Silica on a Mars Volcano Tells of Wet and Cozy Past
This volcanic cone in the Nili Patera caldera on Mars has hydrothermal mineral deposits on the southern flanks and nearby terrains. Two of the largest deposits are marked by arrows, and the entire field of light-toned material on the left of the cone is hydrothermal deposits. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL/Brown Univ.
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October 31, 2010
PASADENA, Calif. -- Light-colored mounds of a mineral deposited on a volcanic cone more than three billion years ago may preserve evidence of one of the most recent habitable microenvironments on Mars.
Observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enabled researchers to identify the mineral as hydrated silica and to see its volcanic context. The mounds' composition and their location on the flanks of a volcanic cone provide the best evidence yet found on Mars for an intact deposit from a hydrothermal environment -- a steam fumarole, or hot spring. Such environments may have provided habitats for some of Earth's earliest life forms.
"The heat and water required to create this deposit probably made this a habitable zone," said J.R. Skok of Brown University, Providence, R.I., lead author of a paper about these findings published online today by Nature Geoscience. "If life did exist there, this would be a promising type of deposit to entomb evidence of it -- a microbial mortuary."
No studies have yet determined whether Mars has ever supported life. The new results add to accumulating evidence that, at some times and in some places, Mars has had favorable environments for microbial life. This specific place would have been habitable when most of Mars was already dry and cold. Concentrations of hydrated silica have been identified on Mars previously, including a nearly pure patch found by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in 2007. However, none of those earlier findings were in such an intact setting as this one, and the setting adds evidence about the origin.
Skok said, "You have spectacular context for this deposit. It's right on the flank of a volcano. The setting remains essentially the same as it was when the silica was deposited."
The small cone rises about 100 meters (100 yards) from the floor of a shallow bowl named Nili Patera. The patera, which is the floor of a volcanic caldera, spans about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the Syrtis Major volcanic region of equatorial Mars. Before the cone formed, free-flowing lava blanketed nearby plains. The collapse of an underground magma chamber from which lava had emanated created the bowl. Subsequent lava flows, still with a runny texture, coated the floor of Nili Patera. The cone grew from even later flows, apparently after evolution of the underground magma had thickened its texture so that the erupted lava would mound up.
"We can read a series of chapters in this history book and know that the cone grew from the last gasp of a giant volcanic system," said John Mustard, Skok's thesis advisor at Brown and a co-author of the paper. "The cooling and solidification of most of the magma concentrated its silica and water content."
Observations by cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed patches of bright deposits near the summit of the cone, fanning down its flank, and on flatter ground in the vicinity. The Brown researchers partnered with Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., to analyze the bright exposures with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument on the orbiter.
Silica can be dissolved, transported and concentrated by hot water or steam. Hydrated silica identified by the spectrometer in uphill locations -- confirmed by stereo imaging -- indicates that hot springs or fumaroles fed by underground heating created these deposits. Silica deposits around hydrothermal vents in Iceland are among the best parallels on Earth.
Murchie said, "The habitable zone would have been within and alongside the conduits carrying the heated water." The volcanic activity that built the cone in Nili Patera appears to have happened more recently than the 3.7-billion-year or greater age of Mars' potentially habitable early wet environments recorded in clay minerals identified from orbit.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory provided and operates CRISM, one of six instruments on the orbiter. For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro.
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Richard Lewis 401-863-3766
Brown University, Providence, R.I.
richard_lewis@brown.edu
Geoffrey Brown 240-228-5618
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
geoffrey.brown@jhuapl.edu
2010-361
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
A Good Mix-Genetic Engineering And Space Travel
A Good Mix: Genetic Engineering and Space Exploration
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November 2nd, 2010, 07:35 GMT| By Tudor Vieru
Flying people to the Moon, Mars and beyond may become a lot easier in the near future, if only agencies such as NASA would rely more on genetic engineering to meet this objective.
In fact, according to a leading expert in the field, manned space exploration could accelerate in leaps and bounds, and reach destinations that are currently thought of as impossible to get to.
More genetic screening and genetic engineering are now being touted as fail-safe mechanisms of improving humankind's chances of reaching the stars. The announcement was made in Moffett Field, California, on October 30.
The speaker was expert J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in genomics studies, and the biologist who founded the J. Craig Venter Institute. The research organization created the first synthetic organism a few months ago.
One of Venter's main ideas was that screening for individuals that may be better genetically equipped to survive a mission to space would make the entire selection process cheaper and easier, and also help improve the efficiency of future missions.
“I think this could change the shape of what NASA does, if you make the commitment to do it,” explained the researcher at the conference, quoted by Space.
Venter was also in charge of an international team of scientists, that decoded the entire human genome some 10 years ago, Space reports. The meeting took place at the NASA Ames Research Center.
There were in fact two meetings held at the Center, one sponsored by NASA and dealing with synthetic biology, and the other by the Space Studies Institute, which was called Space Manufacturing 14: Critical Technologies for Space Settlement.
One of the most interesting ideas that the expert showcased was that of synthetic astronauts, people whose genomes would be tinkered with so that they express a host of abilities rarely found in other individuals.
The issue here is not as much as giving an individual an ability, but collecting a large number of traits, and putting them all together in a man or woman.
Venter explains that, for instance, future astronauts could be engineered to have better gut flora, less harmful bacteria in sweat, or produce no sweat at all. Their DNA could also be tweaked so that it can repair itself after being exposed to cosmic radiation.
But even the biologist admits that the work on this is still in its earliest stages. A few more years will have to pass before experts can consider there ideas, and weigh their moral and ethical implications.
“I can't think of an organization that could benefit from synthetic genomics more than NASA,” Venter concluded in his speech.
Follow the editor on Twitter @tudorvieru
Adjust text size:
November 2nd, 2010, 07:35 GMT| By Tudor Vieru
Flying people to the Moon, Mars and beyond may become a lot easier in the near future, if only agencies such as NASA would rely more on genetic engineering to meet this objective.
In fact, according to a leading expert in the field, manned space exploration could accelerate in leaps and bounds, and reach destinations that are currently thought of as impossible to get to.
More genetic screening and genetic engineering are now being touted as fail-safe mechanisms of improving humankind's chances of reaching the stars. The announcement was made in Moffett Field, California, on October 30.
The speaker was expert J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in genomics studies, and the biologist who founded the J. Craig Venter Institute. The research organization created the first synthetic organism a few months ago.
One of Venter's main ideas was that screening for individuals that may be better genetically equipped to survive a mission to space would make the entire selection process cheaper and easier, and also help improve the efficiency of future missions.
“I think this could change the shape of what NASA does, if you make the commitment to do it,” explained the researcher at the conference, quoted by Space.
Venter was also in charge of an international team of scientists, that decoded the entire human genome some 10 years ago, Space reports. The meeting took place at the NASA Ames Research Center.
There were in fact two meetings held at the Center, one sponsored by NASA and dealing with synthetic biology, and the other by the Space Studies Institute, which was called Space Manufacturing 14: Critical Technologies for Space Settlement.
One of the most interesting ideas that the expert showcased was that of synthetic astronauts, people whose genomes would be tinkered with so that they express a host of abilities rarely found in other individuals.
The issue here is not as much as giving an individual an ability, but collecting a large number of traits, and putting them all together in a man or woman.
Venter explains that, for instance, future astronauts could be engineered to have better gut flora, less harmful bacteria in sweat, or produce no sweat at all. Their DNA could also be tweaked so that it can repair itself after being exposed to cosmic radiation.
But even the biologist admits that the work on this is still in its earliest stages. A few more years will have to pass before experts can consider there ideas, and weigh their moral and ethical implications.
“I can't think of an organization that could benefit from synthetic genomics more than NASA,” Venter concluded in his speech.
Follow the editor on Twitter @tudorvieru
Monday, November 1, 2010
Trail Blazing Mars-The Road To Getting A Manned Mars Landing A Stated NASA Goal
Review: Trailblazing Mars
by Jeff Foust
Monday, November 1, 2010
Comments (0)
Trailblazing Mars: NASA’s Next Giant Leap
by Pat Duggins
University Press of Florida, 2010
hardcover, 224 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-8130-3518-5
US$24.95
One often-overlooked element of the NASA authorization legislation signed into law by President Obama three weeks ago is its formal endorsement of human exploration of Mars. “A long term objective for human exploration of space should be the eventual international exploration of Mars,” the bill states, making clear the destination while begin deliberately vague about the timeline. Obama, in his April 15th speech, spoke of a human mission to orbit Mars in the mid-2030s, followed at some point soon after by a Mars landing. Talk of human Mars exploration is nothing new, of course: the Vision for Space Exploration, for example, talked of going to “Moon, Mars, and beyond”, but its focus had been on the first of those three destinations. Now, at the very least, the emphasis on sending humans to Mars is more explicit. But is any more realistic?
Given the book’s subtitle and its timing, one might think that the book covers the recent shift in direction in space policy towards human Mars exploration. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
What technology, planning, and other preparation needed to be able to successfully mount human expeditions to the Red Planet is at the heart of Trailblazing Mars. Pat Duggins, a longtime National Public Radio reporter who covered the space program from Florida, digs through the history of space exploration as well as the various issues associated with the exploration of Mars. He takes on a broad range of issues in a relatively slender book, from the experience of building and working on the ISS to the biological and psychological lessons learned from the Biosphere 2 project in the early 1990s. He also examines some of the criticism for human Mars exploration from those who think such exploration is better done by robots and/or think NASA’s priorities should be focused elsewhere, such as (in the opinion of Gregg Easterbrook) protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts.
Given the book’s subtitle (“NASA’s Next Giant Leap”) and its timing, one might think that the book covers the shift in direction in space policy towards human Mars exploration that came earlier this year. Unfortunately, that’s not the case: there’s no mention of that change in policy, nor of the often vociferous reaction to it in Congress and the media, in the book. The Augustine Committee’s 2009 study of the future of human spaceflight is mentioned in the book, but only for several pages, and only briefly mentioning the options the committee published in its final report or the fact that it concluded that Mars “is the ultimate destination for human exploration of the inner solar system” if not necessarily the best next destination. That omission is understandable given the long lead times in book publishing, but still seems like a missed opportunity to examine this change in direction.
Another issue with Trailblazing Mars is that at times it appears to be a bit haphazard: a collection of anecdotes and profiles that are only tangentially related, at best, to human exploration of Mars. The chapter titled “The Shuttle’s Long Good-Bye”, for example, starts with the a discussion about the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle (including the book’s only detailed discussion of the Augustine Committee deliberations), but then veers off into a history of shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Another chapter is primarily a profile of veteran astronaut Jerry Ross, including his genealogical research that linked him to an ancestor that prospected for gold in Wyoming in the 1870s—something that Duggins tries to make relevant by comparing the hostile living environments of Wyoming in winter with Mars. That disjointed nature, however, is perhaps a reflection of the planning for such exploration in the first place: a distant goal with little near-term focus, at least before now. Whether the future will see more focused, deliberate progress towards that goal will be one of the key issues for NASA in the coming decade and beyond.
Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site and the Space Politics and NewSpace Journal (formerly Personal Spaceflight) weblogs. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone, and do not represent the official positions of any organization or company, including the Futron Corporation, the author’s employer.
Follow the discussion
Comments
by Jeff Foust
Monday, November 1, 2010
Comments (0)
Trailblazing Mars: NASA’s Next Giant Leap
by Pat Duggins
University Press of Florida, 2010
hardcover, 224 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-8130-3518-5
US$24.95
One often-overlooked element of the NASA authorization legislation signed into law by President Obama three weeks ago is its formal endorsement of human exploration of Mars. “A long term objective for human exploration of space should be the eventual international exploration of Mars,” the bill states, making clear the destination while begin deliberately vague about the timeline. Obama, in his April 15th speech, spoke of a human mission to orbit Mars in the mid-2030s, followed at some point soon after by a Mars landing. Talk of human Mars exploration is nothing new, of course: the Vision for Space Exploration, for example, talked of going to “Moon, Mars, and beyond”, but its focus had been on the first of those three destinations. Now, at the very least, the emphasis on sending humans to Mars is more explicit. But is any more realistic?
Given the book’s subtitle and its timing, one might think that the book covers the recent shift in direction in space policy towards human Mars exploration. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
What technology, planning, and other preparation needed to be able to successfully mount human expeditions to the Red Planet is at the heart of Trailblazing Mars. Pat Duggins, a longtime National Public Radio reporter who covered the space program from Florida, digs through the history of space exploration as well as the various issues associated with the exploration of Mars. He takes on a broad range of issues in a relatively slender book, from the experience of building and working on the ISS to the biological and psychological lessons learned from the Biosphere 2 project in the early 1990s. He also examines some of the criticism for human Mars exploration from those who think such exploration is better done by robots and/or think NASA’s priorities should be focused elsewhere, such as (in the opinion of Gregg Easterbrook) protecting the Earth from asteroid impacts.
Given the book’s subtitle (“NASA’s Next Giant Leap”) and its timing, one might think that the book covers the shift in direction in space policy towards human Mars exploration that came earlier this year. Unfortunately, that’s not the case: there’s no mention of that change in policy, nor of the often vociferous reaction to it in Congress and the media, in the book. The Augustine Committee’s 2009 study of the future of human spaceflight is mentioned in the book, but only for several pages, and only briefly mentioning the options the committee published in its final report or the fact that it concluded that Mars “is the ultimate destination for human exploration of the inner solar system” if not necessarily the best next destination. That omission is understandable given the long lead times in book publishing, but still seems like a missed opportunity to examine this change in direction.
Another issue with Trailblazing Mars is that at times it appears to be a bit haphazard: a collection of anecdotes and profiles that are only tangentially related, at best, to human exploration of Mars. The chapter titled “The Shuttle’s Long Good-Bye”, for example, starts with the a discussion about the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle (including the book’s only detailed discussion of the Augustine Committee deliberations), but then veers off into a history of shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Another chapter is primarily a profile of veteran astronaut Jerry Ross, including his genealogical research that linked him to an ancestor that prospected for gold in Wyoming in the 1870s—something that Duggins tries to make relevant by comparing the hostile living environments of Wyoming in winter with Mars. That disjointed nature, however, is perhaps a reflection of the planning for such exploration in the first place: a distant goal with little near-term focus, at least before now. Whether the future will see more focused, deliberate progress towards that goal will be one of the key issues for NASA in the coming decade and beyond.
Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site and the Space Politics and NewSpace Journal (formerly Personal Spaceflight) weblogs. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone, and do not represent the official positions of any organization or company, including the Futron Corporation, the author’s employer.
Follow the discussion
Comments
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Is NASA Covering Up 100 Year Starship?
IR & SPACE
Is NASA Covering Up the 100-Year Starship?
By John Brandon
Published October 29, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Print Email Share Comments (638) Text Size
Paramount
NASA appears to be debating a way to permanently colonize another planet, boldly going where no one has ever gone -- and where no one could come back, some fear.
A NASA official may have made a 35-million-mile slip of the tongue.
The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.
There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.
The 100-year ship would leave Earth with the intention of colonizing a planet, but it would likely be a one-way trip because of the time it takes to travel 35 million miles. That’s a daunting prospect, partly because of the ethical dilemma, and partly because it may be the only recourse.
"What psychological challenges should we anticipate in those who volunteer in good faith and with great courage, yet find themselves confronting misgivings or loneliness or feelings of rage or beset with mental illness?" asked Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
A NASA spacecraft has been beaming to Earth incredibly detailed pictures of the surface of Mars. And the beautiful colors and rich textures of the red planet will shock you.
RELATED LINKS
The Psychology of Leaving Earth Behind Forever
The Race to the Red Planet
Buzz Aldrin Dreams of Mars
Horror Stories From Space: 10 Ways Life in Orbit Can Be Rough
More Leaks Plague Space Shuttle, Delaying Launch
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There's one other bizarre aspect to the plan: Humans would have to be “adapted” to the alien world, Worden said, instead of figuring out a way to make the planet more hospitable to them.
“The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” Worden said during his talk. “Twenty years ago you whispered that in dark bars and got fired.” (Worden actually was fired, he confessed during the talk, under the Bush administration.)
Since that revelation, hundreds of news reports about the program have theorized that the substantial budget indicates the Hundred Year Starship is a dramatic shift for the stalled space program, not just a research project; others suggest it is a serious attempt to find a way to Mars. And NASA? The space agency seems to be dodging all questions.
FoxNews.com first contacted NASA’s Ames Research Center last week and scheduled a call with Worden for Monday. The call was postponed to Wednesday. Late Wednesday the space agency postponed again, before finally canceling the interview, citing Worden’s busy schedule.
After a week and a half, DARPA issued a press release announcing the program -- but conveying no more information than in Worden's initial speech.
But what is the Hundred Year Starship? Some experts argue that any program that suggests putting humans into space for their entire life, or for multiple generations, is doomed from the start, since many people react negatively to the idea of leaving the planet and never returning. Others are more supportive, saying it is the only way to settle a space colony.
New exploration
Speculation about colonization takes many forms, and some of the freshest ideas sound a bit peculiar. Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, who wrote in the Journal of Cosmology recently, suggest sending four astronauts on a one-way mission who “establish their presence” and do not come back. The suggestion is to send supplies to them occasionally, but the risks are similar to what Columbus undertook to explore the new world. (That analogy is a bit suspect, however: Columbus was most famous for actually returning.)
Les Johnson, a well-respected science author, spoke to FoxNews.com and agreed with the plan: a one-way, hundred-year mission may be the only way to get to Mars or other planets.
The main issue has to do with a basic physics conundrum. In order to travel the great distance to Mars (about 35 million miles), a starship would need a tremendous amount of fuel. Yet fuel adds more weight -- in fact, every pound you add to a ship requires 4 pounds of fuel. The more fuel you add, the more you need simply to move the ship's bulk, making it impossible to go one-way to Mars, much less roundtrip.
Johnson said the only solution is a longer mission using some form of propulsion that has not even been invented yet, or is still untested. One is a massive solar sail, which captures energy from the sun. Another is a fusion reactor that generates power without any on-board fuel.
Dr. Chris DePree, who heads the Bradley Observatory, also helped fill in some gaps on a 100-year mission to another planet. “It seems like the only realistic way forward, if we really want to colonize the solar system, is to have one-way trips,” DePree told FoxNews.com. “It might be that technology improves, and the grandchildren of those first Martian colonists return to Earth.”
He also explained what “adapting humans” means: The suggestion sounds absurd, but science may actually have more luck developing new breathing apparatuses or using chemical injections to make humans able to live on a foreign world than developing technology for "terraforming" a planet.
As to the question of a one-way mission, DePree says the idea is not as hush-hush as you might expect. NASA doesn't intend for a suicide mission, he said, but rather is debating the idea that an astronaut may live out his or her natural life on another planet and never return to Earth. Johnson said there are astronauts who have already volunteered for one-way missions before, and it's not a ludicrous proposition.
Swirling controversy
Even with these explanations, there is still wild speculation about the program. Worden mentioned the idea of working with third-parties to help fund future missions. He said Larry Page, the Google founder, asked how much it would cost to fund the mission (the answer: about $10 billion). This begs the question: is NASA ready to leverage its work by enlisting private enterprises?
Some scientists have wondered how the 100-Year Starship would deal with the effects of long-term space travel. Johnson said that even after spending a few months in space, the wear and tear starts to show -- astronauts who have visited the Space Station often cannot walk for a few days. Johnson said muscle mass starts to decline and bone density decreases after prolonged periods in outer space.
Short of an official news release, one that spells out exactly how the starship program will proceed, many assume that the program is just in an early stage. Johnson said the funding level of just $1.1M sounds like it is simply for research.
Worden may have slipped by revealing the program, but -- as evidenced by NASA’s lack of cooperation -- it may be too early for any new revelations.
Print Email Share Comments (638)
Is NASA Covering Up the 100-Year Starship?
By John Brandon
Published October 29, 2010 | FoxNews.com
Print Email Share Comments (638) Text Size
Paramount
NASA appears to be debating a way to permanently colonize another planet, boldly going where no one has ever gone -- and where no one could come back, some fear.
A NASA official may have made a 35-million-mile slip of the tongue.
The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.
There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.
The 100-year ship would leave Earth with the intention of colonizing a planet, but it would likely be a one-way trip because of the time it takes to travel 35 million miles. That’s a daunting prospect, partly because of the ethical dilemma, and partly because it may be the only recourse.
"What psychological challenges should we anticipate in those who volunteer in good faith and with great courage, yet find themselves confronting misgivings or loneliness or feelings of rage or beset with mental illness?" asked Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team.
A NASA spacecraft has been beaming to Earth incredibly detailed pictures of the surface of Mars. And the beautiful colors and rich textures of the red planet will shock you.
RELATED LINKS
The Psychology of Leaving Earth Behind Forever
The Race to the Red Planet
Buzz Aldrin Dreams of Mars
Horror Stories From Space: 10 Ways Life in Orbit Can Be Rough
More Leaks Plague Space Shuttle, Delaying Launch
YOU MIGHT ALSO BE
INTERESTED IN
10 Most Overpriced Products You Should Avoid
Hoarders: Buried in Debt
Bomb Materials From Yemen Found on Way to Jewish Places of Worship in Chicago
The Kilogram Is No Longer Valid, U.S. Argues
NOW Defends O'Donnell After One Night Stand Story
There's one other bizarre aspect to the plan: Humans would have to be “adapted” to the alien world, Worden said, instead of figuring out a way to make the planet more hospitable to them.
“The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” Worden said during his talk. “Twenty years ago you whispered that in dark bars and got fired.” (Worden actually was fired, he confessed during the talk, under the Bush administration.)
Since that revelation, hundreds of news reports about the program have theorized that the substantial budget indicates the Hundred Year Starship is a dramatic shift for the stalled space program, not just a research project; others suggest it is a serious attempt to find a way to Mars. And NASA? The space agency seems to be dodging all questions.
FoxNews.com first contacted NASA’s Ames Research Center last week and scheduled a call with Worden for Monday. The call was postponed to Wednesday. Late Wednesday the space agency postponed again, before finally canceling the interview, citing Worden’s busy schedule.
After a week and a half, DARPA issued a press release announcing the program -- but conveying no more information than in Worden's initial speech.
But what is the Hundred Year Starship? Some experts argue that any program that suggests putting humans into space for their entire life, or for multiple generations, is doomed from the start, since many people react negatively to the idea of leaving the planet and never returning. Others are more supportive, saying it is the only way to settle a space colony.
New exploration
Speculation about colonization takes many forms, and some of the freshest ideas sound a bit peculiar. Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies, who wrote in the Journal of Cosmology recently, suggest sending four astronauts on a one-way mission who “establish their presence” and do not come back. The suggestion is to send supplies to them occasionally, but the risks are similar to what Columbus undertook to explore the new world. (That analogy is a bit suspect, however: Columbus was most famous for actually returning.)
Les Johnson, a well-respected science author, spoke to FoxNews.com and agreed with the plan: a one-way, hundred-year mission may be the only way to get to Mars or other planets.
The main issue has to do with a basic physics conundrum. In order to travel the great distance to Mars (about 35 million miles), a starship would need a tremendous amount of fuel. Yet fuel adds more weight -- in fact, every pound you add to a ship requires 4 pounds of fuel. The more fuel you add, the more you need simply to move the ship's bulk, making it impossible to go one-way to Mars, much less roundtrip.
Johnson said the only solution is a longer mission using some form of propulsion that has not even been invented yet, or is still untested. One is a massive solar sail, which captures energy from the sun. Another is a fusion reactor that generates power without any on-board fuel.
Dr. Chris DePree, who heads the Bradley Observatory, also helped fill in some gaps on a 100-year mission to another planet. “It seems like the only realistic way forward, if we really want to colonize the solar system, is to have one-way trips,” DePree told FoxNews.com. “It might be that technology improves, and the grandchildren of those first Martian colonists return to Earth.”
He also explained what “adapting humans” means: The suggestion sounds absurd, but science may actually have more luck developing new breathing apparatuses or using chemical injections to make humans able to live on a foreign world than developing technology for "terraforming" a planet.
As to the question of a one-way mission, DePree says the idea is not as hush-hush as you might expect. NASA doesn't intend for a suicide mission, he said, but rather is debating the idea that an astronaut may live out his or her natural life on another planet and never return to Earth. Johnson said there are astronauts who have already volunteered for one-way missions before, and it's not a ludicrous proposition.
Swirling controversy
Even with these explanations, there is still wild speculation about the program. Worden mentioned the idea of working with third-parties to help fund future missions. He said Larry Page, the Google founder, asked how much it would cost to fund the mission (the answer: about $10 billion). This begs the question: is NASA ready to leverage its work by enlisting private enterprises?
Some scientists have wondered how the 100-Year Starship would deal with the effects of long-term space travel. Johnson said that even after spending a few months in space, the wear and tear starts to show -- astronauts who have visited the Space Station often cannot walk for a few days. Johnson said muscle mass starts to decline and bone density decreases after prolonged periods in outer space.
Short of an official news release, one that spells out exactly how the starship program will proceed, many assume that the program is just in an early stage. Johnson said the funding level of just $1.1M sounds like it is simply for research.
Worden may have slipped by revealing the program, but -- as evidenced by NASA’s lack of cooperation -- it may be too early for any new revelations.
Print Email Share Comments (638)
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