Category Archives: Mars Colonization

With the advent of developing space companies and recent conversations surrounding the habitability of Earth, this years Ten Years Hence series uncovers profound reflections not only for the business world, but for the entirety of our current generation. Life Beyond Earth is the theme of the 2022 lectures, offered by the Mendoza College of Business. Christian Davenport, staff writer for the Washington Post, launched the first of the seven scheduled talks by sharing insights regarding the commercialization of space.

Author of, The Space Barons: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos (2018), Davenport related how the quest for the cosmos is intricately tied to the plight of the wealthiest individuals in the world.

The quickest way to go to space is to become a billionaire, Davenport said. And the richest among us are plowing big parts of their fortune into space.

He further explained his reference to the Space Barons in his books title, we have businesses competing in a way that governments used to, Davenport said.

Ten Years Hence course instructor Professor James ORourke notes that enlightened self-interest is the driving force behind this new space race.

The vision of the space barons is similar, but unique in nature. Both Elon Musk and Jeffery Bezos plan to bridge the largest gap dividing Earth from space: costs. While Elon Musk concerns himself with a backup for humanity, with Mars standing as the best candidate for such an option, Bezos philosophy is to preserve Earth and instead move industry to space.

When he founded Amazon, the resources he needed for the business to succeed were there: the credit card, post office and internet, for instance of course, for space, there is no infrastructure yet, Davenport said. Perhaps we are dawning an era of economic dynamism that creates a whole new market, similar to what the internet did to the world when it was first created.

Leading spectators through history, Davenport elucidated how the aura of hope for space travel now burns even brighter. He recalled the desolation of the Challenger space shuttle explosion and traced the quest to build a reusable, cost-efficient rocket, from events like the historic landing of Space Xs Falcon 9 in 2015 to the Starship launch for orbit scheduled this year.

With a multiplicity of companies such as Boeing, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, along with the ranks of astronauts proliferating, an unprecedented era of space exploration appears to be within reach. NASAs plans to construct a new International Space Station and their recent launching of the James Webb Space Telescope are further accomplishments which cannot be overlooked, as they will continue to enlighten the universes great unknown.

Davenport even touched upon an eventual return to the Moon, remarking that the reason we havent been beyond earth orbit for a while now is because of different, conflicting government administrations. NASAs Artemis project, adequately named after the mythological twin sister of Apollo, endeavors to brave through this feat once more. With the knowledge of there being water on the moon, Davenport noted there is even a potential for it to become a gas station to space.

Apart from the lecture, Davenport noted the importance of discussing these subjects in general, emphasizing his goal to explain the issues of our time to people, including how the government is administering tax funded programs, and place that in a broader historical context; to inform the citizenry of this interesting time we hope to introduce in space, and how it might play a bigger role in peoples lives, he said. We must understand the advantages as well as the ethical challenges related to this.

Professor ORourke added that the series itself is designed to encourage students to ponder about major relevant issues of the near future. In ten years, everyone in the room will need to adapt and/or adopt an intervention strategy for the challenges and opportunities that emerge. These are topics you wont encounter in an accounting or marketing course, and you get the chance to meet interesting, important and smart people along the way.

Interesting people will indeed appear throughout this series, featured among them a NASA Astronaut and U.S. Air Force test pilot, a mission manager for Blue Origin, scientist from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and beyond. A full program for this stellar course may be found at the Mendoza College of Business website.

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Twentieth 'Ten Years Hence' series discusses the future of space travel - Observer Online

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/rJkJNFPcdBkDQKqtkgHSjA/4ab4fea1-e811-4a48-97b2-98db952be827.jpg/r4_0_5924_3345_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg When you hear the word alien, what do you picture?

A six-legged dog? Small dinosaurs? Alien fish? Bacteria? This view doesnt come from science, but science fiction. Movies, TV shows, and novels have created and built up this stereotype, embedding it into our culture. When H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in the late 19th century, Wells created a view of aliens that has stuck with us to this day.

Humans are a very self-centred species we think a lot of ourselves. We think that the world, and by extension other worlds, revolve around us. Therefore, we think that all life on other planets must look, act, and think like us. They would also want we have, and it is up to us to defend ourselves. In War of the Worlds, big-headed creatures with tentacles that operated machines came from Mars to colonise Earth. The book was rooted in science, but also a critique of the world at the time.

Moreover, you may think of a hostile race, that wants to come to Earth to take over. Maybe it is for our resources, maybe it is to colonize, or maybe we do know why, but we should fear and fight them. Most likely, you pictured some human-like figure, maybe with a big head, big eyes, and green or grey skin. Why is this the image we always jump to when we hear aliens.

War of the Worlds is using the idea of beings from other worlds as a way to tell and critique what is happening in the world. We should actually fear ourselves. Wells was strongly against British colonialism and the issues, especially for indigenous peoples around the world, it created. In one passage, Wells even refers to Tasmania, saying that why should Earthlings condemn the Martians when we have done similar things on Earth, using Tasmania as an example.

Even prominent scientists like the late Stephen Hawking have warned we should not contact an alien species as they are likely to be hostile. We worry about aliens, but should we? This view, both physically how aliens look, and how they act, is repeated over and over in science fiction. From Independence Day to Mars Attacks. Even in films like Arrival, the aliens look similar to classic portrayals and, while not meant to be hostile, we automatically assume they are. When aliens seemingly visit us here on Earth, they are hostile creatures out to harm or take over our planet. When we Earthlings travel and explore other worlds and meet aliens there, we are innocent explorers. How come it is not the reverse? It is a matter of projection we are projecting our own worries and fears, not necessarily scientific ones.

Link:
Are there aliens in space and should we be afraid? | The Canberra Times - BollyInside

Mars is the place of hope for many astronomers. Its very far away for us: the average distance is roughly 54 million kilometers. But the distance is nothing for the unfathomable distances that traverse the Universe.

Whats for sure is that long ago, there were floods of water on Mars, similar to how it happens on Earth. Those times are far gone, but the Red Planet still poses interest for astronomers today. The reason is that humanity might have a chance to colonize it, although its highly unrealistic to believe that it shall be possible in the near future.

However, scientists continue to take steps towards understanding in a better way how habitable or inhabitable Mars is. Its indeed great to see that astronomers keep struggling to uncover the Red Planets secrets!

According to ScienceAlert.com, scientists reveal that by using the Perseverance rover of NASA, organic molecules were discovered in rocks and dust from the Jezero Crater of Mars. A new instrument of the rover was used for the discovery: the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC for short).

While were not talking about the first time when organic compounds have been found on the Red Planet, the new discovery is important because it suggests the ability of Martian rocks to preserve organic compounds well. This leads to the idea that biological organic material can also be preserved.

Luther Beegle, a planetary scientist of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA from Southern California, explained as cited by ScienceAlert.com:

What SHERLOC adds to the story is its capability to map the spatial distribution of organics inside rocks and relate those organics to minerals found there.

But celebration could still be far away, as the same scientist says as quoted by the same source:

This helps us understand the environment in which the organics formed. More analysis needs to be done to determine the method of production for the identified organics.

Therefore, organic molecules exist on Mars, but finding any complex life dwelling there is still unlikely, at least for now.

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NASA's Perseverance Rover Confirms the Presence of Organic Molecules on Mars - Why the Discovery Could Be More Important Than Ever - Optic Flux

It is time once again to look back at 2021 to see what happened and how my predictions panned out.

- There were two major items influencing the IT world in 2021. One was the chip shortage and the other was of course Covid-19. My prediction about the need for a Covid passport for travel came true and for many countries is still very relevant. The Omicron variant may change that, but for the moment vaccine passports will remain.

- I was correct about the increasing collection of all types of personal data but wrong about any of the social media giants being broken up. If anything, they seemed to have gained even more power across the globe. As for the usual assortment of hardware, there was nothing other than incremental upgrades. Hard drives did hit 20TB, but only 18TB in the regular consumer market, so I'll give myself half points. Standalone monitors via Bluetooth or wireless also became quite affordable this year. As predicted the 1TB microSD became affordable and still the biggest easily available size. While 2-4TB thumb drives did appear, there were also a lot of fake ones in that range on eBay and elsewhere. Hint, a 2 or 4TB thumb drive does not cost 500 baht.

- Despite some crazy assertions of it affecting people's brains, 5G technology spread more widely this year but not as much as I expected. New smartphones from the mid-range and up support this technology for faster data transfers, but I didn't get a 5G connection all that often. I did see some general connectivity issues working from home but not as many as I thought. The main letdown was from applications like Outlook and Teams having multiple problems throughout the year. As expected, we did see many companies finding the work from home model works well enough to share time in the office with some at home. This helped many with office accommodation requirements and costs.

- Also as expected many small to medium companies did not survive a year of Covid, while many of the larger companies thrived. Social media giants and others doubled their revenues in 2021. The travel industry took a big hit and some airlines have either collapsed or are in trouble. I made some predictions about the Amazon Halo Band. This did not spread as widely as I expected so that prediction failed.

- Finally, as far as my predictions, the vaccine rollout ended up causing more problems than it solved and we have had more than my predicted single variant in the past year. Vaccine manufacturers had a year of stellar profits and they are unwilling to see that money train slow down. So, all in all I did about usual, a bit above 50% but not all that well, particularly with the chip shortages.

- In a trial at Brown University using a transmitter in a human brain, a patient was connected to a computer to control robotic limbs with thought alone, ie, by imagining their movements. This is very promising for those with spinal cord injuries. A private citizen, Richard Branson became the first to reach space in his own spaceship. Others followed throughout the year but that was a great achievement. So was the Mars rover Perseverance using Moxie, or the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, to convert some of the Mars atmosphere into oxygen. This is a first step in the colonisation of Mars.

- Proving yet again that Einstein was right, light was observed for the first time coming from behind a black hole. El Salvador was the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the US dollar. Other countries have announced their own cryptocurrency initiatives to add one to their current banking system but not necessarily Bitcoin, rather a country controlled one. China was one of the first to announce this. The industry seems to have some concerns about this direction so we will see where we are in a few years.

- A piece of digital artwork named Everydays: The First 5000 Days by the artist Mike Winkelmann was sold by the auction house Christie's for US$69.3 million (about 2.3 billion baht). This also marked the first time that cryptocurrency was accepted as a form of payment. Since we also need to include the not-so-nice uses of technology, according to a UN report the first autonomous drone was used to hunt down and kill human targets in Libya. This would be the first example of the forerunner of Skynet-like technology where an AI based system was given control to hunt humans. Plarium's RAID: Shadow Legends won worst mobile game for the year.

- Before you do any travel, you may want to turn off Google's tracking. Login to your google.com account, click on your icon letter top right and then on Manage your Google account. Now click on Privacy & personalization then Things you've done and places you've been. Now inside the History Settings box click on Location History opening Activity Controls. Under Location History, click the button on the right that reads Turn off and in the pop-up windows scroll down and click Pause. This prevents Google from storing location markets linked to specific actions and the storing of information collected from searches or other activities. See how easy they make it? Happy New Year.

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Prediction hits and misses for 2021 - Bangkok Post

As per usual, TIME sat down with this years honoree for a lengthy profile, which covers anything from Musks dreams of widespread EV adoption to his opinions on vaccine mandates and whether it is right for one man to be worth billions of dollars when millions of people around the world go without food or potable water, and his hopes of colonizing Mars. Well focus on that last item on the list now.

Among the reasons TIME chose Musk as the recipient of the Person of the Year title is his aspir[ation] to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit. Well, that, and poop-tweeting, which, though admittedly juvenile, is a thing few other people of his standing would even dare to consider.

And the magazine is right; Musk does plan to take us to another planet, as anyone whos been following the developments over at SpaceX knows. NASA, the mag says, has more or less abdicated its position as the leader in space exploration, leaving the spot open for Musk. Electric vehicles might be a passion of his and his biggest source of revenue, but its space travel that gets him the most excited.

Musk says hes positive the first landing on Mars should take place within the next five years. After that, colonization will take place, resulting in what he calls the first self-sustaining city on the Red Planet. SpaceX will then ship animals there because Musk is dead serious about relocating the human race to another planet since weve already pretty much destroyed the one were currently occupying.

The goal overall has been to make life multi-planetary and enable humanity to become a spacefaring civilization, Musk says. And the next really big thing is to build a self-sustaining city on Mars and bring the animals and creatures of Earth there. Sort of like a futuristic Noahs ark. Well bring more than two, though its a little weird if theres only two.He does make a valid point. Pairs of two mightve worked for Noah, but Musk cant afford to lose one half of a pair on the way there or, you know, have it refuse to mate. This detail, as funny as it might seem, proves Musk is serious about his colonization plans and has been so for a very long time.

Until that happens, Musk and his SpaceX will continue to work hard to further space exploration. I think we can do a loop around the moon maybe as soon as 2023, Musk casually remarks in the same interview.

To catch up with Musk and see what makes him such a fascinating public figure, heres the video that accompanies his Time Magazine profile.

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Elon Musk Will Build a Futuristic Noah's Ark to Help With Colonizing Mars - autoevolution

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December 14, 2021 02:34 GMT

According to the companys CEO, Elon Musk, the new technology will also be important to Mars.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on December 13 that his space company intends to extract satiate from the atmosphere and convert it into rocket fuel.

SpaceX begins a program to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into rocket fuel. Please join us if you are interested. Starch The businessman via his official Twitter account, adding that the new technology It will also be important for Mars.

We must remember that Musk never gives up on an idea colonization of the red planet and goals Builds By 2050 there is a self-sufficient city with a population of 1 million. those People will come to Mars In the Starship Spacecraft, a reusable planetary craft being developed by SpaceX.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization alerted In October of this year, greenhouse gas concentrations reached a level New record Last year it increased at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade. The agency, which is based on the United Nations, noted that these trends occurred despite a temporary reduction in emissions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, has reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 The report declared it to be 149% of the pre-industrial level. On the other hand, the organization also noted that the ability of terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems to serve as sinks for carbon dioxide could become less effective in the future due to its sensitivity to climate change.

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SpaceX begins a program to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into rocket fuel - Amico Hoops

The front of the SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

In late September, aformer communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees raised concerns about the culture at the company, highlighting issues such as sexism in the workplace. Writing on the Lioness website, Alexandra Abrams and the unnamed employees wrote that Blue Origin "turns a blind eye toward sexism."

The essay ignited a wildfire of criticism about the working environment of Blue Origin, even extending to concerns about the safety of the company's vehicles. In the wake of the essay's publication, the Federal Aviation Administration launched an investigation of these safety allegations.

Now the conflagration has spread to SpaceX. On Tuesday, Lioness published another essay byAshley Kosak, a former mission integration engineer at SpaceX. This essay has fewer anonymous co-signers (only two) and is more tightly focused on sexism rather than the company's broader culture. But in regard to harassment, its allegations are no less worrisome.Kosak writes about multiple occasions of feeling sexually harassed and her belief that SpaceX's management did not do enough to intervene.

Kosak noted that SpaceX's mission is no less than to settle other worlds, but she muses about whether such a world would be a utopia, given the workplace culture of SpaceX.

"These conditions would be disturbing anywhere, but in this particular workplace, we are blazing a trail to settle a new planet," she said. "What will life on Elon's Mars be like? Probably much like life at SpaceX. Elon uses engineers as a resource to be mined rather than a team to be led. The health of Earth is rarely a consideration in the company's projects. Misogyny is rampant."

SpaceX declined to comment. I have spoken to more than 100 SpaceX employees over the years as a reporter covering space. In those discussions, the biggest concern about the company's work environment has been its demanding pace and long working hoursa tone clearly set by Musk, who nearly asks the impossible of his employees.

And notably, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell has always been described as a defender of women in aerospace. But clearly all is not well, given the concerns expressed by Kosakand other women who have left the company.

Shotwell and Musk appear to have taken note. This weekend, in advance of the publication of the Lioness essay, Shotwell sent an internal email to employees announcing an independentaudit of the company's human relations procedures. The company, Shotwell wrote, "can always do better."

The harsh reality is that the space industry, which grew largely out of military operations in the United States, has been male-dominated since its inception. Figures for the diversity of private companies are not available, but even NASA, which strives for a diverse workforce, had a two-to-one male-to-female ratio of employees in 2020 (see diversity report). At the senior level of management, the ratio was more than four-to-one.

The mission-driven environment of spaceflight also may help to foster an environment of sexism. Florida Today explored this dynamic in a lengthy report on harassment published earlier this fall.

"According to experts and whistleblowers, the idealistic nature of space explorationand sharpfocuson 'the mission' adds to adangerous dynamic in which women, already a minority in the high-tech workplace, might be willing to put up with unacceptable behaviors to achieve success," the publication wrote. "If left unresolved, insiders are concerned this culture could someday extend to astronauts on assignment or deep space colonization efforts."

Efforts by whistleblowers in Lioness are helpful in that they shine a light on problems that have existed from the beginning. Such illumination helps to expose bad behaviors. Welcome, too, is the recent creation of organizations to support young women and minorities in the space industry through fellowshipssuch as the Brooke Owens Fellowship and the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship.

These organizations help aerospace students find strong mentors and peers in the space industry. The hope is that students will not feel isolated and will instead be empowered to speak up for their needs and rights. Space should welcome all who are called to its vast potential.

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Concerns about sexism in the aerospace industry land at SpaceX - Ars Technica

Earlier this month, a group of 60 prominent scientists and engineers met behind closed doors at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their agenda: Mars colonisation.

Organised by Elon Musks SpaceX and attended by members of Nasas Mars exploration programme, the goal of this inaugural Mars workshop was to begin formulating concrete plans for landing, building and sustaining a human colony on Mars within the next 40 to 100 years.

This workshop signals the growing momentum and reality behind plans to actually send humans to Mars. But while SpaceX and partners ask whether we could live there, others still ask whether we should.

A Pew Research Centre survey carried out in June asked US adults to rank the relative importance of nine of Nasas current primary missions. Sending humans to Mars was ranked eighth (ahead only of returning to the Moon) with only 18% of those surveyed believing it should be a high priority.

We have known for some time that the journey to Mars for humans would be hard. Its expensive. It's dangerous. It's boring. However, like so many advocates of Mars exploration, I've always thought the sacrifice was worth it.

But to test this belief I wanted to look at the case against Mars; three reasons humans should leave the red planet alone.

It is hard to forget the images six months ago of Elon Musk's midnight cherry Tesla floating through space. Launched atop the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX hoped to shoot the Tesla into orbit with Mars. A stunt, for sure but also a marvellous demonstration of technical competence.

But not everyone was happy. Unlike every previous craft sent to Mars, this car and the mannequin called Starman sitting behind the wheel had not been sterilised. And for this reason, some scientists described it as the largest load of earthly bacteria to ever enter space.

As it happens, the Tesla overshot its orbit. At the time of writing, it is 88 million miles from Mars, drifting through the darkness of space with Bowie on an infinite loop. But the episode illustrates the first argument against human travel to Mars: contamination.

If humans do eventually land on Mars, they would not arrive alone. They would carry with them their earthly microbes. Trillions of them.

There is a real risk that some of these microbes could find their way onto the surface of Mars and, in doing so, confuse perhaps irreversibly so the search for Martian life. This is because we wouldn't be able to distinguish indigenous life from the microbes we'd brought with us. Our presence on Mars could jeopardise one of our main reasons for being there the search for life.

Furthermore, there is no one way of knowing how our microbes may react with the vulnerable Martian ecosystem. In Cosmos, the late Carl Sagan wrote, If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes the preservation of that life must, I think, supersede any other possible use of Mars.

Of course, one easy way to minimise the risk of contamination is to send robots to Mars instead of humans the second argument against a manned trip to Mars.

Robots have several inherent advantages. They are much cheaper than humans because they don't require a vast support infrastructure to provide things like water, food and breathable air. They are immune to the risks of cosmic radiation and other dangers inherent to space travel. And they won't get bored.

Over the last 40 years, the international space community has an extraordinary legacy of robotic missions to Mars.

A few weeks ago, the European Space agency's Mars Express identified liquid water buried in the south polar region of Mars.

The Curiosity Rover recently celebrated its sixth birthday with the discovery of organic molecules and methane variations in the atmosphere both positive signals of life.

And while most of its targets are chosen by humans, Curiosity also uses artificial intelligence to autonomously analyse images and choose targets for its laser detection system.

With the rapid pace of progress in robotics and AI, it is likely that the effectiveness of these non-human explorers will only increase. Robots on Mars will be to able to carry out increasingly complex scientific research, accessing craters and canyons that humans might find too difficult to reach and perhaps even drilling for Martian microbes.

The most polarising issue in the Mars debate is arguably the tension between those dreaming of a second home and those prioritising the one we have now.

Before his death, Stephen Hawking made the bleak prediction that humanity only had 100 years left on Earth.

Faced with a growing list of threats climate change, overpopulation, nuclear war Hawking believed that we had reached "the point of no return" and had no choice as a species but to become multi-planetary starting with the colonisation of Mars.

Elon Musk has also said on numerous occasions that we need a backup planet should something apocalyptic like an asteroid collision destroy Earth.

However, not everyone agrees. In the Pew survey mentioned earlier, a majority of US adults believed that Nasas number one priority should be fixing problems on Earth. The billions if not trillions of dollars needed to colonise Mars could, for example, be better spent investing in renewable forms of energy to address climate change or strengthening our planetary defences against asteroid collisions.

And of course, if we have not figured out how to deal with problems of our own making here on Earth, there is no guarantee that the same fate would not befall Mars colonists.

Furthermore, if something truly horrible were to happen on Earth, its not clear Mars would actually be an effective salvation. Giant underground bunkers on Earth, for example, could protect more people, more easily than a colony on Mars.

And in the event of apocalyptic scenario, it is possible that the conditions on Earth however horrific may still be more hospitable than the Martian wasteland. Let's not forget that Mars has next to no atmosphere, only one third gravity and is exposed to surface radiation approximately 100 times greater than on Earth.

The arguments above show that we are perhaps not ready to go to Mars at least, not today.

We need to first update our policies on planetary protection and apply them fairly to both public and private sector entities. We need to understand humans' unique role in exploration, beyond robots. And we can't lose sight of challenges on Earth, nor use the promise of Mars as an opportunity to deflect responsibility from Earth.

But for me, the issue comes down to timing. The technology will not be ready to send a human to Mars for at least another 10, perhaps even 15 years. This is a good thing. We should use this time carefully to make sure that, by the time we can go to Mars, we really should.

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The case against Mars colonisation | Mars | The Guardian

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Companies have until February 19 of next year to come up with a concept that can sustain life support systems, conduct research and support exploration and colonization on Mars

Author of the article:

Publishing date:

There hasnt been a man on the moon in almost 50 years but NASA has revealed a new plan that, if successful, could see human beings live on the Moon long-term in the near future.

Along with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the space agency put out a request on Friday, November 19 to American companies to pitch concept designs of a fission surface power system as part of its Artemis programme to put people back on the Moon, and eventually, Mars.

The hope is to design a reactor that could be launched and running on the Moons surface within the decade. And, if all goes well, astronauts could eventually spend up to two months at a time living on the Moon, using it as a jumping-off point for missions further into the solar system..

Fission surface power in conjunction with solar cells, batteries, and fuel cells can provide the power to operate rovers, conduct experiments, and use the Moons resources to produce water, propellant, and other supplies for life support, NASA said.

The agencys call for proposals includes some ideas of what a potential reactor could look like. For now, the system would have to be small and lightweight, easily transportable, and be able to generate up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power, enough to cater to the electricity demands of several average households.

The power would be used to run life support systems, charge lunar rovers, landers and conduct research.

On top of it all, the reactor would have to be fully autonomous. It cannot rely on any external power or robotic support, nor astronaut involvement for system startup, shutdown, operation, or maintenance, NASA stated .

In the future, the systems would need to be able to produce at least 40 kilowatts of energy, enough to power approximately 30 households for up to 10 years, according to NASA.

As a result, the produced energy should be able to sustain a lunar presence and also support exploration and potential colonization of Mars.

Companies interested in submitting a pitch have until February 19, 2022, the brief states, after which NASA and DOE will select the ones that look most promising and help develop them over the next year.

The feedback and enthusiasm we continue to see for space nuclear power systems has been very exciting, and understandably so,says senior engineer Sebastian Corbisiero, the Fission Surface Power Project lead at the DOEs Idaho National Laboratory in the press brief.

Providing a reliable, high-power system on the Moon is a vital next step in human space exploration, and achieving it is within our grasp.

The announcement comes after NASA to launch DART, a SpaceX rocket that will crash into an asteroid at high speed to deflect it away from Earth, as its first-of-its-kind planetary defence, Tuesday night.

For tonights test, DART will target an asteroid whose size is a tiny fraction of the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and most of the planets animal species. It is not on a path that will cause it to hit Earth in the foreseeable future.

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NASA puts out call to U.S. industry partners to design a nuclear reactor to run on the Moon - National Post

Mars colonization architecture proposing no return vehicles

Mars to Stay missions propose astronauts sent to Mars for the first time should intend to stay. Unused emergency return vehicles would be recycled into settlement construction as soon as the habitability of Mars becomes evident to the initial pioneers. Mars to Stay missions are advocated both to reduce cost and to ensure permanent settlement of Mars. Among many notable Mars to Stay advocates, former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin has been particularly outspoken, suggesting in numerous forums "Forget the Moon, Lets Head to Mars!"[1] and, in June 2013, Aldrin promoted a crewed mission "to homestead Mars and become a two-planet species".[2] In August 2015, Aldrin, in association with the Florida Institute of Technology, presented a "master plan", for NASA consideration, for astronauts, with a "tour of duty of ten years", to colonize Mars before the year 2040.[3] The Mars Underground, Mars Homestead Project / Mars Foundation, Mars One (defunct in 2019), and Mars Artists Community advocacy groups and business organizations have also adopted Mars to Stay policy initiatives.[4]

The earliest formal outline of a Mars to Stay mission architecture was given at the Case for Mars VI Workshop in 1996, during a presentation by George Herbert titled "One Way to Mars".[5]

Since returning the astronauts from the surface of Mars is one of the most difficult parts of a Mars mission, the idea of a one-way trip to Mars has been proposed several times. Space activist Bruce Mackenzie, for example, proposed a one-way trip to Mars in a presentation "One Way to Mars a Permanent Settlement on the First Mission" at the 1998 International Space Development Conference,[6] arguing that since the mission could be done with less difficulty and expense if the astronauts were not required to return to Earth, the first mission to Mars should be a settlement, not a visit.

Paul Davies, writing in the New York Times in 2004, made similar arguments.[7] Under Davies' plan, an initial colony of four astronauts equipped with a small nuclear reactor and a couple of rover vehicles would make their own oxygen, grow food, and even initiate building projects using local raw materials. Supplemented by food shipments, medical supplies, and replacement gadgets from Earth, the colony would be indefinitely sustained.

Under Mars to Stay mission architectures, the first humans to travel to Mars would typically be in six-member teams. After this initial landing, subsequent missions would raise the number of persons on Mars to 30, thereby beginning a Martian settlement. Since the Martian surface offers some of the natural resources and elements necessary to sustain a robust, mature, industrialized human settlement[8]unlike, for example the Moon[9]a permanent Martian settlement is thought to be the most effective way to ensure that humanity becomes a space-faring, multi-planet species.[10]

A Mars to Stay mission following Aldrin's proposal would enlist astronauts in the following timeline:[11]

As Aldrin has said, "who knows what advances will have taken place. The first generation can retire there, or maybe we can bring them back."[11]

An article by Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University) and Paul Davies (Arizona State University) from the book The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet[12] highlights their mission plans as:

The astronauts would be sent supplies from Earth regularly. This proposal was picked up for discussion in a number of public sources.[13]

A proposal for a one-way human settlement mission to Mars was put forward in 2012 by the Mars One, a private spaceflight project led by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp to establish a permanent human colony on Mars.[14]Mars One was a Dutch not-for-profit foundation, a Stichting.[15][16]The proposal was to send a communication satellite and pathfinder lander to the planet by 2018 and, after several stages, land four humans on Mars for permanent settlement in 2027.[17] A new set of four astronauts would then arrive every two years.[18] 200,000 applications were started; about 2,500 were complete enough for consideration, from which one hundred applicants were chosen. Further selections were planned to narrow this down to six groups of four before training began in 2016.[19][needs update] It was hoped that a reality television show, participant fees, and donations would generate the funding for the project.[20]

The project was criticized by experts as a 'scam'[21][22][23][24][25] and as 'delusional'.[26][27][20][28] On January 15, 2019, a court decision was settled to liquidate the organization, sending it into bankruptcy administration.[29][30]

In response to feedback following the EarthLight Institute's "Mars Colony 2030" project at NewSpace 2012 and the announcement of Mars One, Eric Machmer proposed conjunction-class missions be planned with a bias to stay (if low gravity, radiation, and other factors present no pressing health issues),[31][32] so that, if at the end of each 550-day period during a conjunction-class launch window no adverse health effects were observed, settlers would continue research and construction through another 550-day period. In the meantime, additional crews and supplies would continue to arrive, starting their own 550-day evaluation periods. Health tests would be repeated during subsequent 550-day periods until the viability of human life on Mars was proven. Once settlers determine that humans can live on Mars without negative health effects, emergency return vehicles would be recycled into permanent research bases.

Initial explorers leave equipment in orbit and at landing zones scattered considerable distances from the main settlement. Subsequent missions therefore are assumed to become easier and safer to undertake, with the likelihood of back-up equipment being present if accidents in transit or landing occur.

Large subsurface, pressurized habitats would be the first step toward human settlement; as Dr. Robert Zubrin suggests in the first chapter of his book Mars Direct, these structures can be built as Roman-style atria in mountainsides or underground with easily produced Martian brick. During and after this initial phase of habitat construction, hard-plastic radiation and abrasion-resistant geodesic domes could be deployed on the surface for eventual habitation and crop growth. Nascent industry would begin using indigenous resources: the manufacture of plastics, ceramics and glass could be easily achieved.

The longer-term work of terraforming Mars requires an initial phase of global warming to release atmosphere from the Martian regolith and to create a water-cycle. Three methods of global warming are described by Zubrin, who suggests they are best deployed in tandem: orbital mirrors to heat the surface; factories on the ground to pump halocarbons into the atmosphere; and the seeding of bacteria that can metabolize water, nitrogen and carbon to produce ammonia and methane (these gases would aid in global warming). While the work of terraforming Mars is on-going, robust settlement of Mars would continue.

Zubrin, in his 1996 book (revised 2011) The Case for Mars, acknowledges any Martian colony will be partially Earth-dependent for centuries. However, Zubrin suggests Mars may be profitable for two reasons. First, it may contain concentrated supplies of metals equal to or of greater value than silver, which have not been subjected to millennia of human scavenging; it is suggested such ores may be sold on Earth for profit. Secondly, the concentration of deuteriuman extremely expensive but essential fuel for the as-yet non-existent nuclear fusion power industryis five times greater on Mars. Humans emigrating to Mars, under this paradigm, are presumed to have an industry; it is assumed the planet will be a magnet for settlers as wage costs will be high. Because of the labor shortage on Mars and its subsequent high pay-scale, Martian civilization and the value placed upon each individual's productivity is proposed as a future engine of both technological and social advancement.[citation needed]

In the fifth chapter of "Mars Direct", Zubrin addresses the idea that radiation and zero-gravity are unduly hazardous. He claims cancer rates do increase for astronauts who have spent extensive time in space, but only marginally. Similarly, while zero-gravity presents challenges, near total recovery of musculature and immune system vitality is presumed by all Mars to Stay mission plans once settlers are on the Martian surface. Several experiments, such as the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, have been proposed to test this hypothetical assumption, but until humans have lived in Martian gravity conditions (38% of Earth's), human long-term viability in such low gravity will remain only a working assumption. Back-contaminationhumans acquiring and spreading hypothetical Martian virusesis described as "just plain nuts", because there are no host organisms on Mars for disease organisms to have evolved.

In the same chapter, Zubrin rejects suggestions the Moon should be used as waypoint to Mars or as a preliminary training area. "It is ultimately much easier to journey to Mars from low Earth orbit than from the Moon and using the latter as a staging point is a pointless diversion of resources." While the Moon may superficially appear a good place to perfect Mars exploration and habitation techniques, the two bodies are radically different. The Moon has no atmosphere, no analogous geology and a much greater temperature range and rotational period of illumination. It is argued Antarctica, deserts of Earth, and precisely controlled chilled vacuum chambers on easily accessible NASA centers on Earth provide much better training grounds at lesser cost.

"Should the United States space program send a mission to Mars, those astronauts should be prepared to stay there," said Lunar astronaut Buzz Aldrin during an interview on "Mars to Stay" initiative.[33] The time and expense required to send astronauts to Mars, argues Aldrin, "warrants more than a brief sojourn, so those who are on board should think of themselves as pioneers. Like the Pilgrims who came to the New World or the families who headed to the Wild West, they should not plan on coming back home." The Moon is a shorter trip of two or three days, but according to Mars advocates it offers virtually no potential for independent settlements. Studies have found that Mars, on the other hand, has vast reserves of frozen water, all of the basic elements, and more closely mimics both gravitational (roughly 13 of Earth's while the moon is 16) and illumination conditions on Earth. "It is easier to subsist, to provide the support needed for people there than on the Moon." In an interview with reporters, Aldrin said Mars offers greater potential than Earth's satellite as a place for habitation:

If we are going to put a few people down there and ensure their appropriate safety, would you then go through all that trouble and then bring them back immediately, after a year, a year and a half? ... They need to go there more with the psychology of knowing that you are a pioneering settler and you don't look forward to go back home again after a couple of years.[34]

A comprehensive statement of a rationale for "Mars to Stay" was laid out by Buzz Aldrin in a May 2009 Popular Mechanics article, as follows:

The agency's current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the Moon by 2020a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago. Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA's current lunar plan is a detour. It will derail our Mars effort, siphoning off money and engineering talent for the next two decades. If we aspire to a long-term human presence on Marsand I believe that should be our overarching goal for the foreseeable futurewe must drastically change our focus. Our purely exploratory efforts should aim higher than a place we've already set foot on six times. In recent years my philosophy on colonizing Mars has evolved. I now believe that human visitors to the Red Planet should commit to staying there permanently. One-way tickets to Mars will make the missions technically easier and less expensive and get us there sooner. More importantly, they will ensure that our Martian outpost steadily grows as more homesteaders arrive. Instead of explorers, one-way Mars travelers will be 21st-century pilgrims, pioneering a new way of life. It will take a special kind of person. Instead of the traditional pilot/scientist/engineer, Martian homesteaders will be selected more for their personalitiesflexible, inventive and determined in the face of unpredictability. In short, survivors.[35]

The Mars Artists Community has adopted Mars to Stay as their primary policy initiative.[36] During a 2009 public hearing of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee at which Dr. Robert Zubrin presented a summary of the arguments in his book The Case for Mars, dozens of placards reading "Mars Direct Cowards Return to the Moon" were placed throughout the Carnegie Institute.[37] The passionate uproar among space exploration advocatesboth favorable and criticalresulted in the Mars Artists Community creating several dozen more designs, with such slogans as, "Traitors Return to Earth" and "What Would Zheng He Do?"

In October 2009, Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle wrote of "Mars to Stay" as perhaps the only program that can revitalize the United States' space program:

What if NASA could land astronauts on Mars in a decade, for not ridiculously more money than the $10 billion the agency spends annually on human spaceflight? It's possible ... relieving NASA of the need to send fuel and rocketry to blast humans off the Martian surface, which has slightly more than twice the gravity of the moon, would actually reduce costs by about a factor of 10, by some estimates.[38]

Hard Science Fiction writer Mike Brotherton has found "Mars to Stay" appealing for both economic and safety reasons, but more emphatically, as a fulfillment of the ultimate mandate by which "our manned space program is sold, at least philosophically and long-term, as a step to colonizing other worlds". Two-thirds of the respondents to a poll on his website expressed interest in a one-way ticket to Mars "if mission parameters are well-defined" (not suicidal).[39]

In June 2010, Buzz Aldrin gave an interview to Vanity Fair in which he restated "Mars to Stay":

Did the Pilgrims on the Mayflower sit around Plymouth Rock waiting for a return trip? They came here to settle. And that's what we should be doing on Mars. When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you're there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustaining environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn't be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you're there.[40]

An article by Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University) and Paul Davies (Arizona State University) from the book The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet[12] summarizes their rationale for Mars to Stay:

[Mars to stay] would obviate the need for years of rehabilitation for returning astronauts, which would not be an issue if the astronauts were to remain in the low-gravity environment of Mars. We envision that Mars exploration would begin and proceed for a long time on the basis of outbound journeys only.[12]

In November 2010, Keith Olbermann started an interview with Derrick Pitts, Planetarium Director at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, by quoting from the Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies article, saying, "The Astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony." In response to Olbermann's statement that "the authors claim a one-way ticket to Mars is no more outlandish than a one-way ticket to America was in 1620", Pitts defends Mars to Stay initiatives by saying "they begin to open the doors in a way that haven't been opened before".[41]

In a January 2011 interview, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis expressed his preference for Mars to Stay research settlements:

Privately funded missions are the only way to go to Mars with humans because I think the best way to go is on "one-way" colonization flights and no government will likely sanction such a risk. The timing for this could well be within the next 20 years. It will fall within the hands of a small group of tech billionaires who view such missions as the way to leave their mark on humanity.[42]

In March 2011, Apollo 14 pilot Edgar Mitchell and Apollo 17's geologist Harrison Schmitt, among other noted Mars exploration advocates published an anthology of Mars to Stay architectures titled, A One Way Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet". From the publisher's review:

Answers are provided by a veritable who's who of the top experts in the world. And what would it be like to live on Mars? What dangers would they face? Learn first hand, in the final, visionary chapter about life in a Martian colony, and the adventures of a young woman, Aurora, who is born on Mars. Exploration, discovery, and journeys into the unknown are part of the human spirit. Colonizing the cosmos is our destiny. The Greatest Adventure in the History of Humanity awaits us. Onward to Mars![43]

August 2011, Professor Paul Davies gave a plenary address to the opening session of the 14th Annual International Mars Society Convention on cost-effective human mission plans for Mars titled "One-Way Mission to Mars".[44]

"Mars to Stay" has been explicitly proposed by two op-ed pieces in the New York Times.[7][45]

Following a similar line of argument to Buzz Aldrin, Lawrence Krauss asks in an op-ed, "Why are we so interested in bringing the Mars astronauts home again?"[45] While the idea of sending astronauts aloft never to return may be jarring upon first hearing, the rationale for one-way exploration and settlement trips has both historical and practical roots. For example, colonists and pilgrims seldom set off to the New World with the expectation of a return trip. As Lawrence Krauss writes, "To boldly go where no one has gone before does not require coming home again."

If it sounds unrealistic to suggest that astronauts would be willing to leave home never to return ... consider the results of several informal surveys I and several colleagues have conducted recently. One of my peers in Arizona recently accompanied a group of scientists and engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a geological survey. He asked how many would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space. Every member of the group raised their hand.[45]

Additional immediate and pragmatic reasons to consider one-way human space exploration missions are explored by Krauss. Since much of the cost of a voyage to Mars will be spent on returning to Earth, if the fuel for the return is carried on board, this greatly increases the mission mass requirement that in turn requires even more fuel. According to Krauss, "Human space travel is so expensive and so dangerous ... we are going to need novel, even extreme solutions if we really want to expand the range of human civilization beyond our own planet." Delivering food and supplies to pioneers via uncrewed spacecraft is less expensive than designing an immediate return trip.

In an earlier 2004 op-ed for the New York Times, Paul Davies says motivation for the less expensive, permanent "one-way to stay option" arises from a theme common in "Mars to Stay" advocacy: "Mars is one of the few accessible places beyond Earth that could have sustained life [...and] alone among our sister planets, it is able to support a permanent human presence."[7]

Why is going to Mars so expensive? ... It takes a lot of fuel to blast off Mars and get back home. If the propellant has to be transported there from Earth, costs of a launching soar.Without some radical improvements in technology, the prospects for sending astronauts on a round-trip to Mars any time soon are slim, whatever the presidential rhetoric. What's more, the president's suggestion of using the Moon as a base a place to assemble equipment and produce fuel for a Mars mission less expensively has the potential to turn into a costly sideshow. There is, however, an obvious way to slash the costs and bring Mars within reach of early human exploration. The answer lies with a one-way mission.[7]

Davies argues that since "some people gleefully dice with death in the name of sport or adventure [and since] dangerous occupations that reduce life expectancy through exposure to hazardous conditions or substances are commonplace", we ought to not find the risks involved in a Mars to Stay architecture unusual. "A century ago, explorers set out to trek across Antarctica in the full knowledge that they could die in the process, and that even if they succeeded their health[31] might be irreversibly harmed. Yet governments and scientific societies were willing sponsors of these enterprises." Davies then asks, "Why should it be different today?"[7]

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