Daily Archives: October 16, 2014

Organizers of a private Mars colonization effort may have to rethink their ambitious plans, a new study reports.

An analysis led by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has identified a few purported problems with the blueprint laid out by the Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2025 as the vanguard of a permanent settlement.

"We're not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible," study co-author Olivier de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, said in a statement. "But we do think it's not really feasible under the assumptions they've made. We're pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path." [Mars One's Red Planet Colony Project (Gallery)]

The Dutch nonprofit Mars One aims to land four colonists on the Red Planet in 2023. Do you want to be one of them?

The study team looked at many different aspects of the proposed Mars One mission, from the rockets needed to get gear to the Red Planet to the details of how settlers would grow their food. The results are sobering for would-be colonists, more than 200,000 of whom have applied to be a one-way Mars One astronaut. (There are no plans at the moment to bring the settlers back to Earth.)

For example, Mars One aims to source the colony's drinking water on-site by baking Red Planet soil, which is known to harbor water ice, at least in some locations. But the technology needed to do this is not yet ready to fly on a space mission, study authors said.

Furthermore, the new analysis suggests that growing crops within settlers' habitats, as Mars One envisions, would generate enough oxygen to make the living spaces a fire hazard.

Piping in nitrogen could lower the oxygen to safe levels, researchers said, but this fix would likely deprive the colony of a vital gas needed to compensate for leakage into the surrounding Martian atmosphere. The possible end result? A space that would quickly become unlivable, suffocating colonists after about 10 weeks, the study found.

There are ways to prevent this scenario growing food in isolated greenhouses, for example, or implementing an oxygen-extraction system. But the best alternative is to nix the idea of Mars farms and bring all the colony's food from Earth, the study determined.

"We found [that] carrying food is always cheaper than growing it locally," said study lead author Sydney Do, an MIT grad student. "On Mars, you need lighting and watering systems, and for lighting, we found it requires 875 LED [light-emitting diode] systems, which fail over time. So you need to provide spare parts for that, making the initial system heavier."

Link:
Private Mars Colony Project May Not Be Feasible, Study Suggests

Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTONSpace enthusiasts planning a move to Mars may have to wait to relocate: conditions on the Red Planet are such that humans would likely begin dying within 68 days, a new study says.

Oxygen levels would start to deplete after about two months and scientists said new technologies are required before humans can permanently settle on Mars, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The five-person team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based non-profit group behind an audacious project to permanently colonize the Red Planet starting in 2024.

Planet Mars. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

A shortlist of more than 1,000 people from an initial pool of 200,000 applicants will be whittled down to 24 for the mission an irreversible move to Mars, which is to be partially funded by a reality television show about the endeavor.

But conditions on Mars and the limits of human technology could make the mission impossible, for now at least.

The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission, according to the 35-page report, which analyzed mathematical formulas on oxygen, food and technology required for the project.

Plants required to feed the space colony would produce unsafe amounts of oxygen, the authors said.

Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight, the study concluded.

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Humans may only survive 68 days on Marsstudy

A team of MIT researchers has completed an analysis of the Mars One mission to colonize the Red Planet that throws the feasibility of the non-profit project into question. By analyzing the missions details, the team found that as the plan stands, there are a number of hurdles that must be overcome if the colonists aren't to end up dead within 10 weeks of landing.

Announced in 2012, The Mars One project aims at landing four colonists on Mars in 2025, where they would remain for the rest of their lives with additional colonists sent as Earth and Mars come back into the right launch position every 18 months or so. Living in habitats set up previously by unmanned rovers, the colonists would live off the land for their raw materials while being the focus of a reality television show beamed back to Earth.

Even though Mars Ones call for volunteers resulted in replies from 200,000 applicants, the feasibility of the mission remains an open question. In search of an answer, an MIT team developed a detailed settlement-analysis tool, which they used to carry out an assessment of the colonization plans. They used the plans, mission architecture, logistics, and assumptions proposed by Mars One, as well as the mission timeline and the intended use of existing technology. For comparison, the assessment used the International Space Stations (ISS) systems and operations as a model.

The end result is like a dash of cold water after the party for Mars One. According to MIT, the plans for the colony as outlined presents previously unforeseen shortcomings, will require technologies that dont yet exist, and will be much more expensive than previously thought.

For example, growing food for the colony is, in terms of space technology, like jumping from a window box to a commercial greenhouse in one go. The Mars One plan calls for 50 sq/m (538 sq/ft) of space for growing food. However, based on ISS data, MIT calculated that at least 200 sq/m (2,153 sq/ft) would be needed to grow a balanced diet of enough beans, lettuce, peanuts, potatoes, and rice at 3,040 calories per person per day to sustain four people.

By carefully packing crops in growing racks, MIT reckoned that this could be crammed into the planned habitat modules, but as the module used to grow food is also the living quarters for the colonists, that created other, potentially fatal, problems.

Unmanned pathfinder probe designed to precede the Mars One colonists (Image: Mars One)

Plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, which is a good thing, but having so many plants in such a small, confined space means that it soon becomes too much of a good thing. According to the MIT report, the oxygen produced would soon reach toxic levels and pose a massive fire hazard. To prevent this, air would need to be bled off and replaced with nitrogen gas to restore the balance, but that would soon use up the entire store of nitrogen allocated for the colony.

Worse than this, the habitat pods aren't perfectly airtight. They inevitably leak air, and without nitrogen to maintain pressure, the modules would soon lose so much air that the crew would suffocate in 68 days after arrival on Mars.

Though tanking oxygen from Earth is a possibility, that still leaves the problem of air leakage, which would make the habitat pod uninhabitable in about a year and a half. MIT says that this could be offset by collecting nitrogen on Mars and separating out the oxygen from the habitat for storage, but such a system would be extremely heavy and none are space rated.

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MIT team throws feasibility of Mars One mission into question