Hurdles of Traveling to Mars

Kristian Dolghier

Mr. McCorkle

Post AP Economics

4/30/2017

The hurdles of traveling to mars

Traveling to another planet is an enormous prospect which costs billions of dollars and the cooperation of the American public. NASA has set themselves a goal to set a human on mars by the year 2030. This is highly unlikely with their current funding and if they do want to proceed with this they will have to overcome many hurdles both economically and physically. One of the basic problems they will have to overcome is how will they fit two and a half of years of food onto a ship without needing more thrusters and making the space ship exponentially larger. This alone is a large enough problem to stop future space flights to the red planet and back. However, if a plan was only to deposit humans on mars then they would have different problems relating to farming food on mars with many other problems. This essay will analyze the viability of living on mars and go into detail on the cost and benefit of traveling to the mars.

There are many problems that need to be addressed in relation to traveling to mars and living on there. These problems include the storage of food, the storage of water, the storage of oxygen, the effects of space radiation, the small gravity on mars, the carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the prospects of traveling to mars and not being able to travel back. The first, and arguably most important, hurdle to overcome is how can NASA pack years of food into a spaceship which is on a one way trip to mars. Since the difficulty of coming back from mars this will assume that The trip to mars is a one way trip and the people there will need to live mostly on the food that they bring with them. These calculations will assume that four people are in the spaceship to mars and they will need materials for a year. They will travel 6 months in space and will need supplies to start out their colony for the next 6 months. After this, NASA will be required to send them supplies in an unmanned rocket every year. Americans eat an average of 3770 calories eat day which result in 1,376,050 calories per year. An MRE is a good representation of calorie dense food which on average has 1250 calories and weights 1.375 lbs. This results in 909 calories per lb. This calculation results in 1513 lbs per person for only food. For four people this will require 6055 lbs for an entire for only food. Each MRE costs 20.33$ to make which results in 14.79 dollars for a lb. This results in 89,553 dollars to only purchase the food. This does not include any weight for water yet. I approximate that the astronaut will need approximately 1000 liters of water. This is 2204 lbs of water. This large amount is needed as a precaution. Astronauts on the ISS recycle their water with dehumidifiers, and by removing humidity from the air. However, they lose water and need to be periodically resupplied. This loss may seem insignificant for a short period of time, but over a year a significant percentage will be lost and unrecoverable. On mars there is a very small percentage of h20 in the air so it will cost a lot of energy to get a relatively small amount of water. If the people on mars will want to farm crops they will also require a large amount of water before they give a crop return. Water can also alleviate the problem with the generation of oxygen. By using electrolysis we can produce oxygen gas from water with added energy from solar panels. This amount of water will cost an insignificant amount which will, if filtered and treated, will cost a few thousand.

The main problem with all of this material is how expensive it will be to send into space. Assuming we will use SpaceX to send it into space, this will be 11.2 million dollars per ton. Just based off food and water alone this will require to send upwards of ten tons of material into space, and have enough space to have a night fuel to get to mars. Instead of having a giant rocket, i propose to have a smaller rocket lift the food, water, and spaceship to the ISS. At the ISS it will refill with fuel which was previously flown there by a separate ship. This has never been done, and i believe will be a more efficient and cheaper option than flying a giant space ship. The Saturn 5 is a spaceship was was created to move lots of things to the moon. It had a payload of 90 tons and flew several times. In order to get to mars in 6 months, This spaceship will need to be refueled at the ISS, because it Has enough thrust to get to low earth orbit and to the moon, but simply cannot travel the 60 million miles to mars without getting a boost at the ISS. This alone will cost approximately 1 billion dollars, based off the cost that it cost to fly it in the 70s. This solution fixes the problem of making to mars, but there are more problems while traveling there. On the way to mars there will be no protection by our earth's magnetic field and there will be ionizing radiation which will be bombarding the astronauts and their food day and night. There will also be larger energy bursts which include solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Blocking these with a dense material like lead is cost prohibitive. Instead NASA has developed Hydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes which promise to stop the radiation. These are "tiny, nanotubes made of carbon, boron, and nitrogen, with hydrogen interspersed throughout the empty spaces left in between the tubes. Boron is also an excellent absorber of secondary neutrons, making hydrogenated BNNTs an ideal shielding material." This technology is still in testing but can have the opportunity to effectively shield the astronauts.

Most of the major problems relating to traveling through space have been addressed but the actual colonization of mars has not been addressed. Mars one estimates that it will cost 2.3 billion dollars to set up the infrastructure on mars. This includes the actual settlement, vehicles on mars, and various supplies that will be stored. This may seem to be excessive in cost, but most of the technologies which they will be using there will have to be invented which results in a large research and development cost. For example the Hydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes I mentioned earlier had to be created specifically for this and undoubtedly have cost tens or hundred of million to research and develop. All of the costs to getting to the moon combined will be at least 150 Billion dollars. A large portion of this money was as a result of research and the development of spacecraft to get to the moon. Now, with SpaceX, the price for transportation will be less which would hopefully decrease the cost of getting to mars. Mars one estimates that for the initial push to mars it will cost 6.075 billion to start the settlement on mars. However, a settlement will require an investment of 1.85 billion each year in order to pay for further human missions and resupplying the colony. In my opinion these cost are far underestimated because they do not appreciate the magnitude of the cost of everything that needs to happen in order to get to mars. This cost is made smaller for one primary reason- to not scare off potential investors. If you have a price tag of 100 billion, then many people who previously may have invested would be scared by that large figure. However this 100 billion number is even considered an understatement by experts. The evidence for this is the ISS which initially was planned to cost 10 billion dollars for 10 years, but ended up costing 150 billion dollars. This cost is expected to be lessened with the help of international partners, but will result in less American citizens living on mars. Assuming that this will cost 10 times the number quoted by NASA it can be reasonable to assume that it will cost in the range of 1 trillion dollars in total. An important fact to remember is that this number will be spread out over twenty or thirty years. Over 25 years this number will only be 40 billion per year which is twice NASA's budget for 2015. This can be possible and will happen if congress decides for it to happen. 40 billion dollars is 1% of the federal budget which is a modest amount in comparison to the amount of money is being asked.

However, the main concern is the reason why we should go to mars. When we went to the moon, we invented many new technologies which have now drifted into everyday life and we have become accustomed to. Some of this technology includes, fireproof fabric, lightweight breathing system, chlorine free pool filters, security systems, more efficient solar panels, heart monitors, pacemaker control, improved dialysis, precise prescription doses, battery powered instruments, quartz clocks, insulative metal layers, liquid methane engines, etc. Many of these inventions seem to be staples of everyday life, but could have been done this early without the help of NASA's technology. If NASA decides to send humans to space they will have to fix many of the problems i have not discussed. These fixes and improvements will later on be used by companies and be adopted into our everyday life. As discussed before, Hydrogenated boron nitride nanotubes could be used in everyday life to protect people from radiation. Other improvements can be made and the people will eventually be the benefactors. Pure technological benefits, are not the only benefits when it comes to this. Going to mars will signal a major progression for humanity as we begin to colonize our other planets. Many believe that humanity's end goal is to colonize our solar system and go further on into other solar systems. This ideal is showed in many Sci-Fi TV shows, movies and games which all include humanity going for the stars. Going to mars will start this idea, and hopefully cause us to go further as time goes on. This is an intangible benefit, but is a benefit nonetheless. Going to mars will eventually happen, but which country will make it there first, America, China or Russia?