NASA’s three-phase plan to put humans on Mars by the year 2040 proves that not all
mega-projects are earthbound.
Step one is for Lockheed Martin to complete the $20 billion Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
It will be the first modern spacecraft capable of carrying humans beyond where the International
Space Station currently exists in low earth orbit, to reach asteroids and—eventually—the
Red Planet.
For these trips, astronauts will need a vehicle that can support them for extended periods
of time, while protecting them and their equipment from radiation, extreme temperatures, and
micrometeoroid strikes.
But the NASA/Lockheed collaboration has competition.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has grabbed headlines with his announcement that its Dragon 2 spacecraft
will fly two private citizens on a five day trip around the moon and back.
The target launch for the mission is 2018.
Although that timeline may be overly optimistic given that SpaceX has not yet flown a single
manned mission, NASA—in a statement—praised its industry partner for “reaching higher,”
and vowed to work closely with SpaceX to ensure it safely “returns the launch of astronauts
to U.S. soil.”
For his part, in deference to his company’s close partnership with the American space
agency, Musk said he’s willing to bump the two space tourists—who’ve already paid
a significant deposit—to a later flight.
"NASA always has first priority...So if NASA decides to have the first mission of this
nature be a NASA mission, then of course NASA would take priority."
But regardless of who gets around the moon first, the big prize is Mars. 75,000,000 km
from Earth, it’s 195x farther than the moon.
To study the effects on the human body of spending months in space, astronauts Scott
Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko spent over 11 months living on the ISS.
Kelly actually grew two inches during his prolonged time in microgravity.
He shrunk back to his normal height two days after returning to earth.
NASA is also using Mars Mission simulations—in which research subjects spend months together
in Hawaii isolated from the outside world—to figure out the best way to handle the unique
psychological burdens of the long journey.
And that’s where the mission to Mars starts to run into serious challenges.
One look at the Orion and Dragon crafts reveals that even if the scientists and engineers
get everything else right about the journey, there simply is not enough room for multiple
human beings to live together for a nine month each-way trip to Mars—unless the mission
is to drive the astronauts completely insane.
NASA’s going to tackle this problem in the next decade by capturing an asteroid and placing
it in orbit around the moon, and then docking with it and collecting samples.
This mission will be a test run for longer trips away from Earth, deep space walking
techniques, and Solar Electric Propulsion, all of which will need to be perfected before
any human mission to Mars can move forward.
NASA calls the third and final phase of putting astronauts on Mars Earth Independent.
Thanks to successful missions like the Curiosity rover, we’ve already begun to learn a ton
about potential exploration zones.
The next NASA rover is scheduled to touch down in 2020, and will have company.
Europe, China, India, the United Arab Emirates, and SpaceX all plan on taking advantage of
the summer 2020 launch window—when the planets will be at their shortest distances from one
another—to deliver rovers and orbiters to the Red Planet.
The 2020 rover will help NASA figure out the entry, descent, and landing techniques needed
to get down to the Martian surface from orbit, and to learn what’s needed to live off the
land.
NASA is also planning a round-trip robotic mission that will return to Earth with samples
sometime in the late 2020’s.
But to make that defining moment in human history happen, when a human foot steps down
on Martian soil, NASA will have to overcome two massive challenges that could make this
one of the most expensive megaprojects in human history: designing a spacecraft that
can support a survivable trip to Mars and back, and designing a propulsion system that
can deliver that craft, and then bring it home.
Given the daunting challenges, the trip to Mars seems like the perfect opportunity for
national governments to put aside our differences and our instincts to compete with each other,
and instead form a global space agency.
That way we can make sure our precious resources here on Earth are being used most efficiently.
If “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” was true for Neil Armstrong’s
touchdown on the moon, imagine the worldwide impact of the first step on Mars.
Thanks for watching.
For more coverage of space and other regular videos like this, like this video and subscribe.
For TDC, until next time, I’m Bryce Plank.