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Jul 7, 2020 · There's a way to make crewed flights to Mars faster, cheaper, and higher-return: use Venus as a gravity assist. A group of scientists and engineers are proposing that a future Mars...
Aug 26, 2024 · With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars.
Jan 13, 2023 · Following two Artemis test missions, Artemis III, currently planned for 2026, will mark humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years. NASA will make history by sending the first humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole.
Jun 25, 2012 · MSC's study favored a Venus swingby-type expedition over an opposition-class short-stay expedition with less than 15 days at Mars and a total duration of less than 450 days.
- Overview
- Mars: why go, why stay?
- Aldrin's plan
- Creating Martians
- Mars and mentality
- Venus first
- Space tourism and Moon bases
- Elon Musk's plans
- Buzz on Bezos
- Presidential pledge
News
By Jamie Carter
published 7 August 2017
Human 'Martians' on the Red Planet by 2040, anyone?
The new space race is on. "We can establish permanent habitats on Mars by 2039, and I have a plan to achieve it."
So says Dr. Buzz Aldrin, best known for being one of the first two humans to walk on the Moon when, on 16 July, 1969, he spent two-and-a-half hours on the lunar surface with Neil Armstrong. Three years previously in another huge tech landmark Aldrin took the first space selfie.
Before we get in to the detail, it's worth remembering just why we need to go to Mars. While Elon Musk thinks Earth will suffer an extinction-level event and Jeff Bezos hates that idea but thinks we'll need to go looking for more sources of energy, Aldrin's take is far more simple.
"We explore or we expire," says Aldrin about why humanity needs to reach for Mars. "We have been stuck in low earth orbit for too long and I believe that we need to break this malaise."
OK, but why do we need to establish a permanent settlement?
"Any expeditionary missions may go there once or twice and never go back," says Aldrin, who has a plan to affordably send multiple spacecraft to Mars.
"It is vastly more expensive to send people up there with all their infrastructure in one spacecraft, and the quality of the science would be dramatically lower," he says.
"Once you have the right kind of surface and transportation infrastructure the cost of sending individual astronauts up there is much lower."
Aldrin's concept to create a permanent human settlement on Mars revolves around the concept of what he calls Cycling Pathways.
"I believe we can have one or two Earth-Mars 'Cyclers' taking astronauts to Mars on a three-month trip every two or four years," he explains. They can only travel when the two planets align favorably, which happens every 26 months.
"Crews will be transported to the Earth-Mars Cycler with a single launch, with refuelling in Earth orbit." He reckons that his plan will mean the cost of sending an astronaut to Mars will be an order of magnitude cheaper than the expeditionary architectures often discussed by NASA.
Instead of a costly and pointless one-off mission, Aldrin favors developing deep space cruisers that continuously cycle first between Earth and the Moon, then between Earth and Mars, to constantly move people, equipment and supplies. The end result? A 'triad of worlds' in the inner-Solar System supporting people and trade.
Technicals aside, Aldrin is obsessed with one type of futuristic human; Martians. He's dedicated much effort to his non-profit ShareSpace Foundation, which raises money to drive education and help develop the next generation of space innovators who will lead humanity to future habitation of Mars. He's funding his current project – producing Giant M...
So what kind of people should go to Mars? "That’s a really important question and I do not think we really have the answer yet but I can tell you that psychological aspects and mental health will be incredibly important," says Aldrin, though he stresses the need for potential Martians to be versatile.
"They will need to be scientists, engineers, physicians, carpenters, plumbers and many other things all rolled in to one," he says.
"The truth is, for long duration missions – certainly to Mars – we will probably be much better off with some diversity in the crew composition."
Is that because of the necessarily cramped conditions?
"Most concepts have spacecraft that are considerably larger than some of the capsules you see today," says Aldrin. "In my concept we would have at least one module that would be considerably larger than one of the ISS modules, so I think that confinement will not be a problem during transit."
Aldrin thinks the bigger problem will be the surface habitation systems.
He's obsessed with Mars, but for Aldrin, a manned mission there means first visiting the planet Venus. It gets a bad rap from potential colonizers because of its super-hot, thick atmosphere and sulphuric acid rain, but a manned flyby could prove pivotal on the path to Mars.
"A Venus flyby mission is a relatively straightforward and low-cost means of testing out the deep space performance and operation of the spacecraft without committing to go all the way to Mars," says Aldrin.
"There is also the accomplishment of flying by another planet in our solar system." Aldrin thinks that if men are going to Mars, then it should be women who go to Venus.
"I have been telling people that this mission should be conducted by an all-female crew, but that is really more for the entertainment value," he says.
Billionaires and Mars go together well, but not just Musk and Bezos. If reusable rockets are to change the economics of space exploration, SpaceX, Blue Origin and others will all need to make low-Earth orbit into an marketplace.
"I think human commercial activities in low-Earth orbit (LEO) will be very important in the future. Tourism will be among those activities," says Aldrin, though he thinks that manufacturing and research will be more significant fundraisers than space tourism.
If Aldrin has penciled-in 2039 and NASA is talking about the 2030s, then there's a chance that the first Mars colonizer will be Elon Musk. The SpaceX supremo has recently issued a paper outlining plans to use reusable rockets to launch cargo, propellant tankers and people into orbit to create a 1,000 spacecraft-strong Mars Colonial fleet that would leave for the red planet every 26 months. Tickets to Mars would cost US$200,000. With 100-200 on each flight, he thinks he can put a million people on Mars in 40-100 years.
"Elon’s plans for Mars are certainly ambitious, and I am delighted that he has many people talking about large numbers of people living their lives on Mars," says Aldrin.
Not that Musk will be put-off; SpaceX has confirmed that it will test-launch its huge Falcon Heavy rocket in November, a vehicle designed with a manned mission to Mars in mind. Fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos also has plans that have caught the attention of Aldrin.
Blue Origin, his semi-secretive rocket company, is building ever-larger reusable rockets near Kennedy Space Center, and recently outlined plans for a Blue Moon cargo-delivery service to the surface of the Moon. "Jeff Bezos told me on my recent visit to Blue Origin that he's been dreaming of space since the age of five years old," says Aldrin.
Aldrin's chosen target to land on the red planet is 2039, which just so happens to be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's Moon landing. He thinks that would be the perfect time for the US to make the decision to colonize Mars.
"I am personally very committed to the idea that the President should, and indeed must, announce a major US commitment to Mars permanence by the 50th anniversary," says Aldrin.
"I believe that a Presidential commitment is essential to force us to make the hard choices we must make in order to get to Mars in the next 20 years." Although Aldrin was present at the signing of the reestablishment of the National Space Council by President Trump in June, he doesn't expect it to fundamentally change the US Space Program.
However, if Mars is on the table, things would change.
Dec 11, 2022 · Artemis I was the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration at the Moon and future missions to Mars. Learn More
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Apr 28, 2021 · 144. In the mid-1960s, NASA began planning what audacious goal it could take on after successfully landing on the Moon. One idea that gained a fair amount of traction was a manned mission to...
