

Buzz Aldrin: Cancel Ares, reprieve shuttle, colonise Mars - dhs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/28/aldrin_space_vision

======
ars
I thought the problem was that humans can't _get_ to mars!

Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation, and no one would survive
the trip. And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from
earth). Which is why we want to go to the moon first.

~~~
stcredzero
_I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars! Because there is too
much solar and cosmic radiation,_

Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that
can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking.

 _And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth)._

Again nonsense. Water is a very good shield medium. You'll need to carry a lot
of it anyhow, and you only need to shield a small short-duration shelter for
radiation storms.

So we can extract the shielding from the moon? Waste of time for exploration.
So you save on launch costs for the expedition. How much is it going to cost
to launch the lunar shielding extraction equipment? Yes, it's desirable to
have infrastructure on the moon, eventually. But for exploring Mars, it's
superfluous. It's like Lewis and Clark needing to establish Tulsa before going
to the Pacific.

Read Zubrin. He's got the facts on his side.

~~~
ars
> Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm
> that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like
> smoking.

You are wrong. The radiation is lethal. What you wrote only applies near
earth.

And it's not solar particles that are the main problem. It's cosmic particles,
which have much much higher energies, and do not come in bursts.

See here: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-
forc...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-force-field)
and here:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-s...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-
space-travelers) and here:
[http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reas...](http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reason_why_we_wont_go_to_mars_in_my_lifet_1.html)
and here:
[http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_20...](http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_2006_0004.pdf)
(pdf) and here: [http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-
shield...](http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-
shielding.html)

Is that enough? We are not going to mars anytime soon. Even a colony on the
moon is not possible right now. We would either need to send people on once
only short term construction trips, or some sort of robotic construction to
make a shield first. Or a biological protectant of some kind.

~~~
stcredzero
The very energetic high-energy particles are less of a problem. They tend to
pass straight through and cause relatively little damage. The critical danger
comes from cascades of low energy secondary particles causing much greater
damage to genes.

The people pushing for more sophisticated radiation shielding than tanks of
water are hoping to get funded to build that stuff. It's unnecessary.

Again, the lethality rate for Mars transit is about the same as picking up a
bad smoking habit. Acceptable for early explorers and initial colonists, and
actually an argument for settling Mars as soon as possible. (Many people
already know these risks, and they _still_ want to go! Once you have a native
workforce living up there with a local infrastructure, the risks are minimized
because the resources for shielding form radiation are also more available.)

 _We are not going to mars anytime soon. Even a colony on the moon is not
possible right now. We would either need to send people on once only short
term construction trips, or some sort of robotic construction to make a shield
first. Or a biological protectant of some kind._

Again nonsense. You can build bricks and masonry arches out of local Martian
materials. Ship a "vault-laying" robot up there, and you can create lots of
living space quickly. Bury it in soil, and you get the physical support to
pressurize those environments as well as radiation shielding.

(You can't do the same trick on the Moon, because you need lots of _water_ to
make bricks. Far less of it on the Moon, and easily extracted concentrations
of it are probably only at the poles. To build weight-pressurized compressive
structures on the Moon, you're going to have to make silica blocks. A lot more
energy intensive and expensive, with high temperature handling of materials.
Smelting aluminum? Fuggedaboudit!)

Also, the radiation question is actually an argument for Mars over the Moon.
Mars has an atmosphere that reduces the radiation load of humans walking
outside. In fact, this is another reason why lunar industry should be
established _from Mars_ with teleoperated robots controlled form Earth.

~~~
ars
The environment ON mars is better than the moon, sure. But getting there is
still a problem. I don't think you are right about the lethality rate for Mars
transit. That is simply not what all those articles I linked to said.

The reason the high energy particles are more of a problem is because it's
harder to shield from them. Especially without the shielding becoming a
problem in and off itself. Which is more or less what you said. So you agree
that hiding during solar storms is not enough.

I have no arguments about water working just fine as shielding. I think it
will. It's the amount of water that is the problem. There is no practical way
to launch the amount that is needed. And even once you launch it, it's so
massive that you'll have a really hard time getting to mars fast enough.

I haven't run the numbers myself, but I've read works from people who have,
and they say that it's not practical. Water is just too heavy.

PS. For the moon, there is little reason to build up - dig under instead, and
line the inside with weak, but airtight material.

~~~
stcredzero
_That is simply not what all those articles I linked to said._

You're spreading pop-science FUD designed to create the exact misconceptions
you are spreading. Read the other side in Zubrin's books and articles. No big
conspiracies, just people using fear of radiation to sensationalize articles
and get more money out of our federal government.

 _The reason the high energy particles are more of a problem is because it's
harder to shield from them_

There's less _need_ to shield from them.

 _Especially without the shielding becoming a problem in and off itself. Which
is more or less what you said. So you agree that hiding during solar storms is
not enough._

By _not_ shielding the entire vessel, you can create a small booth with enough
shielding to also absorb the secondaries. Again, this is well trodden
territory. Most public libraries have Zubrin's books. Read the other side, and
you will find that you have been fed incomplete pictures. Shielding the whole
craft is a straw man. Trying to give complete protection for initial explorers
and colonists is overkill and FUD for selling expensive and unnecessary R&D to
bureaucrats who want to cover their asses.

If you protect the astronauts from just the promptly lethal solar flares, you
wind up with lethality something like a bad smoking habit.

I would gladly accept a 1% or even a 4% mortality rate if I could have the
chance to be one of the founders of the Mars colony. My children won't have
that problem, shielded by the Martian atmosphere and the soil used for
radiation shielding.

~~~
ars
>You're spreading pop-science FUD designed to create the exact misconceptions
you are spreading.

I don't think you looked at a single one of the links I posted. You are very
caught up in what Zubrin says, but you are not looking at what anyone else
says. So how do you know he's right, and they are wrong?

------
Locke1689
From what I hear, it seems like reprieving the shuttle isn't really an option.
It's so out of date and unsafe that NASA isn't willing to use it anymore.

Sure there are problems with Ares, but isn't that what engineers are for?

~~~
rbanffy
It's fine, as long as you let them design the system.

The shuttle, as it is, came out of an engineer's drawing board, but not before
addressing the wishes of a lot of politicians.

I am all in for Ares, as long as engineers are in control. It seems they are
not.

------
edw519
Sounds like Obama needs to pull a "Kennedy" and define the goal. Amazing what
smart people can do with a little vision.

~~~
sketerpot
It helps to have funding that won't be cut off in two years by a mercurial
congress.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes.

Politicians have a lot of vision, but little commitment.

We would have not went to the moon in the 1960s without the cold war.

------
TriinT
Two questions:

1) why isn't the URL linking to the article on Popular Mechanics? (which is a
lot better than this article)

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4322647.ht...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4322647.html)

2) would someone care to explain what the point in colonising Mars is?
Unmanned exploration of Mars would be a whole lot cheaper because robots don't
need life-support systems. Moreover, losing a couple of robots is more
acceptable than losing a couple of human astronauts. Sure, we could colonise
Mars, but at what cost, and what for? In case Aldrin hasn't noticed, the USA
is not in the same financial situation as in 1960.

~~~
stcredzero
Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of
the Solar System than humans living on Earth. With a 24 hour day-night cycle,
local access to water and necessary elements, it's also a lot easier to grow
food. These two facts alone are enough to position human settlement on Mars
for economic, military, and political domination of the Solar System.

Basically, colonizing Mars is desirable for the same reasons that colonizing
North America was. Whichever nation does it can expect the resulting
civilization to break away and surpass those on Earth. But the "old country"
can expect much better relations with the new superpower.

(Actually, we could build a space elevator on Mars with materials we _already
have_. The citizens of a Mars colony could eventually access space with the
same ease with which we fly overseas.)

~~~
rbanffy
Don't forget the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn: low gravity, plenty of
water and carbon-rich environments. The major downside is that the vicinity of
Jupiter is as cozy as the interior of a microwave oven and sunlight is not
that abundant as it is down here.

As for the Martian space elevator, it would involve the demolition of Deimos
and Phobos or some moving of the counterweight in order to miss their orbits.

~~~
stcredzero
Mars is so much easier to get off of, space elevators are almost irrelevant.
However, I would vote for _moving_ a moon of Mars and using it as a
counterweight.

 _The major downside is that the vicinity of Jupiter is as cozy as the
interior of a microwave oven and sunlight is not that abundant as it is down
here._

Helium 3 is probably going to be the next oil. It will be the stuff you run
your military machine with. Mars is in a better position than Earth to control
the resources of the gas giants, and it is in a very good position for even
control of the Moon's He3. The higher population of Mars due to agriculture
and vast potential living space will probably mean political domination of the
Jovian moons by Mars.

~~~
rbanffy
I don't see He3 being the next oil. By the time we are able to colonize the
solar system like that, fusion power may very well seem like an interesting
antique.

~~~
stcredzero
Tech gets obsolete a lot faster than physics. The energy of fusion is physics,
not tech.

------
TweedHeads
Colonise Mars?

Coming from a man who's been in space, that is a stupid claim to do without
first colonizing the moon and learning in the process.

Walk, run, fly.

~~~
gaius
Nonsense! Go and read some Robert Zubrin.

~~~
tom_rath
...then question some of the 'miracle technologies' used in Zubrin's
infrastructure.

Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets and if all issues
involved in living on another world were understood, Zubrin's plan(s) would be
a shoo-in. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere
fully enclosed here on Earth!

Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a
world no more than three days' travel away first.

~~~
stcredzero
_Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets_

Certainly not essential to Zubrin's plan. There are modifications to Zubrin's
plan that can be implemented with existing boosters, with on-orbit assembly
limited to linking together 4 components. Seems doable to me.

 _However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully
enclosed here on Earth!_

Where do you get that from? For one thing, the most publicized efforts were
tried by questionable people. I think a legitimate effort would account for
things like curing concrete absorbing lots of oxygen. For another thing,
there's a huge difference between a biosphere and air/water recycling combined
with local agriculture. The point is not to get a 100% viable self-regulating
biosphere. It's just to be able to use local resources. For initial
colonization, it's just _life support_ for plants. The 100% viable self-
regulating biospheres will take decades to get right, but we'll have decades
and lots of economic incentive once the colonization efforts are under way.

 _Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a
world no more than three days' travel away first._

If the only thing to be gained from the moon is a stepping stone to Mars, then
it's a waste of time. The environmental challenges are just about all
different, so it's not even a good rehearsal. That's more like "Learn to swim
before you run. Let's work on movement while partially buoyant, not subject to
a full G, first."

I'm sure you could train babies to swim-crawl-walk. But if you want to walk,
it's an unnecessary detour.

~~~
tom_rath
I'd like to believe in Zubrin's plan more than anyone (I still have a well-
highlighted copy of his "Mars Direct - Humans to the Red Planet by 1999" Acta
Astronautica paper amongst my many cabinets of the stuff) but that plan is
built on assumption.

    
    
      >However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial
      >biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth!
    
      Where do you get that from?
    

From the fact that no one has done it yet. Ever.

We just don't know how to live on other worlds. We are almost completely
ignorant of the complexities involved in the process and have a whole bunch of
unpleasant discoveries to make yet. That's not to say it _can't_ be done and
that we don't know what should happen in theory, but we have never done it
before. Ever. There is no experience to build upon.

If you want another flags and footprints mission to plant a candelabra of
pennants on Mars and then scurry back after a few days of visiting, by all
means piss away hundreds of billions of dollars and go to Mars direct for a
quick visit. However, if you want to learn the actual skills required to live
and work on other worlds, you should focus on building missions which
demonstrate and refine the skills required to live and work on other worlds.

Doing so on our Moon and near-Earth asteroids (the nearest locations to
support and safety) is the best way to do that and will give us the tools
needed to move outwards permanently.

~~~
gaius
We routinely build completely self-contained environments in which dozens of
ordinary people with a few months training live and work for months at a time
with very, very low casualty rates. They're called nuclear submarines.

~~~
ars
They are self-contained but not self-sustaining.

The ISS is also self-contained.

