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Add to FavoritesN.A.S.A.'s record for safe space travel is not excellent. Their standard of blowing things up on the way to Mars probably will be equaled in some way-I would guess that government contractors probably profit more than a little when disaster's occur anyway. N.A.S.A. does not design low cost, efficient interplanetary space vehicles or systems, and they use chemical rocket concepts as the essential mode of propulsion and will do so till the cows come home from Mars as revolutionaries I suppose.
If people want to go to Mars next month it would be too dangerous, yet if they don't develop the capacity to go to Mars within a decade or two the collateral failure of human technology to progress while the population goes up billions may spell the doom of humanity on Earth. Failing to go to Mars is too dangerous to risk!
Sure humanity flunks many fairly simple things including solid political philosophy conformed to human needs. One gets a Leviathan from Thomas Hobbes and an Essay on Government from John Locke that are entirely incompatible. Hobbes and Stalin might have got along, and possibly Russian anarchists with Locke and Nathan Hale, yet which of the lot could have brought good ecological economics and space-travel technology together right away if they were all alive today with political power?
New space travel methods can make space travel to Mars simple and cheap. Developing Mars should also be simple and cheap. Terraforming Mars under glass should be simple and cheap-yet humanity can make the most impossibly dangerous and difficult situations out of the simple and safe...the fault lies within ourselves and not in the stars.
An interview in the field by a survivor of the return from Mars of the altered state Enterprise Rover assault disaster elicited a true report of the dangers of spaced travel beyond the edges of the world and solar system...'Thar be monstars aplenty me bucko. Two days out ye run into the doom goons of gun and lilies of prisswitts assaulting the ship for quarters and shakin down the hatches, carryon off the bolts and nuts and ripples in space time leave it tall a shakin. Mars is especially doom on hardware with wired read-breathing appuratusses and hippobeasts eating the government fodder freely. Electrical bilge circuit overloads and concurrence's of code-word sloggin by vengeful mimedwarfs are repelled only with loss of crew and yeomanry-pikesmen and slingers, archers and arrows-then the return to Earth and the computers, M.B.A.'s and trade goods a barterin"
-plainly the interview complete with Xeno Map detailing the locations of the dangers of the road to Mars-space-time warps, flattened dimensions, cull de sac, cosmic rays, fearful cold, a far piece without triple A and inadequate tax and developer base were indicated along with extra-terrestrial monsters in hidden yet well located places.
A space race for the moon is presently in progress and so is one for Mars as well. Though the United States may not exist in 30 years because of trans-national corporatist M.B.A.'s loyal to profits only with democracy lumped in with public sector investments as communist (corporatists are feudalistic moving toward monopoly and hate the big communist monopolies jealously) there is still a plethora of private and national space ventures including various X prises such as the one from Google for a private lunar landing of a machine explorer that will proceed even if America falters as it has since the last Apollo landing.
Comparatively the world is in the process of destroying itself and it's environment anyway with a neurotic concentration on corporate profits by M.B.A.'s to the detriment of what are consider 'externalities' that they should not be responsible for, and only communists or zil drivers would have an interest in the environment or anything requiring taxation to accomplish so a Mars mission should go ahead faster, cheaper and better than anything presently planned.
Electro-magnetic mass drivers on the moon should be used to launch like an electro-magnetic cannon designed on S.D.I. rail gun principles and metalstorm gun miniature models to launch a lot of pre-formed hardware and supplies to Mars. A number of base camp supply modules life boats should be set to float around in Mars orbit, at L5, on Mar's moon Phobos (it means 'fear' in Latin) and in Mars-Earth transit orbits such that they are no more than three months apart in passing any fixed relative point in the circuit.
Long term expose to cosmic rays in space destroy the human D.N.A.'s coherence and something like 15 feet of water of ice are needed for shielding humans from long term cosmic ray exposure. The transit base camps all should be designed for later shield by liquid water or ice, and Mars should have an electro-magnetic mass driver to hurl water into space for use in creating cosmic ray shields.
There are a number of space propulsion technologies that will get space-travelers from the Moon to Mars in two years, yet the time could be improved by construction of a large electro-magnetic macro accelerator through which a normal chemical rocket or ion driven space-ship would boost its speed to a significantly quicker pace. New adaptations of existing technology would need to be synthesized for the project.
Mars is a high frontier that should be approached like exploration missions of prior centuries in the Earth's past such as the Falcon Scott and Amundsen competitions in the Antarctic. Will America be a Amundsen or a Scott in its approach to practical field procedures of expedient space travel? Scott had the glorious teamwork and determination of naval disciple brave to the end, while Amundsen comparatively breezed on past with dogs pulling the load instead of men having spent a lifetime carefully researching the ways of the polar environments and using the most expedient and effective methods to get around. America could build space-stations as if they were hollow spheres sprayed and dried to a certain size then built up with other layered materials in space and create as many floating space-spheres as there are little sea-shell tests that built up the cliffs of Dover over eons of time. It takes imagination and the determination of the intrepid explorer such as Robert McClure navigating Canada's then unknown Banks Island for the British Admiralty.
Dangers exist in exploration yet that is usual. One must expect dangers and loss of equipment and engineer technologies and systems that can survive the attrition. McClure's ship was turned on its side by the ice-floes and nearly crushed before being released. They sailed farther north and were eventually frozen in permanently being rescued only months later by naval sledging parties look for the northwest passage.
The construction possibilities for Earth shelters and dome homes is indescribably good. It would be a good way to get away from the rat race for a while, grow your own organic produce and read philosophy books while thinking about God and serious topics.
Learn more about this author, Gary C. Gibson.
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Yes
Of course travel to Mars, 150 million miles of hard vacuum and cosmic radiation away, is too dangerous and it will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. This question is phrased not, "should we go to Mars", or, "will we ever get to Mars", so it remains open to interpretation as to what currently constitutes "too dangerous". There is also a tendency to make assumptions that any current technological difficulties will be overcome in time somehow.
In May of 2001, Robert Zubrin, then president of Pioneer Astronautics and the Mars Society, told National Geographic Today, "We are much closer today to sending people to Mars than we were to sending people to the moon in 1961." If that were actually the case, then we would be landing on Mars sometime next summer. Enthusiasm and pragmatism are frequently at odds with each other and there are many pros and cons to the practicality of a Mars mission. But for the sake of brevity, I offer the top 5 reasons, in order of increasing importance, why going to Mars is still too dangerous at present.
5) If you think your cell phone service has dead-spots now, try Mars.
Unless we learn to exceed the speed of light in the next few years, communications are going to be a huge hurdle. Depending on the relative locations of the two planets, communication can take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes; and that's one way. Throw in the fact that Earth would have to be above the Martian horizon to receive messages (and vice versa), windows of opportunity will further restrict the amount of information that's able to be exchanged during any particular interval of time.
Advances in laser-communications and increased bandwidth can alleviate some of the concerns by providing increased data capacity over radio waves. But even lasers have drawbacks, such as cloud cover, dust storms and the need to accurate pointing over vast distances. A series of relay satellites or even the orbiter itself might be able to intercept a signal no matter what relative positions Mars and Earth are in, but they still have to be on the same side of the planet as the Lander. And that will do nothing to shorten the lag time. While not necessarily a fatal flaw if all systems are go, in an emergency, such a delay could indeed be fatal.
4) In space no one can hear you scream, and they won't hear you scream in the Lander, either, without oxygen. The logistical problems of taking sufficient air, water and food for a round trip voyage is mind-boggling and at this point in time, insurmountable. When one notes the number of times per year the International Space Station must be re-supplied using heavy-lift Russian rockets, it quickly becomes apparent that the Mars ship will either be gigantic, or else there is going to have to be another way of providing food/water/oxygen for the crew's journey.
Other possibilities exist, such as pre-launching and staging supply stations all along the trajectory to Mars. That's pretty tough since orbital dynamics around the sun would affect the supply line, but it is still possible to place these supply depots into predictable, exploitable orbits provided something doesn't interfere with the mission itself and its timing in any way. One might even fly "robot supply ships" around and rendezvous with the Mars ship in route. Either way, it's going to take a lot of coordination, a lot of manpower and a lot of supplies. Until the ISS gets more self-sufficient for longer intervals than it is now, no manned Mars mission is feasible using currently available technology.
3) The dominance of outer space is going to require some serious "divide and conquer" tactics. Before we can go to Mars, we have to conquer the Moon first. Sure, we made a camping trip there a few decades ago, but in order to use the Moon as a platform for deeper space exploration, we'll have to place a permanent facility there. This means building, supplying and launching sophisticated space craft for building, supplying and using a Moon base for building, supplying and launching a Mars ship. Over-anxiously placing the cart before the horse in a mad dash to the red planet is a sure recipe for disaster.
The learning curve for the Moon base itself will not be short, and there would be lessons to be learned from a prolonged presence on the Moon that might apply to a Mars mission. Thus a prolonged training program on the Moon would be merited. That's a bit of a "delay" but certainly not a show-stopper, however, there is one underlying "danger" that will translate to every aspect of the journey to Mars: meteor impacts. One meteor impact can stop the show dead in its tracks.
Since the Moon has a gravitational field, there is a constant possibility of meteor impacts. Large or small, meteors will absolutely ruin a Mars mission, so even though the danger starts on the Moon, it doesn't end there. The prospect of having the Mars craft damaged by micro-meteor impacts at any stage of the journey raises the possibilities of catastrophic mission failure beyond what would be considered a reasonable risk. Without options for impact recovery or sufficient shielding for impact prevention, the uncertainty of the actual impact risk will delay any mission to Mars until that risk becomes a known quantity.
2) In space, doctors do not make house calls. There have been remarkable advances in the use of remote, robotic-assisted medical procedures. The time-lag between instructions leaving Earth and reaching the Mars module will make that quite challenging, but it is a surmountable problem with the use of properly trained personnel on the Mars module augmenting the process. But, there's one medical problem that can't really be dealt with in this manner: radiation. The amount of hard radiation that will bombard our astronauts during their many months long journey to and from Mars is definitely "dangerous" and without proper shielding, could be fatal.
These are unknown factors with regard to how much radiation to expect, how much the human body can take and over what duration. Additional shielding will make the module more massive, requiring more fuel and once again, we get into the area of sufficient resources. Closely related to this danger is another aspect of the sun itself and lack of adequate protection against hard radiation spewing out of coronal holes, and solar flares directionally targeting the craft and its fragile electronics.
Plus, the radiation danger may not end at the orbit of Mars, since the surface also receives more cosmic radiation than Earth. Here, you have an even less shielded Lander subjected to relatively less radiation, but still possibly at dangerous levels. A more shielded Lander is heavier which requires more thrust to attain orbit using more fuel and the resources dilemma is reinforced.
1) Then there is the biggest factor that makes a trip to Mars "too dangerous": the need for properly testing the mechanical integrity of the craft and all its peripherals under realistic conditions. Mechanical functions occasionally fail and the more complex the equipment, the more things that can go wrong with it. It will takes hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of testing of the actual equipment, subjected to the forces the craft will encounter, under identical environmental conditions in order to create contingency plans and reinforce the weaknesses. The best testing would take place in space itself where the cold/heat of space can be represented before you subject the entire structure to the stresses of deceleration after months in space. This will take time. Until that is done, Mars is too dangerous and a hasty mission is not only dangerous, but reckless.
There is risk involved in any exploration and one need only be reminded that Mount Everest was initially conquered with much less advanced equipment than exists today. But, people still die today. One big difference isn't the equipment, but the experience level of the people involved. Ingenuity and the human spirit has overcome much and will continue to do so in the future. Still, the first men to attempt Mount Everest failed. Two of those, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, attempted an ascent on June 8, 1924 and died 29 years before Sir Hillary's successful ascent and descent. But, Mallory is still known to this day for explaining why he even wanted to climb Everest: "Because it's there." Mount Everest is STILL there. Mars is there, too, but we're in it for the return trip.
Learn more about this author, Gunter Chang.
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