The adventure of the century
The thrill of space exploration never goes away, and the next stage could be the most exciting ever as plans are made to put people on Mars. Apart from stories on a 50 ton flame throwing mechanical spider and motors on the golf course, in this issue we have an aerospace feature covering products and projects from Siemens, Hytec and Horne Technologies – Mars rover missions, hybrid-electric passenger planes and thermoplastic presses. This reminds me of a MESA conference I attended at the end of last year where I was privileged to have lunch with theoretical physicist and quantum biology researcher, Dr Adriana Marais who is on the shortlist of 100 to go to Mars – one way. When I first heard of the Mars One project I thought the aspiring Martians were quite crazy but Adriana convinced me otherwise. She had us spellbound with her vision of life on Mars and the potential for this project to generate new technologies which could benefit people on earth in ways we cannot yet imagine in science, technology and medicine.
Mars One is a private non-profit organisation that plans to establish a permanent human colony on Mars by 2030. In this extraordinary and ambitious project, six teams of two men and two women will be selected in 2018 from the current Mars 100. Among them will be mechanical engineers. The selected teams will then begin training full-time for the first team’s departure. Mars One intends to use the Olympic model of making cash from TV broadcasting rights to raise the huge amount of capital needed.
Adriana says she applied to go to Mars because the allure of the unknown has always felt far more powerful than the comfort of the known. “Exploration is what defines us as human beings and it drives innovation,” she says. “Mars is the next step. We’re just doing in terms of space travel what we’ve always done in terms of exploring the globe.” Her research interests have led her to the question of ‘what is life’. Showing that life is sustainable on Mars, or finding evidence of life on Mars, would be one of the most important possible discoveries for humanity – a giant leap in terms of understanding who we are, where we come from and what the future may hold. The Curiosity rover projects have already revealed that Mars could have supported microbial life in the past.
Practically the journey will take seven months. The astronauts will have access to the Internet and everything that it brings. A signal takes seven minutes to reach earth, so you would have to wait only 14 minutes for a response to your WhatsApp message. Marais envisions using virtual reality headsets to get a feel for earth when she’s feeling homesick.
The components needed for the Mars mission will probably be blasted into low earth orbit, then towed to cislunar space and assembled there. You expend about 80% of the energy it takes to get to Mars just to get to lower earth orbit. The first 250 km are the hardest, and the other 250 million are actually quite easy. You can store things like fuel and habitation modules in lower earth orbit to be assembled and used later on – a bit like the base camp for a mountain expedition; and 3D printing will be a critical resource – if you need a certain spanner for example.
Advances in technology are toppling the old ways of travelling in space. Now anyone with enough money and initiative can go there. The race is now between companies rather than countries and there is a rush of companies scrambling to fill the gap with promises of cheaper access to space with innovations such as renewable rockets and horizontal launch systems.
Following in the steps of the visionary Mars One proposal, other companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as well as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have also announced plans to send manned missions to Mars in the next decade or two. But unlike the political eyeballing of the 1960s space race, it is now all about cooperation. SpaceX plans to land the first private cargo mission on Mars in partnership with NASA, and Mars One plans to outsource its technology to world leaders in the aerospace industry such as SpaceX and Lockheed Martin. Governments and private companies are working together, drawing on the best minds available. Man’s greatest achievement could only be a couple of decades away.
I am holding thumbs for Adriana Marais.
Kim Roberts
Editor
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