{"id":680,"date":"2014-10-17T04:13:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T04:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=680"},"modified":"2014-10-17T04:16:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T04:16:13","slug":"mars-one-and-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/mars-one-and-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Mars One (and done?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIT team independently assesses the technical feasibility of the proposed Mars One mission.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The non-profit company Mars One plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars by 2025. Pictured is an artist’s rendering of a series of habitats. Solar panels (in the foreground), would supply the colony’s electricity, while a system to extract water from the soil (in the background) would supply drinking water.
Courtesy of Bryan Versteeg\/Mars One<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —\u00a0In 2012, the \u201cMars One\u201d project, led by a Dutch nonprofit, announced plans to establish the first human colony on the Red Planet by 2025. The mission would initially send four astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars, where they would spend the rest of their lives building the first permanent human settlement.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bold vision \u2014 particularly since Mars One claims that the entire mission can be built upon technologies that already exist. As its website states, establishing humans on Mars would be \u201cthe next giant leap for mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

But engineers at MIT say the project may have to take a step back, at least to reconsider the mission\u2019s technical feasibility.<\/p>\n

The MIT researchers developed a detailed settlement-analysis tool to assess the feasibility of the Mars One mission, and found that new technologies will be needed to keep humans alive on Mars.<\/p>\n

For example, if all food is obtained from locally grown crops, as Mars One envisions, the vegetation would produce unsafe levels of oxygen, which would set off a series of events that would eventually cause human inhabitants to suffocate. To avoid this scenario, a system to remove excess oxygen would have to be implemented \u2014 a technology that has not yet been developed for use in space.<\/p>\n

\"More<\/a>
More than 200,000 people around the world have applied to be the first Mars colonists.
Courtesy of Bryan Versteeg\/Mars One<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similarly, the Mars Phoenix lander discovered evidence of ice on the Martian surface in 2008, suggesting that future settlers might be able to melt ice for drinking water \u2014 another Mars One goal. But according to the MIT analysis, current technologies designed to \u201cbake\u201d water from soil are not yet ready for deployment, particularly in space.<\/p>\n

The team also performed an integrated analysis of spare-parts resupply \u2014 how many spare parts would have to be delivered to a Martian colony at each opportunity to keep it going. The researchers found that as the colony grows, spare parts would quickly dominate future deliveries to Mars, making up as much as 62 percent of payloads from Earth.<\/p>\n

As for the actual voyage to Mars, the team also calculated the number of rockets required to establish the first four settlers and subsequent crews on the planet, as well as the journey\u2019s cost.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
An artist’s rendering of a Mars Lander, which will transport the first settlers to the Martian surface.
Courtesy of Mars One<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the Mars One plan, six Falcon Heavy rockets would be required to send up initial supplies, before the astronauts\u2019 arrival. But the MIT assessment found that number to be \u201coverly optimistic\u201d: The team determined that the needed supplies would instead require 15 Falcon Heavy rockets. The transportation cost for this leg of the mission alone, combined with the astronauts\u2019 launch, would be $4.5 billion \u2014 a cost that would grow with additional crews and supplies to Mars. The researchers say this estimate does not include the cost of developing and purchasing equipment for the mission, which would further increase the overall cost.<\/p>\n

Olivier de Weck, an MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, says the prospect of building a human settlement on Mars is an exciting one. To make this goal a reality, however, will require innovations in a number of technologies and a rigorous systems perspective, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible,\u201d de Weck says. \u201cBut we do think it\u2019s not really feasible under the assumptions they\u2019ve made. We\u2019re pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>One of the great insights we were able to get was just how hard it is to pull this [mission] off,\u201d says graduate student Sydney Do. \u201cThere are just so many unknowns. And to give anyone confidence that they\u2019re going to get there and stay alive \u2014 there\u2019s still a lot of work that needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do and de Weck presented their analysis this month at the International Astronautical Congress in Toronto. Co-authors include MIT graduate students Koki Ho, Andrew Owens, and Samuel Schreiner.<\/p>\n

Simulating a day on Mars<\/strong><\/p>\n

The group took a systems-based approach in analyzing the Mars One mission, first assessing various aspects of the mission\u2019s architecture, such as its habitat, life-support systems, spare-parts requirements, and transportation logistics, then looking at how each component contributes to the whole system.<\/p>\n

For the habitat portion, Do simulated the day-to-day life of a Mars colonist. Based on the typical work schedule, activity levels, and metabolic rates of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), Do estimated that a settler would have to consume about 3,040 calories daily to stay alive and healthy on Mars. He then determined crops that would provide a reasonably balanced diet, including beans, lettuce, peanuts, potatoes, and rice.<\/p>\n

Do calculated that producing enough of these crops to sustain astronauts over the long term would require about 200 square meters of growing area, compared with Mars One\u2019s estimate of 50 square meters. If, as the project plans, crops are cultivated within the settlers\u2019 habitat, Do found that they would produce unsafe levels of oxygen that would exceed fire safety thresholds, requiring continuous introduction of nitrogen to reduce the oxygen level. Over time, this would deplete nitrogen tanks, leaving the habitat without a gas to compensate for leaks.<\/p>\n

As the air inside the habitat continued to leak, the total atmospheric pressure would drop, creating an oppressive environment that would suffocate the first settler within an estimated 68 days.<\/p>\n

Possible solutions, Do says, might include either developing a technology to extract excess oxygen or isolating the crops in a separate greenhouse. The team even considered using nitrogen extracted from the Martian atmosphere, but found that doing so would require a prohibitively large system. Surprisingly, the cheapest option found was to supply all the food required from Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found carrying food is always cheaper than growing it locally,\u201d Do says. \u201cOn Mars, you need lighting and watering systems, and for lighting, we found it requires 875 LED systems, which fail over time. So you need to provide spare parts for that, making the initial system heavier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twisting the knobs<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the team found, spare parts, over time, would substantially inflate the cost of initial and future missions to Mars. Owens, who assessed the resupply of spare parts, based his analysis on reliability data derived from NASA repair logs for given components on the ISS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ISS is based on the idea that if something breaks, you can call home and get a new part quickly,\u201d says Owens. \u201cIf you want a spare part on Mars, you have to send it when a launch window is open, every 26 months, and then wait 180 days for it to get there. If you could make spares in-situ, that would be a massive savings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owens points to technologies such as 3-D printing, which may enable settlers to manufacture spare parts on Mars. But the technology as it exists today is not advanced enough to reproduce the exact dimensions and functions of many space-rated parts. The MIT analysis found that 3-D printers will have to improve by leaps, or else the entire Mars settlement infrastructure will have to be redesigned so that its parts can be printed with existing technology.<\/p>\n

While this analysis may make the Mars One program look daunting, the researchers say the settlement-analysis tool they\u2019ve developed may help determine the feasibility of various scenarios. For example, rather than sending crews on one-way trips to the planet, what would the overall mission cost be if crews were occasionally replaced?<\/p>\n

\u201cMars One is a pretty radical idea,\u201d Schreiner says. \u201cNow we\u2019ve built a tool that we can play around with, and we can twist some of the knobs to see how the cost and feasibility of the mission changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the students on this project were supported by NASA fellowships.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: News provided by MIT news office and written by\u00a0Jennifer Chu<\/span><\/p>\n

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