Men on Mars 2030? Color me still skeptical (updated)

NASA says it still sees a manned mission to Mars in the works for sometime in the 2030s. But, current politics (including GOP reluctance to spend on about anything with the word "science" in it, as noted in the story, are part of why I'm skeptical. The only realistic way to do it, fiscally, is through international cooperation, and given the recent fun with Vladimir Putin, I'm sure US officials want to keep Russia at arms' length.

The other reason?

Per actual science, I don't think we're there yet.

Properly measuring and protecting against Martian radiation will be key
to any manned mission to Mars./Space.com photo

Despite Dennis Tito saying a year ago that he plans on having a manned mission to Mars by 2018, we're nowhere near that close, as I blogged a couple of years ago, unless Tito wants nothing but an unscientific, one-way trip, and a high likelihood of cancer to boot. That said, that's probably all Tito cares about.

That's because, as Space.com notes in this great piece, we're just starting to figure out what we need to know about cosmic rays. And, the problems will be on Mars, not just in flight. Nothing in the USA Today story, at top link, convinces me that NASA has fully addressed these issues yet. It is working on addressing things like how to slow down a manned capsule for landing, as Curiosity's detachable retros, and older balloon systems, are out of play. But, I'm still not convinced NASA is adequately addressing radiation issues, let alone crew redundancy-safety or crew size issues.

(Update, April 24: Wired has a piece of its own on the cosmic rays issue.)

Let's take a peek at it, before doing an update on the possibility, and needs, of an actual scientific mission:

The Mars rover Curiosity has allowed us to finally calculate an average dose over the 180-day journey. It is approximately 300 mSv, the equivalent of 24 CAT scans. In just getting to Mars, an explorer would be exposed to more than 15 times an annual radiation limit for a worker in a nuclear power plant.

So, double that for the return trip. Add 50 percent, off the top of my head, for time on Mars. That's 60 CAT scans, or 37.5 times the power plant worker's limit. Or, 750 mSv, which is 75 rem. Per Wikipedia, we're at a lifetime dose for a nuclear power plant or similar worker.

In short, while a trip to Mars isn't going to turn an astronaut into the cosmic-ray version of Frankenfood, without at least some shielding, it's going to definitely increase his or her likelihood of cancer. And, especially with men, it's going to increase the likelihood of sterility.

That said ...

Is this doable? Yes? Any time this decade? No.

It is a big sum to do this, unless we want a one-way trip, which somebody likely would volunteer to do. I think setting a target date of about 2035 allows out years to fatten that budget, do the R&D on radiation shielding, use more robotic missions to focus what a manned mission should do, etc. That also allows NASA plenty of time to work out details of a joint effort with Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, and maybe other partners.

Also, our current rockets are too small, specifically capsule size. As I've blogged before, unless you want to do the 1-day stop-and-return to have the lowest-energy return trajectory, you've got to have more than three people on that mission. And, that adds up to additional weight, space and food, plus additional weight and space for the exercise area. Mars' gravity is enough more than the moon's that, without adequate exercise in flight, an astronaut is liable to break a leg on landing.

That 2035 tracks pretty closely with the "30 years away" of my original blog post.

Wikipedia has an entry entitled "Manned mission to Mars." Since I started writing my thoughts independently of looking at it, I'm going by what I have written, with brief references to it.

Shorter take? Illustrations of such a trip look great, don't they? Well, drool away, because those illustrations are about as close as we're getting in your lifetime or mine to landing people on Mars, in my opinion.

There's three main reasons why "cool" images are all we'll be seeing in the foreseeable future. They're called space psychology, space safety and space engineering.

And, most of those are connected with the idea that, at minimum, we're talking 1.5 years of travel, with distances far greater than lunar travel. And, the low-fuel journey, for one-quarter of what the "fast" trip takes, involves 2.8 years, more than half of that on Mars.

This will tax engineering, certainly tax human psychology, and without massive advances in shielding from cosmic rays, will kill astronauts -- not on the actual trip, but more surely, and with at least as much life reduction on average, as smoking two packs of Camels a day.

In short, beyond the illustration, we have to do R&D on human physiology for a long journey in "zero gravity," a certain amount of exploration into 1/4 Earth gravity, then a long journey back into zero gravity. We have to do the psychological R&D, more rigorous than Russia's mock trip to Mars, on a capsule of as many as seven people confined together for 6 months or more, and, on Mars, as far away as 20 minutes, one way, by communications link.

Details on the "why" of all of this below the fold, updated to reflect how NASA's current manned mission planning is woefully inadequate, starting with the spacecraft.

1. Space psychology. A trip to Mars will take about 400-450 days round trip. Once on Mars, astronauts either have to wait about 1.5 years for an optimal window for return, or else burn much more fuel to get back to Earth after a relatively short one-month stay. Details of both options, as well as a faster outward trip, are here. Having to burn 3x as much fuel for a faster outward trip, and 5x as much for an earlier return is not a negligible consideration.

Here's the bottom line:
A. Hohmann transfer both ways plus 1.5 years on Mars = 2.8 years.
B. Fast trip out plus 1 month on Mars plus slow trip home = 1.5 years.

So, we've got astronauts away, well away, from Earth for a minimum of 1.5 years. And, if we want to maximize the "return" on going to Mars, we've got them there three years.

Even in near-Earth orbit, and with less than a year's time, we've seen psychological stress on some outer space crews. Yes, there have been simulated Mars trips, but, given the many minor things that can go wrong in real space, and the simple psychological factor of knowing that Earth is "just outside the door," I'm not sure how well you can simulate the psychology of such a trip. The Russian mockup was far short of that. First, they had the knowledge they could bail. Second, it only simulated a one-way trip; the time on Mars and the return time was not in the simulation.

2. You certainly can't simulate space health effects. As for the effects of solar wind? In its articles on magnetospheres and solar wind, Wiki talks about Mars' lack of magnetic field and results thusly: Mars, with little or no magnetic field, is thought to have lost much of its former oceans and atmosphere to space in part due to the direct impact of the solar wind, with an atmosphere now 1/100 that of Earth. Venus, with its thick atmosphere is thought to have lost most of its water to space in large part owing to solar wind ablation. (The solar wind stretches the "downwind" side of Venus' atmosphere almost to Earth.)

For just about all the trip, astronauts will be outside the protection of Earth's magnetosphere. Dangerous, in terms of radiation? Yes, enough to make some people rethink the whole idea as potentially fatal:

"The estimate now is you would exceed acceptable levels of fatal cancer," said Francis Cucinotta, chief scientist for NASA's space radiation program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "That's just cancer. We also worry about effects of radiation on the heart and the central nervous system."

Cucinotta says these estimates do take into account protective shielding around a crew vehicle, probably some form of polyethylene plastic. Lead shields actually create secondary radiation when struck by cosmic rays, while water, perhaps the best form of protection, would have to be several meters thick to get enough protection. ("Houston calling Water Balloon 1, do you copy?") 

Lead and water, in any case, are very heavy for the quantities that would be required, making them an expensive shielding to launch.

And then, there's the gravity issue. We'd have either 450 days of zero gravity and one month of 1/4 Earth gravity, or 450 days of the former and a little more than that of the latter.

At the same time, while Mars' gravity is low, low enough to not be "good" for Earth-accustomed astronauts, it's heavy enough to be problematic after 225 days of no gravity, as the story above notes;

"What happens if they land on Mars and try to lift an object that's fairly or reasonably heavy, they could herniate their discs," said Alan Hargens, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California San Diego who studies the effects of gravity on astronauts. "One of the main issues is that when they arrive at Mars, there's nobody there to take care of them. If they have some issue due to de-conditioning in that six month period, they'll definitely have a problem."

It's true. Even with treadmills and other gravity simulators on the spacecraft, in the first few days on the Martian surface, there would be a high risk of muscle pulls, muscle and tendon tears, hernias and broken bones, and possibly heart attacks due to stress.

Because you'd definitely need "backup," that means not just one, but two members of each crew would have to be physicians. (One could be a psychiatrist, to address issues under point No. 1. We're going to need a psychologist anyway.

There's also another medical problem that's already hit some shuttle/ISS astronauts: Vision problems.

According to one NASA survey of about 300 astronauts, nearly 30 percent of those who have flown on space shuttle missions — which usually lasted two weeks — and 60 percent who completed six-month shifts aboard the station reported a gradual blurring of eyesight.

It's obviously progressive. A trip to Mars would have worse effects on a higher percentage of astronauts. It's fairly serious, and so far, recovery has not been complete in those who have suffered it.

3. Space engineering. This is going to subsume several things.

Let's start with a bottom line that also relates to point 1: the communication time gap. When Earth and Mars are at opposition, it's 20 minutes one way for communication.

So, if an Apollo 13 type event happens, during almost all the journey, astronauts are on their own.

That affect Earth engineering. We can't have an Apollo 13 problem, as far as improvised fixes, of trying to mate square canisters and round holes or vice versa. Can't have it. That means that the U.S. government, U.N., EU, a consortium or whatever, has to ride a very, very heavy herd on private contractors. That, in turn, ramps up the price.

Second, radiation shielding. Unless you have astronauts who sign "death sentence waivers," our current engineering simply can't protect against it. Period.

Third, crew composition. Let's say we have a crew of seven.

As I noted above, we have to have two M.D.s, one a psychiatrist. Both to study human changes in space and explore Martian life, person No. 3 is a Ph.D. biologist, of course. No. 4 is a mechanical engineer who's spent time at all those private contractors' sites. (Every astronaut, though, for reasons mentioned above, will have a crash course in engineering.) No. 5 is a geophysicist. No. 6, whether military or not, as commander, has to have a leader's presence. No. 7 is No. 2 in charge, and No. 1 in piloting skills. These two may have some backup training in sciences, but, their primary backup training will be the leads, along with person No. 4, in engineering and constructing a Martian base, on the first flight, which will be the high-fuel, quick-return version.

Of course, we' re not getting there anyway. But, that would be a minimum. Arguably, even on the first flight, you'd want an eighth person, another engineering/construction person. That then said, what crew capsule size are we talking about? And, are we conforming a crew to a capsule or vice versa? In either case, seven is a minimum, I think.

Don't forget all the food that means. All the water conversion and air filtration that means, with multiple redundancies on systems.

Meanwhile, NASA's Orion crew vehicle only seats four. NASA's skimping a LOT on both human backup needs, legitimate crew needs and space psychology issues. More reason to say both that we're not going to launch a manned mission to Mars any time soon, and we shouldn't, at least not under current planning.

However, Boeing's new capsule (update, May 8, 2015) does seat seven, and does so in comfort, style and modernity, as this story details, complete with the photo and more at the link.

Details note that the pilot's seat has had traditional switchgear replaced with tablet-like interfaces. In turn, that reduces cabin clutter.

Plastic has replaced metal in a lot of places, which reduces weight.

It generally looks much more ergonomic.

Now, this is being targeted to low-Earth orbit, for flights to the International Space Station and commercial use. But, the size is right and general design elements are right. No reason why something based on this couldn't be the Mars craft.

There's one more "engineering" option. Let's call it "financial engineering." Throwing aside radiation, building a spaceship that can offer some exercise protection against zero-G debilitation, be big enough to offer some small bit of buffer against space psychology, be big enough to, over a few trips, carry Mars base construction raw materials, etc. ....

Will cost at least $1 trillion in today's money to build and launch.

The U.S. is not doing that alone. See above, all the various links.

Partnerships also need to to "research and development" on the willingness of even the biggest government joint venture to shell out that much, or even international cooperative efforts to shell that out.

#Mars, biatches? Well, maybe not

Properly measuring and protecting against Martian radiation will be key
to any manned mission to Mars./Space.com photo

Despite Dennis Tito saying a year ago that he plans on having a manned mission to Mars by 2018, we're nowhere near that close, as I blogged a couple of years ago, unless Tito wants nothing but an unscientific, one-way trip, and a high likelihood of cancer to boot. That said, that's probably all Tito cares about.

That's because, as Space.com notes in a great new piece, we're just starting to figure out what we need to know about cosmic rays. And, the problems will be on Mars, not just in flight.

Let's take a peek at it, before doing an update on the possibility, and needs, of an actual scientific mission:

The Mars rover Curiosity has allowed us to finally calculate an average dose over the 180-day journey. It is approximately 300 mSv, the equivalent of 24 CAT scans. In just getting to Mars, an explorer would be exposed to more than 15 times an annual radiation limit for a worker in a nuclear power plant.

So, double that for the return trip. Add 50 percent, off the top of my head, for time on Mars. That's 60 CAT scans, or 37.5 times the power plant worker's limit. Or, 750 mSv, which is 75 rem. Per Wikipedia, we're at a lifetime dose for a nuclear power plant or similar worker.

In short, while a trip to Mars isn't going to turn an astronaut into the cosmic-ray version of Frankenfood, without at least some shielding, it's going to definitely increase his or her likelihood of cancer. And, especially with men, it's going to increase the likelihood of sterility.

That said ...

Is this doable? Yes? Any time this decade? No.

It is a big sum to do this, unless we want a one-way trip, which somebody likely would volunteer to do. I think setting a target date of about 2035 allows out years to fatten that budget, do the R&D on radiation shielding, use more robotic missions to focus what a manned mission should do, etc. That also allows NASA plenty of time to work out details of a joint effort with Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, and maybe other partners.

Also, our current rockets are too small, specifically capsule size. As I've blogged before, unless you want to do the 1-day stop-and-return to have the lowest-energy return trajectory, you've got to have more than three people on that mission. And, that adds up to additional weight, space and food, plus additional weight and space for the exercise area. Mars' gravity is enough more than the moon's that, without adequate exercise in flight, an astronaut is liable to break a leg on landing.

That 2035 tracks pretty closely with the "30 years away" of my original blog post.

Wikipedia has an entry entitled "Manned mission to Mars." Since I started writing my thoughts independently of looking at it, I'm going by what I have written, with brief references to it.

Shorter take? Illustrations of such a trip look great, don't they? Well, drool away, because those illustrations are about as close as we're getting in your lifetime or mine to landing people on Mars, in my opinion.

There's three main reasons why "cool" images are all we'll be seeing in the foreseeable future. They're called space psychology, space safety and space engineering.

And, most of those are connected with the idea that, at minimum, we're talking 1.5 years of travel, with distances far greater than lunar travel. And, the low-fuel journey, for one-quarter of what the "fast" trip takes, involves 2.8 years, more than half of that on Mars.

This will tax engineering, certainly tax human psychology, and without massive advances in shielding from cosmic rays, will kill astronauts -- not on the actual trip, but more surely, and with at least as much life reduction on average, as smoking two packs of Camels a day.

In short, beyond the illustration, we have to do R&D on human physiology for a long journey in "zero gravity," a certain amount of exploration into 1/4 Earth gravity, then a long journey back into zero gravity. We have to do the psychological R&D, more rigorous than Russia's mock trip to Mars, on a capsule of as many as seven people confined together for 6 months or more, and, on Mars, as far away as 20 minutes, one way, by communications link.

Details on the "why" of all of this below the fold, updated to reflect how NASA's current manned mission planning is woefully inadequate, starting with the spacecraft.

1. Space psychology. A trip to Mars will take about 400-450 days round trip. Once on Mars, astronauts either have to wait about 1.5 years for an optimal window for return, or else burn much more fuel to get back to Earth after a relatively short one-month stay. Details of both options, as well as a faster outward trip, are here. Having to burn 3x as much fuel for a faster outward trip, and 5x as much for an earlier return is not a negligible consideration.

Here's the bottom line:
A. Hohmann transfer both ways plus 1.5 years on Mars = 2.8 years.
B. Fast trip out plus 1 month on Mars plus slow trip home = 1.5 years.

So, we've got astronauts away, well away, from Earth for a minimum of 1.5 years. And, if we want to maximize the "return" on going to Mars, we've got them there three years.

Even in near-Earth orbit, and with less than a year's time, we've seen psychological stress on some outer space crews. Yes, there have been simulated Mars trips, but, given the many minor things that can go wrong in real space, and the simple psychological factor of knowing that Earth is "just outside the door," I'm not sure how well you can simulate the psychology of such a trip. The Russian mockup was far short of that. First, they had the knowledge they could bail. Second, it only simulated a one-way trip; the time on Mars and the return time was not in the simulation.

2. You certainly can't simulate space health effects. As for the effects of solar wind? In its articles on magnetospheres and solar wind, Wiki talks about Mars' lack of magnetic field and results thusly: Mars, with little or no magnetic field, is thought to have lost much of its former oceans and atmosphere to space in part due to the direct impact of the solar wind, with an atmosphere now 1/100 that of Earth. Venus, with its thick atmosphere is thought to have lost most of its water to space in large part owing to solar wind ablation. (The solar wind stretches the "downwind" side of Venus' atmosphere almost to Earth.)

For just about all the trip, astronauts will be outside the protection of Earth's magnetosphere. Dangerous, in terms of radiation? Yes, enough to make some people rethink the whole idea as potentially fatal:

"The estimate now is you would exceed acceptable levels of fatal cancer," said Francis Cucinotta, chief scientist for NASA's space radiation program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "That's just cancer. We also worry about effects of radiation on the heart and the central nervous system."

Cucinotta says these estimates do take into account protective shielding around a crew vehicle, probably some form of polyethylene plastic. Lead shields actually create secondary radiation when struck by cosmic rays, while water, perhaps the best form of protection, would have to be several meters thick to get enough protection. ("Houston calling Water Balloon 1, do you copy?") 

Lead and water, in any case, are very heavy for the quantities that would be required, making them an expensive shielding to launch.

And then, there's the gravity issue. We'd have either 450 days of zero gravity and one month of 1/4 Earth gravity, or 450 days of the former and a little more than that of the latter.

At the same time, while Mars' gravity is low, low enough to not be "good" for Earth-accustomed astronauts, it's heavy enough to be problematic after 225 days of no gravity, as the story above notes;

"What happens if they land on Mars and try to lift an object that's fairly or reasonably heavy, they could herniate their discs," said Alan Hargens, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California San Diego who studies the effects of gravity on astronauts. "One of the main issues is that when they arrive at Mars, there's nobody there to take care of them. If they have some issue due to de-conditioning in that six month period, they'll definitely have a problem."

It's true. Even with treadmills and other gravity simulators on the spacecraft, in the first few days on the Martian surface, there would be a high risk of muscle pulls, muscle and tendon tears, hernias and broken bones, and possibly heart attacks due to stress.

Because you'd definitely need "backup," that means not just one, but two members of each crew would have to be physicians. (One could be a psychiatrist, to address issues under point No. 1. We're going to need a psychologist anyway.

There's also another medical problem that's already hit some shuttle/ISS astronauts: Vision problems.

According to one NASA survey of about 300 astronauts, nearly 30 percent of those who have flown on space shuttle missions — which usually lasted two weeks — and 60 percent who completed six-month shifts aboard the station reported a gradual blurring of eyesight.

It's obviously progressive. A trip to Mars would have worse effects on a higher percentage of astronauts. It's fairly serious, and so far, recovery has not been complete in those who have suffered it.

3. Space engineering. This is going to subsume several things.

Let's start with a bottom line that also relates to point 1: the communication time gap. When Earth and Mars are at opposition, it's 20 minutes one way for communication.

So, if an Apollo 13 type event happens, during almost all the journey, astronauts are on their own.

That affect Earth engineering. We can't have an Apollo 13 problem, as far as improvised fixes, of trying to mate square canisters and round holes or vice versa. Can't have it. That means that the U.S. government, U.N., EU, a consortium or whatever, has to ride a very, very heavy herd on private contractors. That, in turn, ramps up the price.

Second, radiation shielding. Unless you have astronauts who sign "death sentence waivers," our current engineering simply can't protect against it. Period.

Third, crew composition. Let's say we have a crew of seven.

As I noted above, we have to have two M.D.s, one a psychiatrist. Both to study human changes in space and explore Martian life, person No. 3 is a Ph.D. biologist, of course. No. 4 is a mechanical engineer who's spent time at all those private contractors' sites. (Every astronaut, though, for reasons mentioned above, will have a crash course in engineering.) No. 5 is a geophysicist. No. 6, whether military or not, as commander, has to have a leader's presence. No. 7 is No. 2 in charge, and No. 1 in piloting skills. These two may have some backup training in sciences, but, their primary backup training will be the leads, along with person No. 4, in engineering and constructing a Martian base, on the first flight, which will be the high-fuel, quick-return version.

Of course, we' re not getting there anyway. But, that would be a minimum. Arguably, even on the first flight, you'd want an eighth person, another engineering/construction person. That then said, what crew capsule size are we talking about? And, are we conforming a crew to a capsule or vice versa? In either case, seven is a minimum, I think.

Don't forget all the food that means. All the water conversion and air filtration that means, with multiple redundancies on systems.

Meanwhile, NASA's Orion crew vehicle only seats four. NASA's skimping a LOT on both human backup needs, legitimate crew needs and space psychology issues. More reason to say both that we're not going to launch a manned mission to Mars any time soon, and we shouldn't, at least not under current planning.


However, Boeing's new capsule (update, May 8, 2015) does seat seven, and does so in comfort, style and modernity, as this story details, complete with the photo and more at the link.

Details note that the pilot's seat has had traditional switchgear replaced with tablet-like interfaces. In turn, that reduces cabin clutter.

Plastic has replaced metal in a lot of places, which reduces weight.

It generally looks much more ergonomic.

Now, this is being targeted to low-Earth orbit, for flights to the International Space Station and commercial use. But, the size is right and general design elements are right. No reason why something based on this couldn't be the Mars craft.

There's one more "engineering" option. Let's call it "financial engineering." Throwing aside radiation, building a spaceship that can offer some exercise protection against zero-G debilitation, be big enough to offer some small bit of buffer against space psychology, be big enough to, over a few trips, carry Mars base construction raw materials, etc. ....

Will cost at least $1 trillion in today's money to build and launch.

The U.S. is not doing that alone. See above.

Partnerships also need to to "R&D" on the willingness of even the biggest government joint venture to shell out that much.

Dennis Tito plans manned trip to Mars?

Megamillionaire Dennis Tito, who's already made a trip to space via Russian rocket, supposedly plans a manned mission to Mars by 2018.

More power to him. And rotsa ruck.

In reality? There's almost no way he can get everything ready by that deadline. If he does, the briefness of the actual stay time on Mars will make it of little scientific value. And, assuming he won't be able to shield the spacecraft from cosmic rays, he'll be knocking years off his life expectancy.

More here, in an extended previous blog post, about the reality of the difficulties of a manned mission to Mars. And, now, March 8, we read about how a fair chunk of the memory of the Curiosity rover got zapped by a cosmic ray.

Beyond the technical, psychological and other difficulties, I estimated the cost at possibly reaching $1 trillion. Tito says he can do it much cheaper than many other estimates. If he's telling one-quarter the truth, then he's skimping on three-quarters the safety, psychological safety and other issues I mention.

Part of me actually hopes he goes, and suffers a massive disaster, just so the country as a whole gets real about how serious of a venture this is.

I'm totally serious. If we learn through mistakes, then that's going to have to be part of the learning. And, sometimes we collectively refuse to do such learning. Challenger, anybody?

#Arsenicgate part deaux from NASA on #Curiosity?

In line with NASA's bullshitty non-annoucement of anything new on Mars, and with the "fiscal cliff" ahead, is every US federal government agency going to have similar PR in days ahead?

Background for that rhetorical question?

When the actual "Arsenicgate" press conference was held, I said NASA had "good" reasons for it's PR fluffery, namely that budget talks were ongoing, and NASA was looking at the possibility of some serious cuts.

In fact, I got into a spat with over-serious science blogger Greg Laden, who both strenuously insisted that the researchers had found something real and significant (wrong, Greg, as they've been refuted on everything from the actual findings the the quality of their work and in between, and are now too lazy to even want to put in the effort to try to replicate their own earlier research) and that NASA wouldn't do something like that (also wrong, as scientists are just as much human beings as anybody else).

Indeed, Laden eventually threatened to "ban me from the Internet," revealing (even before his Freethought Blogs issues) just how over-the-top he is.

But, back to today.

Given that NASA said something incredibly breathless about three weeks ago about a finding by Curiosity, and then, when that went more viral, took more than a week to start walking that back, good skeptics should once again rightfully be suspicious of the agency, in my opinion.

And, while my opening paragraph was halfway snarky, it's not totally so. If the Pentagon suddenly says something rosy about Afghanistan, hold on to your wallets.

I have #Curiosity about #NASA, #Mars and superstition

NASA's 'good luck peanuts.' (Space.com photo)

Yes, the landing of the new Mars rover from NASA, Curiosity, was an incredible triumph.

But, with such technological skill, does NASA (technically, JPL) really need its good Mission Control staff ... keeping a jar of "good luck peanuts"? No, I'm not joking. (Click No. 3 above the top of the first roll-through photo and caption to get the details.)

Oh, sure, one could easily say it's a "harmless tradition."

One could also look at how it got started, then try to remove all jars of peanuts from Mission Control during the next Mars mission and see just how much of a superstition it is.

One could also note that there have been unsuccessful Mars missions since Ranger 7. The Mars Climate Orbiter, which crashed because different engineers used a mix of metric and ASE (feet/inches) measurements and didn't communicate this to one another, immediately comes to mind.

On November 10, 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board released a Phase I report, detailing the suspected issues encountered with the loss of the spacecraft. Previously, on September 8, 1999, Trajectory Correction Maneuver-4 was computed and then executed on September 15, 1999. It was intended to place the spacecraft at an optimal position for an orbital insertion maneuver that would bring the spacecraft around Mars at an altitude of 226 kilometers on September 23, 1999.

However, during the week between TCM-4 and the orbital insertion maneuver, the navigation team indicated the altitude may be much lower than intended at 150 to 170 kilometers. Twenty-four hours prior to orbital insertion, calculations placed the orbiter at an altitude of 110 kilometers; 80 kilometers is the minimum altitude that Mars Climate Orbiter was thought to be capable of surviving during this maneuver. Final calculations placed the spacecraft in a trajectory that would have taken the orbiter within 57 kilometers of the surface where the spacecraft likely disintegrated because of atmospheric stresses.
 
The primary cause of this discrepancy was engineering error. Specifically, the flight system software on the Mars Climate Orbiter was written to take thrust instructions using the metric unit newtons (N), while the software on the ground that generated those instructions used the Imperial measure pound-force (lbf). This error has since been known as the metric mixup.

 Now, this could be a "teaching moment" for NASA/JPL, where top brass, at a minimum, says something like this:

While we at NASA are not about to restrict individual employees' behavior, we do not condone it, either, and we certainly do not support the thought processes behind it.

Then, blast that jar out to space along with all the old sweaters of Gene Kranz.

Of course, speaking of sweaters and other sartorial issues, as a segue, my friend Leo Lincourt mentions that JPL even has a history of connection to the occult.

Men on Mars: Why it won't happen soon

Wikipedia has an entry entitled "Manned mission to Mars." Since I started writing my thoughts independently of looking at it, I'm going by what I have written, with brief references to it.

Shorter take? Illustrations of such a trip look great, don't they? Well, drool away, because those illustrations are about as close as we're getting in your lifetime or mine to landing people on Mars, in my opinion.

There's three main reasons why that image is all we'll be seeing in the foreseeable future. They're called space psychology, space safety and space engineering.

And, most of those are connected with the idea that, at minimum, we're talking 1.5 years of travel, with distances far greater than lunar travel. And, the low-fuel journey, for one-quarter of what the "fast" trip takes, involves 2.8 years, more than half of that on Mars.

This will tax engineering, certainly tax human psychology, and without massive advances in shielding from cosmic rays, will kill astronauts -- not on the actual trip, but more surely, and with at least as much life reduction on average, as smoking two packs of Camels a day.

In short, until we address all of this, we're not even close to sending a manned mission to Mars. We're at least 30 years away, in my opinion, and that's plenty of time for improvements in robotics in particular, and unmanned spaceflight in general, to push that timeline back even further.

Details on the "why" of all of this below the fold, updated to reflect how NASA's current manned mission planning is woefully inadequate, starting with the spacecraft.

Steny Hoyer hypocrisy alert - with #TPM abetting

Per Talking Points Memo, House Minority Whip Hoyer rightly notes that much of the U.S. deficit is due to tax cuts and wars. He/TPM publisher Josh Marshall even have a nice graph of this:

But, what Hoyer doesn't admit, and Marshall (conveniently?) refuses to tell us, is that Hoyer voted FOR the Iraq War, and just six months ago, voted FOR extending all Bush tax cuts.

The Russians are landing on Mars!

Well,. it's not all Russians, and it's a simulation, but, a six-man crew will complete a 520-day "mission" Feb. 12. Darwin Day, as well as Lincoln's birthday. Nice timing.

Just a few problems with this, though.

While the story says communications were occasionally delayed to mimic actual spaceflight, it doesn't say how long. When Mars and Earth are in opposition, there's a 20-minute delay, one way.

And, this doesn't, because it ethically can't, test the effect of cosmic rays on humans. Or zero-gravity induced osteoporosis. Or many other things. At the minimum, before we send humans to Mars, we have to send test mammals of some sort into interplanetary space.

Hey Armstrong and Cernan, get a few clues

Stop looking at today's space program and its needs and goals for the future as though we were still in the middle of the Cold War.

1. As long as it's done in a spirt of cooperation, which has been the case so far, to the degree it's been needed, what's wrong with relying on the Russians more for transport to the space station?

2. Manned trips to the moon again is just your romanticism speaking. If we want to mine the moon for anything, that can probably be done robotically. As for a way station to Mars, the space station will work better for that if we don't do a direct shot.

3. s for a manned trip to Mars, whether directly or via the space station, on a number of grounds, we're not ready for that yet. We haven't tested astronaut psychology enough yet, we haven't determined how to do a robotic pre-human launch camp set-up, and a bunch of other stuff.

I agree that Obama is expecting too much, outside of low-earth orbit stuff, from the private sector.

Otherwise, no, you're wrong, and dated.

Food another tough hurdle for manned mission to Mars

Apollo and space station/shuttle food preparation, preservation and packaging just won’t cut it on the tougher interplanetary rigors of a trip to Mars.

NASA is both looking at new preservation techniques and sending an unmanned advance lander with a food cache.

Forty years after Apollo – No to Mars

Doorknob bless Buzz Aldrin, his overcoming his post-Apollo 11 depression and drinking issues, his efforts for space issues and more, but, perhaps even more now than when this argument was used against his own flight in the 1960s, we have too much to do here on Earth to even consider manned flight to Mars. Beyond that, we’re not close to working out psychological issues of that length of isolation, nor do we have any idea yet what sort of cosmic-ray damage astronauts would suffer.

That’s all true just for a manned trip; it applies in spades to his idea for a colony, which would surely cost at least $1 trillion to set up. (Buzz dodges price issues as well as technical difficulties.)

Euro-Russian astronauts did NOT simulate Mars trip

The six European and Russian volunteers who spent about 100 days in an isolation capsule claiming to simulate a trip to Mars did no such thing.

The journey is six months one way. Then, it’s either stay there for just a few days, or else about a year, unless you want a less safe, and longer than six months, return trip.

The New York Time, which has much more, also talks about the six as having simulated a trip to Mars, although it does provide the qualifying information, later in the story, about an actual trip to Mars which says the six simulated nothing, though future plans call for a 500-day confinement.

Another reason astronauts won’t go to Mars

At least not anytime soon, that is. Astronaut bone loss has been shown to be worse than previously believed, especially in the hip.

How bad? As bad as serious cases of osteoporosis on earth. Now take time on the International Space Station and change it to a trip to Mars in a crew capsule offering less, if not much less, room to exercise.

Picture a hip fracture from stumbling over a crater lip on the Martian surface

Future of Mars and Moon exploration

Will we actually find Earth-based life?

And, no, not because of some drifting of spores, nor any “space seeding” science fiction, but due to spaceship contamination, it’s possible. Earth molecule ATP might live for months in outer space.

Can NASA have a one-ton Mars rover ready in a year?

That’s its deadline to have everything go on what is far and away the largest and heaviest rover sent to the Red Planet.

Water on lunar poles?

New radar says possibly, but onsite testing is needed.

Phoenix may find salt and not life on Mars

The Martian probe Phoenix first has to find water in the Martian Arctic. But, even if it does, it most likely will not find signs of ancient Martian life.

A new study says that any liquid water flowing on Mars in eons past was likely to have been very briny. That said, the researchers note that our own planet has halophilic bacteria, along with thermophilic and other exotic life.

Nonetheless, those are niche forms of life here, so the odds of past, let alone present, life on Mars probably just dropped a whole lot.

Success on Mars – the Phoenix has landed

So far, so good, as NASA appears to have nailed, the landing of the Phoenix, which will explore the Martian Arctic.

Phoenix is designed to dig down directly to the level of water in the Martian Arctic soil and explore for signs of life.

Instruments on the spacecraft include a small oven that will heat the scooped-up dirt and ice to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Analyzing the vapors will provide information on the minerals, and that will, in turn, provide clues about whether the ice ever melted and whether this region was habitable. The mission is to last three months, with the possibility of a two-month extension.

NASA sees it as an obvious stepping-stone to future missions.

Next step, in my book? One more Phoenix-like mission, then a land-and-return mission. NO, not a manned mission.

The Phoenix is about to land

NASA has had a dicey history with Mars probes, but, if all goes according to plan, the Phoenix will land in the Martian Arctic tomorrow.

I’ll probably drop some initial “science awe” observations on here Monday.

We are not going to Mars for a while

Discussed in Discover more than a year ago but ignored by Stephen Hawking, it’s clear that cosmic rays will keep us from the Red Planet for the foreseeable future, Preznit Bush and his Martian pony not withstanding. The National Research Council says we ain’t making manned six-month space trips until NASA figures out how to protect humans from interplanetary cosmic rays and that NASA isn’t doing that right now.

The Earth’s bulk, atmosphere and magnetic field protect life from the solar radiation and the cosmic rays that travel through space. Astronauts have just a thin layer of shielding.

(Astronaut James) Van Hoften knows from personal experience.

“My introduction to space radiation came first-hand as a crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984. ‘What the heck was that?’ I blurted out after seeing what looked like a white laser passing quickly through my eyes,” van Hoften wrote in the introduction to the report.

“‘Oh, that's just cosmic rays,’ said Pinky Nelson, my spacewalking partner and space physicist. The thought of extremely high-energy particles originating from a distant cosmic event passing easily through the space shuttle and subsequently through my head made me think that this cannot be all that healthy. The truth of the matter is that it is not.”

No, it isn’t. Six months going out and another six months back to Mars is a lot more than a week in the space shuttle.

Half-jokingly, Hoften said NASA should send older astronauts, since they will likely not live long enough before the full effects of cosmic-ray damage become apparent.