Oberg: Why is Human Mars Exploration So Surprisingly Hard?

[Wilms]

Why is human Mars exploration so surprisingly hard?

by James Oberg
Monday, August 17, 2009

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Here’s the way I’ve come to see it. It should have been no surprise that “On-To-Mars” never happened. The reasons directly affect today’s chances of tackling the task in the near future.

First, since Apollo had gloriously succeeded in its major purpose—restoring American status as the leading high-tech nation in the world—the political support for further spending evaporated in the face of new, more urgent challenges. Apollo had “worked”. Making the point again on a different stage would have added little if any value.

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Third, major components of the Apollo team—the experienced engineers, technicians, and managers—had by 1969 chosen to return to “normal” life. Gathered from a hundred separate industries with engineering experience in a thousand projects, these men and women had consciously and intentionally chosen to put their personal lives on hold and devote 60-plus-hour workweeks to the “project of the century”—for a limited period of time. And that period was over. Talented and dedicated people remained, but the breadth of experience that had made the Moon program feasible shrank markedly.

Fourth, in terms of the science harvest of the lunar missions, Apollo had reaped enough raw data to require decades of study to digest it, formulate new theories, and define the new questions that needed answers through on-site exploration. The “cover story” that curiosity had been the driver for Apollo (and would be for its successors) lost validity when the next set of scientific questions would take an academic generation or two to crystallize.
The engineering challenges of much, much longer space flights far from Earth (with no chance of resupply or rescue) had been grossly underestimated.

Fifth, there were things we discovered about the hazards of spaceflight that demanded new assessments and the development of new capabilities. For example, extending Apollo-class lunar operations wasn’t merely a matter of carrying more batteries and more sandwiches. The hardware had proven just barely capable of the minimum mission during limited thermal environments and on limited geographical subsets of the Moon. Extending the range in time and space demanded an entirely new generation of space vehicles. For example, the unexpectedly abrasive lunar dust just ate up the Apollo spacesuits, corroding their air seals and jamming their mechanical joints. On the last missions, the suits showed signs of breakdown after only three days of use.

Sixth, the engineering challenges of much, much longer space flights far from Earth (with no chance of resupply or rescue) had been grossly underestimated. Even today aboard the International Space Station less than 500 kilometers from home, proving out truly long-term reliable regenerative life support hardware is only now showing signs of success.

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http://thespacereview.com/article/1448/1

Earth As Seen From Mars

[pokerfan]

1. We acheived our goal

which was beating the Soviets meaning that we went for the wrong reasons. Our crewed space progam is in the process of being grounded. The STS is being retired next year with nothing to replace it for seven years according to the latest schedule. The Ares I looks dead on arrival so expect the schedule to slip even further. NASA seemed to work best when it had direction and clear goals. Today it seems somewhat adrift.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,
(JFK at Rice University, 1962)

http://www.marssociety.org/portal/ZubrinTestimonyAugustine/">Transcript Of Robert Zubrin's Testimony Before Augustine Commission

"It's not a miracle... we just decided to go."
(Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13)

[comtec]

2. I'd call a lunar base and Mars colonization pretty clear

and long term.
and we've had those goals since before Apollo.
oh well.
who needs medicine when you have the nuke right?

[pokerfan]

3. I probably should have said *specific* goals

Can't decide between the Moon and Mars? I've got an idea, let's do both! That's not setting a goal. That's eating your cake and thinking you can still have it.

Remember the 90 Day Report? The one with the $450B price tag twenty years ago? It had everything including an international space station, orbital fuel depots, a lunar base and mining facility, fuel tankers to carry oxygen from the moon to Earth orbit and a gigantic nuclear powered Mars vehicle to be assembled in an orbiting shipyard.

Wonderful, amazing cutting-edge stuff to be sure but you don't need all that stuff to go to Mars. Even NASA agrees that Mars Direct would 'only' cost $55B spread over ten years or so. While not exactly Zubrin's $20B figure it's a helluva long way from $450B. I think when NASA was asked to prepare the 90 Day Report, NASA interpreted the request as the administration handing them a blank check. They weren't.

So they go ahead and build the ISS anyway because that they could get funding for. I don't exactly understand what it's for except inspecting shuttle tiles I guess. It's not needed to go to either the Moon or Mars. We have forty-something years of zero-gee experience including some incredible endurance records so it can't be for that. It's required scores of launches to assemble with each launch costing billions of dollars and now that it's completed NASA wants to abandon it and go off and do something else. It really serves no purpose but it does demand a launch every couple of months.

And now we're ostensibly headed back to the Moon to build a permanent base and an oxygen mining facility. You see what they're doing here? They are proceeding with the $450 billion plan in a piecemeal fashion. The more they delay committing to a Mars Direct style program, the more NASA is proceeding with the 90 Day Report albeit at a glacial pace.

That's why I should have said that NASA needs a specific goal. They got that from Kennedy in 1962 and they delivered.

[phantom power]

4. Human exploration projects...

have, mostly, been either driven by fleeing from something (religious persecution, famine, etc), or driven by treasure-seeking. A new route to Asia, new sources of gold, etc.

So far, there has been nothing off-planet that is of sufficient value to justify the expense of getting out there and taking it back. And (so far) there is no calamity here on earth that is sufficiently wide-spread and horrible to force us off it.

The moon landings were essentially a politically and militarily motivated stunt. Mostly political, since earth orbit serves perfectly well for military applications.

[centristgrandpa]

5. could not agree more..kudo's n/t