Squillionaire space tourist offers oldsters a holiday to Mars A new organisation led by Dennis Tito - the world's first space tourist - wants to send an older couple on an all-expenses-paid 501-day trip to Mars. Artist's impression of the Inspiration Mars spacecraft How the Inspiration Mars spacecraft could look Mega-rich engineer Tito announced yesterday that his Inspiration …
thats wrong on so many levels. if you're worried about space madness then you should not send extrovert people in a first place (they wouldn't be married otherwise). what you need is introvert people who are capable of dealing with solitude over extended periods of time. not many are because people are extensively conditioned into socializing right from birth.
You do realise that it would be fitted out with cameras. ("Day 500 in the Big Brother Spaceship...") Also, given the deliberate simplicity of the mission, you'd hardly get any of the credit for the mission. Rather, you'd go down in history as being the most sex-crazed and shameless couple in human history.
I'll pass, thanks, but I might tune in for some of the later episodes.
Wrong the idea is about showing that we can get to and fly past Mars without any major technologies beyond what we have today. Once something like that is done, it would hopefully lead to performing incremental updates which would allow landing on say Phoebus first, then maybe entering orbit around Mars, and finally landing on Mars.
Normally, once something is shown to be able to be done, humans jump at the opportunity to take it further (sea exploration, flight, computing, etc.), but for some reason manned space travel never followed that same path, maybe this will be the rocket up the bum of civilisation that gets us moving in that direction!
"but for some reason manned space travel never followed that same path"
I think that has a lot to do with the fact that just getting into space is way, way more dangerous than sea exploration, flight, computing, etc. On average, 1 out of every 67 space shuttles blew up. Would you get on an airplane if 1 in 70 ended in a fireball? Not to mention we find incredibly useful things via terrestrial exploration. Until we haul a million ton, platinum asteroid into orbit, I fail to see any benefit from going into space. Granted, technologies that are developed trying to get there can be valuable.
The penguin will never make it higher than 20m AGL, without a rocket attached to its back, either...
How many ships were lost at sea through the early millenia of human exploration? I guarantee it would be more than 1 in 70. How many of the early attempts to fly a plane across the Atlantic were lost? A lot more than 1 in 70.
Humankind is used to taking risks in the name of exploration. Loss of life is always tragic but without that adventurous spirit we would still be sitting up in the trees, scratching ourselves and picking the fleas out of each others fur...
I would suspect that the problem with a Mission to Mars isn't getting there, surviving the trip and all that. We could do that with technology available to us today!
The real challenge for a trip to Mars involving a landing... is the return trip. We can get to Mars, we can land on Mars... but landing on Mars with something that would allow you to subsequently take off again and come back home... THAT is the real challenge.
With all the multiple redundancies they had in the Apollo program, they were still stuck with using the same engine and fuel tank on the lander that was going to get them off again. And they were pretty damned nervous when it came to launching back off the moon that the engine wouldn't fire.
Not helped by the fact that the landing went right down to the wire on fuel - due to the radar glitch. I assume that what would have happened if they'd gone over wouldn't be running out, and going splat into the moon, but would have been not having enough to get back to orbit to rendezvous with the command and service modules - hence no way home. Then poor Michael Collins would have had to say bye-bye guys, and flown off and left them.
Fortunately they made up for lack of redundancy by doing lots and lots and lots of testing.
And to think that in the 1970s my Dad had to take his spark plugs out and dry them in the oven, in order to get his engine to start on a cold morning...
Space endurance? Relationship endurance, more like.
But I'm disappointed the Reg missed the opportunity for a real bout of Finbarr Saunders. At least the lucky couple will resolve the paucity of knowledge concerning doing the wild thing in zero gravity. Hopefully the ships thrusters can make sure the ship isn't knocked off course. Build a special small port on the side of the ship, and the chap can experiment with vacuum enlargement, etc etc
Cost...
The fuel and or mechanisms to enter orbit, lander, survival crap etc. All add weight and resulting launch costs.
Doing a flyby for under 20t might be feasible.
Landing mission you're probably looking at >50t for one way and >200t for return.
This is just a pod and enough fuel, oxygen, food and other sundries to last 2 years.
SpaceX launch costs are around $2000/lb, so you're looking at, as a min, an extra $133m for the one way lander, and $800m for the return mission. That is just launch costs not developing any of the systems.
2 years playing [insert generic popular console] in zero g. I'm sure there'll be applicants.
"plus we have no practical method of radiation shielding once we are outside our own magnetosphere. Even the spacestation isnt perfect. There are a few lab ideas but not to the scale of a habitation module."
Apart from using a large bag of water and polythene for shielding
And launching at the minimum stage of the solar sun spot cycle (which is what they are targeting)
And the possibilities of using radioprotective additives to the atmosphere in the capsule.
And the possibilities for similar work on food.
Don't you have to drink red wine, in order to mitigate radiation exposure. I can't remember why now, but I believe it was one of the things carried on nuclear subs.
In which case, I might reconsider my decision not to sign up. Just think, 17 months of wine every day, all the computer games you can play, and no phone calls offering you PPI refunds or trying to get you to change your energy tariff. Also, no customers. Of course there's the risk of dying horribly, and alone, and on telly. But for 17 months off from talking to customers I reckon I'll risk it.
Shame to go all that way and not go out for a walk when you get there though. But I did once go all the way to Edinburgh to make a delivery and came back without stopping for more time than it took to buy a cup of coffee and go to the loo. No difference really...
NEWS HEADLINES:
First couple to fly to Mars drown in shock accident. Sources close to the mission today said, "we wish we'd picked the mad shoe-buying couple now."
In other news after the death of the new Pope last month, Boris Johnson has been selected as the new Pontiff by the Council of Cardinals. Pope Boris I said that he was delighted by the news and was hoping to play whiff-whaff in St Peters as quickly as possible.
"If Inspiration Mars misses the 2018 window, it won't get another chance at a free-return Martian expedition until 2031."
Bullshit. There are an infinite number of chances at a free-return Martian expedition between 2018 and 2031, they can launch any time they like. It'll just mean a longer journey when the planetary alignment is sub-ideal.
amkalenak,
The ISS is paddling in the shallow end, protected by the earth's magnetic field. The only people to have left that protection were the Apollo astronauts, and they were only gone for a short period of time. Had there been a solar flare, they'd have been in serious trouble. Over 17 months, that risk really mounts up.
Plus whatever nasties the solar wind contains (and won't be blocked), which will steadily mount up over 17 months of long exposure.
While it's great, they schedule 18 hours maintenance a day, it's in LEO, regularly supplied, has very little sheilding, look at when the water recycler broke.
The ISS is like popping to the shops, a Mars mission is a no rescue, no resupply, no maintance (for most of two years) that level of technology is not out there.
Modular pods in LEO such as the ISS is a great start, but next could be moon orbit then lagrange stations, each one learning more, testing more, no reason not to step up to a moon base or an automated ISS around Mars, or a base on phobos/deimos, after all the moon missions were preceded with impacts, unmanned landing (and soil retrieval), to the unaware this seems like an appropriate first step, but it's a massive one, to the really unaware it's seems like a tiny step, perhaps 2031 is the more reasonable timescale?
1) The ISS is with-in the Earths Magnetic Field (a.k.a The Van Allen Belt), Think of this as a "Magic" Force Sheild if ya like!
2) The ISS is in an incredibly low Earth orbit. The ISS is about 255 Miles straight up but that's just Peanuts to the 22,236 Miles up to say Astra 2 A/B/C/D/E/F & G, and Eurobird 1 @ 28.2°E (i.e. BSkyB & Freesat among others)
Once you break free of the Earths protective Shell (e.g. The Van Allen Belt), only then are you in "Deep Space" in the tense that your placing it in, and I sure that even then there will be someone who'd find some fault with that thought.
Ah, the first fuckwit raises their head. At what point do you expect the a male human to be beyond child-bearing age? Downvote for a gaping hole in your supposed intellect? Wouldn't bother as I hate the upvote/downvote system
I admit I am assuming the couple will either be a male and a female, or two males. Men can remove themselves from the gene pool at any time up to death and are therefore candidates for a Darwin Award for life unless they remove or disable their nads.
Part if the older couple but is risk mitigation, 'eh, they're old', the bigger part is to show that you don't need to be a young super fit military automaton to survive in space. It will be interesting to see who they choose. Even if they don't get to go because if technical issues, the training and learning would be fun!
"he bigger part is to show that you don't need to be a young super fit military automaton to survive in space"
You don't hence the average NASA 'naut age of 36.
From 2008: "Forty five is the best astronaut age," says Gerhard Thiele, an experienced spaceman who, as flight operations chief for Europe's answer to NASA, now commands a team with an average age of 50.
45 is a good age for most things:
- physically, you've suffered no significant physical deteriation if you've been keeping fit and avoiding the beer and pies.
- Mentally you're still sharp
- ...and this one is crucial I suspect...you're experienced without being set in your ways and emotionally mature, and far better at performing under stress.
Having said that, I'm nearly the same age - but feel 65 - and have an irrational hatred of children on my lawn.
I've long held the belief that almost anyone who can climb into a rocket and sit down can go into space with no trouble whatsoever. The reason they use people from academic and military backgrounds with half a dozen degrees and a doctorate or two is that those people are inclined to do as they are told, and unlikely to have the imagination to break stuff doing the things you or I would wonder about doing in zero G
Perhaps you forgot the troll icon? There's quite a gulf between what NASA seeks and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman produces.
Somebody with an interesting doctorate has worked independently on a novel problem, commonly for years with light supervision - this is the very stuff of judiciously applied imagination. And for the first intakes of the US manned program the original selection criteria demanded not just military but test pilots, i.e. people accustomed to systematically exploring the behaviour of a new and poorly understood vehicle, learning its problems, collaborating with engineering teams to develop solutions, and teaching others. Manned spacecraft have certainly become increasingly automated but remain finicky bespoke vehicles requiring a lot of hands-on care.
Modern airline pilots would be a better example for your thesis: Boeing engineers used to joke that the 777 would have a dog seat beside the pilot seat: pilot's job being to feed dog, dog's job to bite pilot if he fucks with the controls. However the aviation environment is far more forgiving and far better explored than rocketry and even so situations arise where pilots are necessary. So as a result airlines generally avoid fully exploiting flight automation to limit just-follow-orders behaviour where pilot stops thinking or goes to sleep.
I didn't say they would lack imagination of any kind, just that they might be less inclined as a group to play zero g football with their lunch. Military/academic life encourages a disciplined outlook which ought to make for safer capsule inhabitants than sitting any other random bugger in the driving couch
"to take off on the psychologically gruelling journey to the Red Planet in just five years time. "When you're out that far and the Earth is a tiny, blue pinpoint, you're going to need someone you can hug," he told Space.com. "What better solution to the psychological problems you're going to encounter with that isolation?""
What a load of rubbish. Put me in a room for a year and a half on my own with a PC and copies of Doom, Civilization, Minecraft, etc
Day 207: "Come in Mars Explorer, what is your mission status?"
"Creepers attacked my mine, blew the roof off. Have reinforced the entrance with obsidian. Still looking for diamond. Over."
Day 403: "Come in Mars Explorer, what is your mission status?"
"Requesting mission extension by 100 days to give me time to complete my Aztec empire. Over."
The game is too good. I can't have it installed or I end up playing for hours every day.
Also, it may have Sid's name on it, but it is generally regarded as Brian Reynolds's game. Which is no bad thing.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri = SMAC, which is very addictive. Need I say more????
This is based on the premise that the couple will have a "proven ability to withstand each other's company".
Yeah - proven in normal earth environments, where they are both free to do their own thing or just walk out of a room if things get touchy.
In a tin can in space for a couple of years? With nowhere to go? The most likely result is that only one will return - the other having been disposed of via the airlock after nagging/snoring etc once too often.
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out legally : what state would have jurisdiction for the murder trial?
I'd do it too, if there was the opportunity to actually land on Mars or one of its moons.
As it is, though, it would just be [go there, swan around for a bit, head back, kill the wife or be killed by her].
I just know that she would eventually tire of my snoring/farting or I would tire of her continual desire to watch Strictly Come Dancing or anything else with bloody Artem Chigvintsev in it.
Whilst I admire the ambition, is this project actually the best way to advance space exploration ?
Why not concentrate closer to home first ? I'm thinking more about lunar exploitation - which might then make a Mars mission a bit easier .
That said, thumbs up for giving us a little bit of inspiration. Seems crazy we last went to the moon over 40 years ago, Concorde is history, and wages are falling ....
Because at the press conference they said the life support would be getting stripped down about as often as one of these.
Joking aside the record for the longest continuous period in space seems to be the Russian who was up for 274 days.
Likewise the ISS is re-supplied on roughly a monthly basis and it's said running an environmental control and life support system for 501 day is
And the endless fun to be had from the ISS piss water re-cycling system are well known.
While it's true nothing formerly exists there is a fair degree of certainty that they will a crew rated Dragon capsule and Bigelow has launched 2 generations of inflatable habitat already. . ECLSS is likely to be the long pole in this field. Developing a reliable (or at least on orbit repairable) closed cycle ECLSS is a major challenge.
Is the schedule tight? Very. Possible. Maybe. Will it look like the pictures? Probably not.
And BTW this really would be a case of going "Where no one has gone before."
I think the request for an older couple "past child-bearing age" is to prevent the usual consequence of a fertile couple shagging like rabbits.
On the other hand, being the first people to create extra-terrestrial life would be quite an achievement. It's certainly something to tell the grandkids!
Given that we could just-as-easily do this experiment without the risk of a Martian path...
What are we gaining (besides bravado) from sending these folks to Mars? Maybe we could send that Iranian monkey!
The downside of a problem is considerable. It would set-back sympathy for other Mars pursuits.
The $2K/lb number is a long-term objective for LEO with SpaceX. They are nowhere near that number now. Costs for this mission runs well past a Billion (support staff, support launches, etc.) perhaps many times that.
Today, SpaceX did a COTS launch to the ISS. The initial launch F9 ran nominally. As this is written, there are difficulties with the capsule thrusters. Hopefully, this can be worked out. Time will tell.
The potential for a lost capsule is real on this mission. The hardware is still quite new. Problems can always occur. Given the reduced benefit of a fly-by for the Mars mission, the risks of technical glitches could set-back the drive to explore Mars.
No one wants the drive for Mars to stall unless considerable gains are at hand.
What you want are a couple of old gay institutionalised prisoners, granted it wont look as nice on the PR materials but, and I cant stress this enough, they'll cakewalk the two years in TV friendly good spirts while your married couiple are almost guaranteed a fatality within 6 months.
I'd have thought that the easiest way to deal with the pysch issues is to send a loner with no-one else. A computer + games, Kindle + books. With the contact (even time delayed) to some semi-decent humans back on earth, this shouldn't be too much of a strain. Especially if you include some turn based games; Chess, Civ, Sword of the Stars
No. This mission has a guaranteed return, as it'll slingshot round Mars and come back to earth.
If we're going to send Jedward, we need to do it on one of the early ones, that has to slow down to orbit Mars and then fire the engine again to head back to Earth. Then make sure the engine can't be re-lit. There's no point in getting everyone's hopes up, only for them to re-appear 17 months later.
Hmm, thinking :) Health problems of returning are something to think about, as well as claustrophobia. However, sure beats you going with MarsOne where they say it a one way trip with goal of populating Mars! (Yes, he is applying for that, we will have been married 31 years when they lift off, abandoning his family, so yes, he could be crazy :) ) So you are asking me to join insanity now, LOL. Hmm, thinking.
One man and one woman would be representitive of most of the population of the world (>90%), biologically there are differences which would need to be measured, simple things such as the fact women tend to sweat less (and not until higher temperatures) all add into the mix as far as environment.
That said, if it was a larger experiment, say 100 people then there is an opportuinity for a broader test bed and a 50/50 hetronormative men/women split would be inappropriate to represent a society.
How's that internet connection. Can I stream videos? Funny, it seems that the telnet session has a few characters 'in transit'.
What is the iso code for the planet mars? I really do need a domain name up here.
Will my wife bug me about not asking for directions, or saying "keep up" or "we're not in a race".
How long will the 'prep' take. It not like I just need to show up 1 hour before launch.
Will TSA screen me OK? Will I need a boarding pass?
Will the environment be "customizable"? Need to "pimp my ride"!
Big question: What's the food like? The way to a man's heart is through his stomach!
Has a re-entry been tried before?
Apollo 13? Just sayin'
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