and on the planet that they would be full of gangreen by the time they got back!

NASA, need another seven astronauts, would have another whole new dimension to the motto!

a multi-billion dollar russian roullet mission with at least 5 live bullets in the 6 shooter!

peace and love,

and,

love and peace,

(kirk) kirk gregory czuhai ---> LOVES! :xx:

http://BlueRoses.WS

http://ChessClub.WS

[Stargazer]

The risks of space travel are there of course. But why would anyone go to Mars without good radiation shielding? The scientists and engineers know it's a problem, so obviously they will try to solve it as good as possible. Then there are other dangers as well, but as I see it, they can be overcome. There's no doubt that people will die in space, whether they live in low Earth orbit or while on a journey to Neptune. It happens with a lot of things we do. We've been travelling by boats and ships for a very long time, and yet it's still not 100% safe, because nothing is. It happens with aeroplanes and cars as well, and yet very few would want us to stop using those means of transportation.

 

People who will travel to the other worlds should not do so without being as safe as possible, of course. I mean, we're talking about travelling through an environment that is extremely alien to us, that is, space. And we're going to do it to reach worlds that are vastly different from Earth. The margins are slim, not many things can be allowed to go wrong. That's why we have to take it in small steps, I think, to develop the right technologies to go even further.