"There have been 43 unmanned mission to Mars until this day.
21 have failed."
The next four new posts that I will write will have something a bit different about them. They will all revolve around the same idea: the future of mankind in our Solar System and how that can, should and probably will be achieved. Consequently, all of these four posts will be intertwined and will form a sort of Tetralogy. The idea behind all this is that writing individual posts on different subjects is nice, but tying them together gives each subject so much more weight. It shows why such advancements are, in concrete terms, important not just for now, but also for future humanity advancements. Without further ado, let's get to it.
Our journey starts in 1944, when the Gestapo arrested a man in Germany and charged him since he was proposing to build interplanetary spacecrafts instead of military weapons. After the end of the war, that same man worked for the United States on ballistic missiles; a program that NASA later assimilated. NASA went on to calling him the "greatest rocket scientist in history" after his contribution to the boosters that propelled the Apollo Mission. Wernher von Braun was always a fervent supporter of a human mission to Mars during his lifetime. He even wrote a non-fictional book on how to do it. Even with his numerous pleadings, a trip to Mars didn't seem any closer.
And why is that? How hard could it be? Very Hard. And very costly. The total cost of a 20-year program that puts a man on Mars is between 80 to 100 B$. Getting there is also a big problem. Mars and Earth are at their closest every two years. This leaves a small gap called "striking distance" when the spacecraft is able to travel back to Earth (Think of it as timing a jump from one moving car to another). This puts the duration of a trip to 2.5 years using today's chemically propelled spaceships (they take about 6 months to get to Mars).
2.5 Years, 913 days of mission. It might not seem long for us, but our brains are wired to enjoy diversity. There is no diversity in a small capsule, in the emptiness of space, in talking with the same people for 2.5 years. Psychologically, a trip to Mars is horrible. Boredom, isolation and repetitive tasks will haunt each crew member on that trip. Oh, and they also have to deal with radiation, loss of bone mass and landing on a planet that actually has a noticeable gravity (about 2.3 times the Moon's). Gravity is not the only thing complicating the landing; since there is almost no atmosphere on Mars, there isn't enough friction to slow the entering spacecraft. Therefore, the module will have to minimize the radiation, the time taken to Mars and maximize space for the crew, storage for food and air, things to do to not get depressed and the drag it produces when entering the atmosphere on Mars (and recycle used water).
At this moment, you might wonder why we should do it. Why spend billions on the technology to go to a distant planet and back? Did we get anything back from going to the Moon? The Moon and Mars are two milestones on our way to space exploration. If we are to colonize other planets, then our first best bet would be Mars. It's the most similar planet to ours in our solar system. Developing the technologies to overcome the challenges Mars throws at us is just a step in the right direction. Earth changes faster than we can adapt. The increase in population is also a big problem And if we are to survive as a species, we must look for new inhabitable worlds. And one way to do that is by colonizing other planets. As men created colonies in the past to spread theirs lands, we can do the same thing with planets. Space is also a very profitable venture. Trips to space, future technologies and asteroid mining are only a couple of things that could make space exploration worthwhile. Only problem is: we need to develop some pretty important technologies. Technologies that are as important on Earth as they will be in space. And those are the subjects of my next 4 posts.
For a bit more drops of future, visit:
