You don't burn fuel continuously to go to Mars once you achieve escape velocity from Earth. Nor do you encounter wind resistance en route.
Okay how about a more relevant comment? A huge part of the Apollo program that put man on the moon was developing the launch and support infrastructure that at the time of JFK committing the U.S. to that goal, did not yet exist. A manned Mars program would (at least almost every plan I've heard) use the launch facilities and support systems from the various NASA space centers like Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center and various others. That's literally tens of billions worth of infrastructure to support a manned Mars program which doesn't have to be built from the ground up as it did for the Apollo program.
You and I have different ideas of "huge". At its most generous (including tracking and data acquisition as 100% infrastructure), that was 15% of the Apollo budget, or maybe 22 billion out of 150 billion, inflation adjusted.
Which is why it should be dropped. You can't have perfection like that. Thank God that standard wasn't around when men started building ships.
A ship is a far less complicated thing a Mars rocket. And you can't exactly drop the requirement that the life support system has to be capable of functioning the entire way. The engineers know that no matter how well the design things, something is going to go wrong, and probably something that they never imagined, so they have to make things as bulletproof as possible to minimize the danger when it does go wrong. With things like the Apollo missions, the ISS missions, and even sailing ships in ancient times, there are a number of "outs" on has, if things go wrong. A manned mission to Mars has none of those things, and if two weeks out the crew is killed because a $0.50 part failed, you've thrown away billions of dollars and the lives of the crew for nothing. This isn't to say that it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, just that one shouldn't pretend we can do it "easily."
Who said anything about dropping the life support requirements on a ship? NO ONE. Yes they should work to make the systems the best they can and yes there should be backups. But to hold to the standard you yourself wrote, "any mission to Mars is going to have to be certain that nothing fatal can go wrong" is stupid.
Sigh. You're being needlessly pedantic about this. What I meant was that the kind of safety margins which would be acceptable for a mission to the Moon, the ISS, or even a voyage across the ocean in a wooden sailing ship, aren't going to be sufficient for a mission to Mars if you want it to succeed. A 10% chance of failure of a critical component on any day of the mission isn't a big risk, when the mission is only going to last 3 days, or if you can reach safety in a short period of time. However, when you've got a mission that's going to last 100+ days, a 10% chance of failure for a critical component on any day means that you will, most assuredly, have such a failure on the mission, with potentially (and quite probably) fatal consequences. Just as planes which never make trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific flights don't have to meet the same kind of standards as those that do make such flights, the kinds of missions we've done to date haven't needed to meet the kinds of safety standards required for a manned mission to Mars. And when you look at the various scenarios of the kinds of things that could go wrong on such a mission you run into a number of different issues which all have to be considered carefully. For example, if there's a problem which increases the amount of time that it takes for the crew to return to Earth (assuming you plan on doing so), you don't want the crew to also have to worry about their life support failing them, running out of food, the toilet breaking (or running out of poo bags), because while they're scrambling to deal with those issues, it's almost certain that something else will go wrong. The Apollo 13 guys had a rough couple of days in uncomfortable conditions to deal with and they made it back okay, but had it gone on much longer, they might have had trouble keeping up with everything that needed to be done because fatigue was taking a toll on them. Nobody wants to be in the position of having to sit there and tell a crew that, "I'm sorry, there's a whole lotta nuthin' we can do, you guys are going to die" or hearing a crew suffer and die because something went wrong. (Or realizing too late that because an astronaut was tired he/she hit the wrong switch and just fatally doomed the mission.) Would I strap myself ontop of a rocket going to Mars if I knew there was only a 10% chance I might survive? You bet your ass I would, but if shit goes wrong, and I get killed, I won't be the guy at ground control who has to spend his days wondering if there wasn't something he could have done to prevent that from happening.
^Even Kirk, however, considered some risks unacceptable. Given that Musk is saying he wants humans on Mars in less than 10 years, I'd hardly call that being "timid." It's not like the Russians or the Chinese are likely to beat him there.
You do know that the Apollo missions actually had very little margin for error. The safe return of Apollo 13 was as much a fluke as anything else given that there were a hundred things that could've easily gone wrong in timing that would've led to the crew dying.
You do know that had the shuttles been operated within their original guidelines, we wouldn't have lost either of them? NASA engineers warned management not to launch Challenger in such cold conditions, but they did it anyway, killing seven astronauts, needlessly. Columbia, you could argue might have happened at any point, even if NASA followed all their guidelines, but not Challenger. Though, certainly if NASA had paid attention to the specs which said nothing can hit the wings, they might have had the Columbia crew do an inspection of the wing, spotted the damage, and then tried to figure out a way to rescue the crew. As for the margins with Apollo, they were deemed acceptable because of the short time frame of the missions and the closeness to rescue the crews would be. A Mars mission isn't going to have those luxuries, and even worse, if something goes fatally wrong on the mission, there might not be any way of finding out what happened so as to prevent it from happening again.
Simply being "closer" to Earth in no way makes space rescues "easier". As Dr. Robert Zubrin points out in "The Case for Mars" in case of a in flight emergency on a manned Mars mission, a rapid return to Earth might well not be the best option for the crew.
It is utterly amazing how limited your grasp of the things involved in all of this are. The longest Apollo mission was just over 12 days, and had things gone wrong, they would have only needed to worry about keeping the crew alive for 3 days to get them home. A manned mission to Mars is going to take, with current technology, over a month to get from Earth to Mars. Something goes wrong at, say, the mid-point of the trip to Mars, you have to figure out how to keep the crew alive for a minimum of 15 days, even assuming that you're going to plunk them down on Mars and have them stay there until whatever they need to get them home can be sent. (Yes, I'm well, aware of Zubrin's plans, and the whole pre-configured landing set-up.) After just a couple of days in bad conditions, the Apollo 13 guys were frazzled and had problems thinking. Swigert had to cover up some of the switches because he was afraid that in his sleep-deprived state he'd hit the wrong one and kill them all. You put them in conditions like that for as long as two weeks (or more) and they're almost certain to wind up dead before they even get a good look at Mars. Zubrin spins a good tale, but there's reasons why he's no longer at NASA, and it ain't because they're hidebound and unable to recognize his "brilliance." It's because Zubrin doesn't understand the reality of what it takes to get a project from concept to reality. Allow me to quote from page 60 of his book, The Case for Mars, in which he reprints the memo he sent to folks at NASA in response to George HW Bush's proposal for sending people to Mars Don't see what's wrong with that? He just called the very people he'd need to back his idea "stupid" for making their proposal. Oh, and according to his book, he'd swayed a guy at NASA by the name of Mike Griffin, with his proposal, before 2000. That Mike Griffin would go on to head NASA from 2005-2009, yet Griffin didn't really seem to push Zubrin's ideas while he was running the agency. Why might that be? (Though, Griffin did back the flawed Ares rocket design.) In the book, Zubrin says that the NASA folks who did like his idea insisted upon it being scaled up, which he disparages, but doesn't give the reasons why they said it needed to be scaled up. If they were invalid, why not take them apart, one-by-one? As for his handwaving away any potential objections folks might have to sending a nuclear reactor to Mars (and those objections are foolish, I'll agree), look at what happened when Steve Bannon tried to handwave away any objections to the AHCA of 2017. Didn't exactly work out the way he planned, did it? Now, contrast this with what Musk is doing. Musk is not only saying that we're going to Mars (and he intends to do it using many of the methods that Zubrin describes), but he's being inclusive of NASA (by saying that they'll need NASA's help and knowledge), and he's also doing a PR campaign to get people excited about going to Mars (yet not mentioning anything about needing nuclear reactors, though he almost certainly will). By speaking positively about NASA, and going to great lengths to work with and for them, he's ensuring that when it comes time for him to ask about things like pesky nuclear reactors, people will agree, because he seems like such a nice guy, who's done so much for people. After all, would a guy who builds electric cars, solar panels, etc., etc., etc. want a nuclear reactor if it was dangerous? Of course not. Hell, when Musk found out that a Tesla owner wrecked his car to save a man's life, Musk picked up the tab to fix the car. I don't know if Musk is a chess player or not, but he damned sure knows strategy when he sees it. When his efforts to send people to Mars hit's a snag (which it will, every project has them), he's not going to have any trouble getting money from Congress if he needs it, or deal with people saying he's putting people at unnecessary risk. He'll have a track record which shows that he cares about safety (The Model S is so safe, it broke the testing gear.), and that he can do the "impossible." The last time someone started a major automotive company "from scratch" and had it last more than a couple of years in the US, was in 1925, when Walter P. Chrysler started his company. And even Chrysler had a bigger headstart than Musk did, because Chrysler not only had run car companies before this (Buick and Willys), but simply renamed the Maxwell Motor Works "Chrysler." Musk was a software engineer who'd never run anything like a manufacturing concern before starting Tesla, and Space X. You know why all the offices and conference rooms at Space X are named after Science Fiction writers, astronauts, and scientists? Public fucking relations. They could easily call it "the Blue Office" or "Conference Room B," but they don't. Because such names don't attract attention or inspire confidence. (Or curry favor with important people. Buzz Aldrin was a paid consultant for Burt Rutan's X-Prize attempt, but he had no problems praising SpaceX after they named a conference room after him.) Musk (and I'd say to some extent Bezos and Branson) get what it takes to do such a monumental effort required to get humans off Earth and on to places like the Moon and Mars. Zubrin grasps some of the technological concepts needed, but not the larger political aspects needed to make such a project happen. Werner von Braun and his team started design work on what would become the Saturn V in 1957! Yet, it wasn't Ike who pitched the idea of going to the Moon, it was Kennedy, and if he hadn't had the misfortune of eating a bullet in Dallas a couple of years later, LBJ might not have been able to get the Apollo program through Congress without the ability to wave Kennedy's martyrdom in front of anybody who objected to the idea. LBJ was also clever enough to make sure that instead of centralizing NASA and its operations in one or two locations, he spread the agency around, so that there would be more people in Congress willing to fight for it, since a portion of it was in their home state. That's why Mission Control is in Houston, and not at the Cape. There's no reason why they both can't be in the same location, other than if they're both in Florida, there's fewer people in Congress willing to protect the jobs associated with the agency. That is how you get people to Mars, by showing that you can do "the impossible," that you "care" about people, and that you're willing to push the limits of technology. Not by saying, "Well, I think they should just send people, and not worry about if they get killed or not." Or by shitting on those who can smooth the path forward for you. If Musk is having trouble with a Congressman, do you think that he'd have any trouble getting Buzz to pay that Congressman a visit? Nope. (And the Congressman would be more than happy to meet with a national hero like Buzz, no matter what he might think of NASA, Musk, etc.) Zubrin would just bitch about the Congressman in the next talk he gave, at where ever, with no hope of getting any movement on the issue at all.
He didn't. I wouldn't expect you to recognize Zubrin's foolishness, but I'm sure others here have picked it out from what I quoted by him. I'm simply reciting his accomplishments, there's plenty he's done that I could argue with, but that's neither here nor there, so far as this discussion is concerned. The simple fact of the matter is that Musk knows what needs to be done (or at least has a better idea than you or Zubrin does), and is doing it, which is more than can be said for either of us when it comes to actually getting people off this rock.
Elon Musk might well succeed thanks to his money and connections in no small part. But he is a tireless self promoter. And I'll trust an engineer like Zubrin over Musk any day. And don't you think it speaks volumes that ultimately the core principles of Dr. Zubrin's Mars Direct mission planning have been adopted for any serious future manned Mars program? And NASA does tend to "gold plate" its Mars Mission Planning. Remember when NASA was insisting that a Manned Mars mission have TWO surgeons in case one of the surgeons themselves needed an operation?
Musk is also an engineer, and Zubrin's also a tireless self-promoter, otherwise, you'd have never heard of him. He'd just be like any of the other innumerable engineers at NASA who have ideas that nobody's ever heard of. Not nearly as much as the fact that none of the people are willing make sure Zubrin signs an exclusive contract with them. If he was particularly brilliant (or not so abrasive), Musk or Bezos would want to lock down Zubrin so the other guy couldn't hire him. Yeah, whoever heard of a surgeon being in a remote location and needing to perform lifesaving surgery on himself? Every NASA astronaut in the post-Apollo era has had multiple degrees in different fields, because NASA is trying to egt as much science of each mission as possible. The Apollo guys, save Schmidt, were all strictly engineers and pilots, some of them were more interested in showing they were the funniest guys in the room, than doing actual science when it came to the Moon. Saying NASA wanted "two surgeons" on a Mars mission, is like describing the shuttle as "a way to go somewhere," it neglects rather significant aspects of it. The two surgeons would both have degrees in fields unrelated to medicine, and wouldn't be sitting around in Sick Bay all day on the off-chance somebody got a tummy ache or something.
Having a "surgeon" on a manned Mars mission is still largely a waste of a crew space. Trained nonsurgeons can perform surgical procedures in emergency situations. Especially if they can consult with experts remotely. According to the book "Big Red" about life aboard a U.S. SSBN, the medic aboard said he could probably perform an appendectomy if necessary. And face it, under the conditions during an initial manned Mars mission, any surgical procedure more complicated than that is probably not doable regardless of the surgeons experience and expertise.
Kind of hard to do a remote consultation in an emergency situation, when the lag time in communications is several minutes or longer, as it is between the Earth and any place much farther away than the Moon. Not to mention, that without significant upgrades to both the Deep Space Communication network, and what's presently orbiting Mars in terms of satellites, the window of communication between Earth and Mars is as small as 40 minutes a day, with Earth and Mars being completely out of contact with one another for over a month, when the two planets are on opposite sides of the sun. Zubrin talks about leaving astronauts on Mars for up to 2 years. As any astronaut will tell you, Murphy was an optimist. That's what he says, I'm sure we all know people who say that they can really do something, but when it comes time for them to actually do it, they fail spectacularly. The difference between a medic and a surgeon, is that a medic only has to patch someone together long enough for them to be seen be a team of specialists. A surgeon, by contrast, is trained to deal with a wide variety of problems, and can patch someone back together well-enough that they can expect to resume normal activity in a short-period of time. (Depending upon the type of surgery, of course.) A medic could patch together somebody's knee, a surgeon could enable that person to have the use of their knee back. Additionally, because the astronauts on Mars will be experiencing conditions different than those that humans evolved in (as well as having to deal with things like a Martian surface which has almost pure hydrogen peroxide frost in places), you're going to want as many people on site to have a deep understanding of medicine and biology, just so that they can quickly identify problems that might develop which were completely unexpected.
^Agree to disagree then. I for one think that reducing the dangers in manned spaceflight undermines public support for it. The danger is part of the thrill the public gets out of it.
