As It Is On Mars

"The travel time of six months to Mars has not changed much over the decades. You can get there a few months quicker, if you carry more fuel and less cargo, or if you attach one of the new nuclear-powered propulsion modules to your vehicle, but the few months saved are not worth the much greater cost."

"Because of this long mission time," Dr. Byrd continued, "in the decades before this nation's commitment to a manned mission, there arose two competing visions of how to go to Mars: the bring-all-supplies approach, versus the self- sufficiency approach.

"The bring-all-supplies approach was the cheaper and less technologically complex. You simply brought all the food and water needed for the trip. You needed a lot of food though-- nearly a ton for every mission member-but this approach would get you to Mars earlier. The disadvantage was that next time you went, it would not be any cheaper.

"With the self-sufficiency approach you brought only enough food and water to get there. You also brought a greenhouse to grow your food, and you got water from ice under ground. Because such a mission was more complex, with more unknowns, it was more expensive, and it would take longer to prepare. The advantage was that it was cheaper in the long run. The greenhouse, ice mine, and other equipment left on Mars, could be used by later missions.

"A mission using the bring-all-supplies approach would have been feasible two decades ago, but never happened. Government would not fund it, because of the enormous expense, which would not decrease with time. In current dollars, it actually kept rising in price, given the average 4 percent annual inflation this century.

"This forced NASA to adopt the self-sufficiency approach, and research the problems of how man could survive self- sufficiently on Mars, especially the problem of producing food."

He then went into the years of research that followed. He described how they became very confident they could produce food on the planet, after successfully using robots to grow food in treated soil in small greenhouses sent to Mars.

He went on to talk about how they had successfully made rocket fuel on Mars from Martian air, and propelled a test rocket back to Earth. This eliminated the great cost of transporting fuel to Mars for the return trip.

Then he talked about the severe problems of radiation on Mars, and how the solutions all used Martian soil and sand for shielding. He then discussed other important problems they had solved, such as the problem of small, portable nuclear power units for Mars. Finally, he went into the problem, as yet unsolved, of manufacturing cement on Mars. This problem could be solved only in a laboratory on Mars.

"After all those years of work," he continued, "at last we could present Government with a proposal for a mission that would be self-sufficient in food, air and water, and fuel for the return journey."

"In addition to having a self-sufficient mission," he went on, "we would be leaving buildings and vehicles behind on the surface, for use by later missions. We were thus making a start to building a small, self-sufficient, Martian city, so that future missions promised to be much less expensive.

"We could also argue that the period 2037-2039 was a very attractive one for a Mars mission. First, during that period the sunspot cycle is at its minimum, much reducing solar flare radiation risk.

"Second, there was an opposition in November 2037 that would allow a mission to arrive on Mars near the end of 2037. That arrival time would be close to the Martian spring equinox in mid January. Thus the mission would be eighteen months on Mars, during the Martian spring, summer and fall, and would avoid being on Mars during the winter. A year on Mars lasts twenty- three months.

"We had thus done our homework. We had a mission proposal the President could support and albeit grudgingly--the Congress too. I must emphasize that this support was hard won, and was not won until decades after the time most in the scientific community had thought we would be on Mars!"