humans to Mars that's the plan right the problem is that sending humans down to
the surface of Mars is one of the most complicated and ambitious goals that we
can attempt it's a huge step to go from low-earth orbit then lunar landings then
all the way to Mars a journey of hundreds of millions of kilometers in
two years at the least but there are two places humans can go which are a
stepping-stone between Earth and Mars base camps that would let us gather our
resources in relative safety before dropping down into that gravity well I'm
talking about the moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos all the focus is on Mars and
with good reason it's pretty much the only place that kind of resembles Earth
in the solar system it has the same length of day polar caps of carbon
dioxide and water ice and daytime temperatures that can be almost
reasonable but we've also seen that Mars eats spacecraft for breakfast of the 18
spacecraft given the task of landing on the surface of Mars only nine have
actually made it down safely and we're able to carry out their mission that's
50% are we willing to risk the lives of half the people we send to the Red
Planet not to mention the increased challenge of landing heavier payloads on
Mars filled with soft and squishy humans now I've done a whole video about why
this is so difficult and check it out here but Mars has two moons Phobos and
Deimos offer an interesting alternative instead of going directly from Earth to
the surface of Mars humanity could set up a station on these rocky moons a base
camp for a serious and safer attempt on Mars Phobos is the larger of Mars's
moons and it's 27 kilometers on its longest time engine it's similar in
composition to a C type or carbonaceous chondrite asteroid planetary scientists
think it was either a captured asteroid or the debris from an ancient impact a
long time ago it's covered in fine powder made from eons of micro meteorite
impacts and has absolutely no atmosphere the moon
in orbits above Mars at an altitude of 5000 989 kilometres and takes only seven
hours and 39 minutes to complete an orbit around the planet
damos is smaller just 15 kilometers across at its longest part in orbits
Mars every 30 hours had a much higher altitude of twenty three thousand four
hundred and sixty kilometers so what would it take to set up a base on these
moons and why is it any better than just going directly to Mars even though it's
less massive than the earth Mars still has a significant gravity well in order
to go from the surface of Mars to low orbit you need a velocity change of
three point six kilometers per second and if you want to go from Mars back to
earth you need a velocity change of six kilometers per second in 2015
three engineers from NASA JPL proposed a minimal architecture for human missions
to Mars proposing a series of missions which establish a beachhead on one of
Mars moons first before sending humans down to the planet they suggested that a
campaign to send humans to Mars would be broken up into four major stages first
missions would be sent to Phobos to set up infrastructure on the moon next
astronauts would go down to the surface for a one month day then a longer
one-year expedition would be carried out and finally there would be the move to a
permanent presence on Mars setting up a presence on Phobos would require four
launches of the Space Launch System block two but SpaceX starships would
work nicely to the first three rockets would carry supplies a Phobos habitat
and a return vehicle for astronauts to come home the fourth launch would take
an Orion capsule with four astronauts to Mars following a 200 to 225 day
trajectory to bring them to Phobos the astronauts would live on the Fobo
station for about 500 days performing science on Phobos then they'd come home
maybe even make a side visit over to damos on the way
taking another 250 days to return based on the lessons learned from the Phobos
mission the actual landing on Mars would take another six SLS launches there'd be
more supplies and a 75 ton Mars landing vehicle which would wait in a high Mars
orbit finally crew would launch from Earth make the journey to the Fobo
station and then prepare for a landing on Mars when the conditions were right
two crew would transfer to the descent vehicle and land on Mars spending about
a month down on the surface while the other two astronauts remain on Phobos
the first human would set foot on the surface of Mars sometime in the 2030s or
2040s at the end of their month they'd climb into their ascent vehicle returned
to Phobos and then all the astronauts would come home again with everything
tested and proven more Rockets would launch to Mars carrying more supplies
for the Fobo station and a growing Mars base and astronauts would carry out
year-long expeditions on Mars and eventually there'd be a permanent
presence on Mars with overlapping crews at Phobos at the growing Mars base and
in transit now I know the joke you're gonna make that SpaceX will be sending
starships a decade earlier and this whole process is relevant haha stupid
NASA maybe but Mars is completely hostile to human life there's absolutely
no infrastructure there today and nobody has fully thought-out the thousands of
details it'll take for humans to survive there permanently it's hundreds of days
away with our fastest rockets and anyone who does go to Mars will be beyond any
kind of rescue if anything goes wrong and when it comes to Mars you need to
assume that things are going to go wrong anyway
if starship does fly then NASA just becomes a customer and gets to do these
missions cheaper faster with more redundancy and safety remember that NASA
is SpaceX's biggest customer it turns out that Phobos might actually make the
perfect spot for a partial space elevator
in a 2003 paper entitled space colonization using space elevators from
Phobos NASA engineer Leonard Weinstein looked into the feasibility of this idea
a tether could be lowered down from Phobos ending just above the atmosphere
of Mars from the surface of Mars the end of the tether would be moving through
the sky at a velocity of only half a kilometre a second passing over a spot
on Mars twice a day payloads could be launched from the surface of Mars and
get captured by the bottom end of the tether and then carried up to Phobos
over about two days a second elevator could even carry material up to the
orbit of Deimos and I know this sounds kind of extreme but when you think about
the orbital mechanics it actually takes less energy to carry
material from Phobos to lunar orbit than it does to get it from the surface of
the Moon we've talked about Phobos as a way station with a shortstop to Deimos
but it might be that Deimos is actually a better place to set up shop and I'll
get to that in a second but first I'd like to thank Richard Campbell Michael
Valles cristobal and the rest of our 818 patrons for their generous support the
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today and get in on the action in the 2013 presentation Lockheed Martin
engineer Josh Hopkins proposed that Phobos and Deimos make sense as the
first place for exploration by humans and made this case that damos is even
better both Phobos and Deimos are tidally
locked to Mars which means they always show the same face to the surface of the
planet astronauts stationed on one of these
moons would be able to tell or operate Rovers and sample return missions with
essentially no delay from its higher altitude damos actually sees more of the
surface of Mars than Phobos 98% of the planet is visible from the moon with its
slower path across the sky Deimos would have the ability to
communicate with the surface for almost 60 hours continuously while Phobos slips
over the horizon every four point two hours regions near the
North Pole of damos would be in constant sunlight and also have a constant view
down to the surface of Mars getting to and from damos would actually be easier
needing about 400 meters per second last change in velocity so imagine everything
I said for a mission to Phobos but replace that with damos instead but if
we really want to stay we'll want to tunnel down inside Deimos and this is
according to Jim Logan the co-founder of the space Enterprise Institute during a
recent presentation at a conference in Seattle about space settlement Logan
suggested that it should be possible to build a permanent habitat inside damos I
wasn't there for the seminar but Alan Boyle from geek wire was and he captured
this cool photo of Logan's talk according to Logan the original idea for
an O'Neill cylinder underestimated just how much radiation shielding would be
necessary by about a third so remember when I said that they'd need
forty five thousand starship launches to build an O'Neill cylinder it turns out
we might need a hundred and fifty thousand instead but it should be
possible to dig a tunnel right through the center of Deimos from end to end and
maybe call on Elon Musk's boring company to do the work the interior of Deimos is
assumed to be porous and engineers would find reserves of water ice precious
metals and minerals as they dug through which would support pretty much any
scale of Base it could even be large enough to put rotating habitats inside
the moon to provide artificial gravity for the inhabitants positions solar
panels at the poles where they get almost eternal sunlight all this focus
on Mars but there's a case to be made for the moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos
to serve as the first places we visit in the region then we've got a good solid
base camp and we make a serious attempt on the red planet what do you think does
it make more sense to focus on Phobos and Deimos first let me know your
thoughts in the comments here are the names of the patrons who support us at
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or Mars the one a place that's safer and protected watch this video to find out
why lava tubes make the best place to start