mars_toronto_day4_000813 TORONTO, Canada -- Human treks to Mars will be no cakewalk. In fact, strutting across the Red Planet may be a bone-breaking experience.
Astronaut shuttle hops and rides on Russia's
Mir complex, along with lessons learned in building the International Space Station, point to a roster of need-to-solve problems before footprints can dot Martian terrain."We are not ready at all. There are a number of significant technological challenges that need to be solved," said NASA shuttle astronaut
John Grunsfeld. Astronaut Grunsfeld, along with fellow space traveler, Scott Horowitz, spoke Saturday at the Mars Society's
third international convention, held here August 10 to 13 at Ryerson Polytechnic University.Stand and deliver
One daunting issue that confronts astronauts crossing the vacuum void to and from Mars is long-duration exposure to
microgravity, Grunsfeld said. Bone loss is a "critical concern," he added.Shuttle astronauts returning to Earth, as well as U.S. space flyers that chalked up lengthy stay times on Russia's Mir space station, experienced bone loss in critical, weight-bearing areas. This bone loss is never recovered, Grunsfeld said.
Some returning astronauts have put on a "right-stuff" facade by standing and bounding about after climbing out of the shuttle. In truth, the ability of astronauts to regain their "Earth legs" takes time, Grunsfeld said.
Even a 10-day spaceflight may mean a person will need three to four weeks to get back into tip-top shape.
So what about month after month after month of Earth-to-Mars travel?
"If we have people arrive there the way you have people coming back from the Mir space station, all we're going to end up with is people with compound fractures on the surface of Mars," Grunsfeld said.
Horowitz said that before significant exploration of Mars can begin, leading to a permanent presence on the Red Planet, new types of high-speed rocketry are a must.
"Getting there [to Mars] is one thing, but staying there and doing viable transportation of large numbers of people and equipment is going to require new propulsion technologies, Horowitz said.
The reasons for reaching out and touching Mars are straightforward, Grunsfeld added. "If we stop exploration, you miss the whole reason of being human," he said.
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Watching heroes being made
However, based on their Earth-orbiting experiences, the astronaut duo said further work is needed on developing crucial technologies:
Mars spacesuits, power concepts to energize a Mars expeditionary base and propulsion to shorten trip times to the planet.Horowitz said that future human Mars missions will need the talents of on-the-spot mechanics.
"The one thing we've learned about spacecraft, and the one reason that people are an added value to a mission, is that we can fix stuff," Horowitz said.
The Mars Society's building of a
habitat on Devon Island, Horowitz said, demonstrates "how ingenious people can overcome amazing odds" by using limited resources to turn near failure into success, he said.Carol Stoker, a NASA researcher who took part in building and operating the Devon Island-based Mars habitat, couldn't agree more. "Watching it fail. Watching people give up. Watching people quit. Watching new people come in. Watching heroes being made. That's what it was all about on Devon Island," she said.
"If everything had gone smoothly we would have learned a lot less. And frankly, it would have been a less enriching experience," Stoker said.
Sharp reduction in cost
Michael Reichert, an advanced planner for the German Aerospace Center in Bonn, addressed the Mars Society convention during the final day of talks.
Reichert detailed findings from a study team that reviewed past NASA schemes to land astronauts on Mars. That analysis has led to a sharp reduction in the price tag for dispatching humans to the fourth planet from the sun, he said.
"We have all the technologies we need to send humans to Mars," Reichert said.
According to European studies, Reichert said that three human Mars expeditions could be launched over a 20-year time period, racking up a $50 billion bill. That cost would be spread out over those two decades. That amounts to, on average, $2.5 billion per year -- a lower yearly cost than that experienced during the Apollo lunar-landing project, he said.
"This is about the budget which is currently spent by the United States to operate the space shuttle fleet," Reichert said.
Time for Mars
Fifty years after the first boot met lunar surface, the first footfall on Mars surface is possible by 2019, Reichert said.
Reichert said that the go-ahead to start work on the humans-to-Mars project is practical in 2008. At that time, numbers of nations will have begun to recover their space budgets after the International Space Station becomes fully operational.
As the convention came to a close Sunday,
Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, held up a bumper sticker produced by an Australian member of the group. It simply stated: "Mars: It's Time.""No truer words have ever been spoken," Zubrin concluded.
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