Let’s Explore Mars – But Not With People! – Part 1, Safety

Part 1 – Safety

Honestly, I am not having a bad day, and I love space exploration.  I am very enthusiastic about exploring Mars.  I am amazed at how well some of the robotic craft have performed.

I would like to see larger numbers of roving vehicles traveling the rocky red paths of Mars.  I do not think, however, that we are ready to think seriously about human travel to Mars.  Also, I don’t take it as a certainty that it will happen “someday in the future”.  Here are my reasons: safety, cost, and value.

Safety

I have seen sketches of proposed missions for travel to Mars, and I think that they would have some chance of getting our people to Mars and back home safely.  The problem is that they assume that everything will go reasonably well.  We have learned a lot about building reliability into our spacecraft, but we have had the option of returning quickly to Earth if malfunctions became too great to handle.

A craft en route to Mars will need the capability of managing and recovering from a major problem.  What kind of problem?  Since the flight of Yuri Gagarin, we have had fires, a burst oxygen tank, rocket motors which failed to run when needed, attitude thrusters not shutting off, a loss of hull pressure from a docking mishap, failures of modules to undock, release of toxic gas into a crew compartment, and several types of space suit malfunctions.

The Mars spacecraft will need to have extensive countermeasures and backup systems.  Even so, to have a high level of safety, it may be necessary to travel in tandem with a complete redundant spacecraft, with a means of getting from one to the other quickly.

Although there may be astronauts willing to take a great risk, I would not wish to put them in danger by paying for a mission which doesn’t have an excellent prospect for success.

In addition to the difficulty of building a robust spacecraft, the problem of radiation must be addressed.  When a vehicle moves outside of low-Earth orbit, radiation becomes a serious concern.  There is a constant stream of high-energy particles in space.  During a solar flare, it becomes much more intense.  We have only begun to learn how to provide effective shielding to protect the crew.

Thank you for bearing with my somber treatment of such an exciting topic as space exploration.  I promise to wrap up this series with some very encouraging ideas!

Coming: Cost and Value