The next frontier for human spaceflight is obvious.
We have to go to Mars.
You might’ve heard a lot of people talking about this recently — from tech innovators
to NASA scientists, even President Obama has made the case that we should go to Mars.
So we talked to Chris McKay, a senior scientist at NASA's Ames research center.
He's involved in the planning of future Mars missions, and he walked us through some of
the hazards.
I'm Brian Resnick, I'm a science reporter at Vox.
I will never go to Mars, and here the top seven reasons why.
Here's number one.
Your rocket could blow up before leaving Earth.
This is pretty obvious.
NASA has a pretty good track record with sending astronauts to space, but we also know that
there have been tragedies.
For some context, the NASA space shuttle program carried 833 people to orbit between 1981
and 2011, of which fourteen people died in two big explosions.
SpaceX has a checkered history of trying to launch rockets and land them.
Number two: So if you successfully leave Earth
and it's all safe, and it's all good, there are still some dangers in that journey to Mars.
The biggest danger here is radiation exposure.
The vacuum of space is not really empty.
There's radiation emanating from the sun, and it goes out in all directions.
There are gamma rays, and X rays, and ultraviolet light, and all these things that can damage
our cells.
Here on Earth, we have a dense atmosphere and a magnetic field that helps keep this
radiation out of our daily lives.
According to measurements from NASA’s Curiosity rover, there’s more radiation on the surface
of Mars than there would be on Earth.
Perhaps the more worrisome risk of radiation in space is from solar flares.
Occasionally and randomly and in a way that's hard to predict, the sun emits very large
batches of radiation in great flares.
Number three: you can crash on Mars' surface trying to land.
One thing about landing on Mars that the atmosphere is a lot thinner.
That means there's a lot less of a cushion — another way to think about it is there's
a lot less friction in the atmosphere that will naturally slow your spacecraft down.
You would need a system of rockets to help you land smoothly on Mars.
We saw with the Curiosity rover, that was
an incredibly intricate and choreographed maneuver to get just that one-ton rover down
onto the planet. Could you imagine getting 6, 7, 10, a hundred humans down onto that
planet?
You would need a very complicated, very sophisticated, and very well-tested system to help people
descend down to the Martian surface.
Number four: Mars’ low gravity might wreak havoc on your bones and muscles.
Many astronauts who spend six months or more on the Space Station
have vision loss that doesn't get corrected
when they come back down to the Earth.
There was one astronaut that went from perfect 20/20 vision to 20/100 vision just in six months.
Other things that happen in the microgravity of space is that your muscles start to deteriorate,
your bones start to deteriorate, and this can be staved off by some regular exercise,
but NASA really hasn't found a complete solution to this problem.
Think about a six-month voyage to Mars.
You know once you get there, the Martian gravity isn't as strong as Earth's.
It's not as light as you would be on the moon, it’s not as heavy as you would be on Earth.
So will muscles and bones and eyesight continue to deteriorate on Mars
is not yet known.
Number five: your space suit or habitat could leak, and you just can't breathe Martian air.
The pressure of Mars’ atmosphere is just a fraction of the pressure of the earth's
atmosphere.
Your house on Mars would be like the cabin of an airplane:
Any crack in your house any slit in your space suit will lead it to depressurize … and that's
an obvious problem.
Mars is filled with dust and dirt that just gets everywhere — it could
quickly clog all of your intake vents, it could quickly destroy some of your electronics,
and people could die if you inhale it.
So the dream is that one day we could potentially breathe Martian air.
This is an idea that has long obsessed science fiction authors: it's called terraforming.
And the idea is that maybe we can change the Martian atmosphere to be more like Earth.
We could start some global warming on Mars, and raise the temperature of the planet, and
entrap more greenhouse gases in. We can raise the level of CO2 so we can start
growing plants there, those plants could then start to produce oxygen.
This is probably the most far-fetched idea out there — not to say it's impossible, but just,
it is well, well into the future.
Number six: the planet Mars could literally kill you.
The soil of Mars is toxic.
You might have seen the movie The Martian, where astronaut Mark Watney grows potatoes
on Mars in the Martian soil.
We probably shouldn't do that.
It contains a very high concentrations of chemicals called perchlorates.
These are salts that can do serious damage to the human body, especially the thyroid.
You wouldn’t want to grow your potatoes in it.
It's okay to get Martian dirt on your hands but you really wouldn't want to get into your
drinking water or food or get into your habitat.
Number seven: your fellow travelers could drive you crazy.
This is been a surprising challenge for NASA to learn and to get over: how do you
craft a crew for a spaceship that will be alone with each other for months on end, and
also be the only human beings on an entire planet
for perhaps months or years, and spending only their time with one another?
If there's going to be a mutiny, or if there's going to be interpersonal strife on Mars, that is
an element that could be the riskiest of all.
There was this project called Biosphere 2 in 1994.
"Living in it was supposed to be like living in a space colony."
It was a seven-person crew, and they
split up into warring factions and the mission had to end prematurely.
So it will take some calibration to find who are the right people for this type of mission.
The first people who go to Mars should go
with the expectation that they might never come back.
But that hasn't stopped explorers for centuries: There's always gonna be a drive in humans
to go places we've never been before.
And for the most part, that drive is something that has aided our survival at times.
So will the risks on a trip to Mars be great?
Absolutely.
Should we go?
Absolutely.