Martian chronicles

The private company Mars One has been collecting money for the first flight of a person to Mars for four years - according to the plan in 2035, the population of the Martian colony should reach 44 people.

However, at the end of March, one of the participants in the Mars One project gave an interview in which he subjected the principles of preparing a future expedition to destroying criticism. Will the colonization of the Red Planet remain only a dream?
The fire at the Martian station MDRS broke out shortly after noon, December 29, 2014. The fire was covered by the Greenhab greenhouse unit, flames rose to a height of three meters. The crew members were in the residential block when they noticed a strange jump in the network, and then the smell of smoke. Expedition commander Nick Orenstayn and engineer Dmitry Smirnov ran out with fire extinguishers - it took them more than half an hour to cope with the fire. They spent all the fire extinguishers who had at the station, but this was not enough, and in the end they had to fill the flame with water.

This was the first day of the 146th expedition at the Martian station. Orenstayn needed several days to make sure of the normal psycho -emotional state of his colleagues. The mission was stopped ahead of schedule.

Fortunately, MDRS (Mars Deserch Station) Station is not on Mars, but on Earth, in the American state of Utah. Therefore, Orenstayn and his colleagues went to the neighboring city of Hanksville, and then to the houses. “Martian Society” - the owner of MDRS - will need $ 40 thousand for the restoration of the greenhouse. The press wrote that the incident at the station once again reminded how serious the consequences of such cases in the real Martian expedition can be, where no help from the Earth is impossible.

The business of enthusiasts , however, on our planet there are people who are determined to go to Mars. The founder of Martian Society Robert Zubrin believes that his project Mars Direct will allow you to organize flight and landing in 10 years. The Mars One project Dutchman Bas Lansdorpa promises a trip in 2024. And the millionaire and space tourist Dennis Tito intends to organize a manned overlook of Mars in 2018.

Why is the Martian expedition, which was declared as a strategic goal in both Russian and American space programs, becomes a matter of enthusiasts and businessmen?

After the achievements of the first decades of the Cosmic era, timelessness began-the technology went far ahead, the research probes have visited all the planets of the solar system, but people still do not go further than 400 kilometers-the heights of the ISS orbit. Someone is even nostalgic for the times of the Cold War, when there was why and with whom to compete. Others believe that China’s cosmic successes will force the old cosmic powers to move.

Expectations are generated by the proposal-private Martian projects: from entertainment and educational, simulation and research to extremely serious ones. But not one of them has and cannot even count on the budget comparable to the NASA budget from the Apollo, and giant expenses will be required to fly to Mars - more than $ 400 billion.

To increase the Martian elves before those who spoke with a private initiative, inevitably arose the main task: to radically reduce the costs mainly associated with the mass of cargo, which must be taken to orbit and send to Mars. These are hundreds, or even thousands of tons, and most of the fuel.

The owner of the MDRS and the author of the Mars Direct project Robert Zubrin decided that there is no need to take a fuel with you to return home, but it is necessary to make it on Mars. 26 months before the start of the manned expedition, an unmanned module with a miniature nuclear reactor and 8 tons of hydrogen is sent to Mars. Once on Mars, the module is taken for the production of fuel - methane and oxygen, which it receives from carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere and brought hydrogen using electrolysis and the so -called Sabatier reaction. When the fuel supply - about 112 tons - will be ready, a crew of four astronauts will go to Mars. According to Zubrin’s calculations, the mission will require several launches of super -heavy -class missiles that are similar in their capabilities to the lunar Saturn V (he proposes to build them on the basis of the heritage of “shuttle”).

For the first time, American engineer Zubrin proposed his NASA project in 1990, his idea was met approvingly, he even allocated a small funding for the development of a rocket engine on methane. In the early 2000s, President George Bush made an ambitious program return to the Moon-Constellation. But this program was curtailed to Obama’s presidency. Although NASA leaders are still talking about an expedition to Mars in the 2030s, no large-scale work on Martian projects is underway.

Zubrin did not give up. He created “Martian Society”, whose tasks are to form a public opinion, to ensure that the state began to take real steps to implement the Martian mission. For several weeks, the Marsonavt teams from all over the world come to the MDRS station, built for several weeks, including from Russia, in order to practice in the “Martian” conditions and solve some research problems.

Zubrin himself emphasizes that to implement his plan, no fundamentally new technologies are required. “Of course, we must develop some types of equipment, of course, we need a heavy launch vehicle, but nothing is required that would happen outside our technological capabilities,” he said during his visit to Moscow in 2013.

However, while the main exhaust from expeditions on MDRS is rather not scientific, but propaganda, the project forced the project to think about the prospects for the development of Mars.

Enthusiasts from the MDRS project are trying to approach the Martian conditions in the Utah desert, *March 11, 2013 *The Hero competition of the Dutch engineer and entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp is going to solve the task of reducing the reduction in the mission in fundamentally different: he proposes to reduce the starting mass due to the fact that none of the astronauts will return to Earth.

In the very idea of ​​a one -way flight, there is nothing fundamentally new: it was expressed, for example, astronaut Bazz Oldrin, who visited the moon with Nile Armstrong. But Lansdorp and his project Mars One in 2012 instantly picked up the attention of the public and press in that he announced his intention to send the Martian mission in the coming years. Know-how Lansdorpa: reality show as a source of financing the entire project. According to his calculations, the sending of the first four Martian colonists will cost $ 6 billion. He counts these funds by selling the rights to broadcast a continuous television show with the participation of the first settlers of Mars. Lancdorp recalls that the sale of rights to broadcast a three -week Olympics in London brought $ 4.5 billion, he is sure that the television show about unique events on Mars will bring much more.

Another “trick” of Mars One is its fundamental openness for everyone. Lancdorp invites everyone to the project: it is not required to have a technical education, you do not need to be a fighter-fighter, doctor or engineer, no need to speak English. For the initial application, it was enough to fill out the questionnaire, send a video with self -presentation, pay $ 25. In his opinion, by the time the start in 2024, the participants will have time to get any profession and learn any language.

In general, the expedition project is based on the use of heavy Falcon Heavy missiles, which is planned to create the SpaceX company and the Red Dragon pilots of the same company.

Of course, Mars One faced suspicions that it was a scam and that Lancdorp does not plan to carry out a mission in reality at all. In response, he with undisguised irritation refers to the authority of people and companies that are not afraid to work with him. “Do you really think that companies such as Lockheed Martin, SSTL and Paragon Space Development would sign contracts if Mars One had not been a legitimate company? Would the Nobel Prize Laureate Geradt Hooft in the Council of our company come in? Our plan is ambitious, but technically and financially possible, ”said Lansdorp, answering questions from the users of the Reddit site.

SRS from the hut , but a serious blow to the project was inflicted from one of the finalists, former NASA employee Joseph Rosh. He became one of 100 people who have to prepare for the flight.

However, at the end of March, he gave an interview to Medium, in which he subjected the entire project to destroy criticism. According to Rosha, the journalists fell under the charm of Lansdorp and his dreams and uncritically broadcast the information that he “fed” to them - about the number of applicants, about the practice of selecting participants, and about the financing of the project.

Lancdorp spoke on the project’s website with excuses, but admitted that due to paperwork and difficult negotiations with investors it would not be possible on time-in 2018-to ensure the launch of the first intelligence unmanned mission, an automatic apparatus, which Lockheed Martin should be built under the contract. Now the first real space mission of the project is shifting to 2020.

Radiation and dust organizational and financial problems may turn out to be trifles in comparison with the difficulties that arise if it comes to a real flight. It is enough to recall that not a single person left the limits of the Earth’s magnetic field since the time of the Apollo, and no one spent a truly open space in this really open. The magnetic field protects our planet and all living things on it from charged particles emanating from the sun and galactic sources. Heavy charged particles are very dangerous for all living things, there is practically no protection from them. The data collected by the RAD device on board the Curiosity Marshound during its flight to Mars show that during the flight to Mars the astronaut will gain a dose of 330 millisive devices - a third of the dose, which is considered the maximum of the astronaut’s career.

The conditions on the surface of Mars can also be extremely inhospitable. Very dry air contributes to the accumulation of static electricity that is dangerous for electronics. Martian dust may contain toxic substances - perchlorates, and it was extremely difficult to get rid of dust, this could not be possible for astronauts during lunar missions.

Finally, no one knows how not experimental will affect the crew psyche, as in the Russian project “Mars-500”

* * “Mars-500”-an experiment to imitate the manned flight to Mars, held by Russia in 2007-2011 with international participation. The experiment was as close as possible to a real manned flight to Mars with a return to Earth. In the third, final stage (actually “flight”) 6 people participated, it lasted 519 days. , and real isolation from all mankind, the inability to receive help.

Maybe we will be grateful to Bas Lansdorp, if he turns out to be a scammage, because it is possible that the execution of his dreams can become much worse than the failure of the Mars One project. But how I still want to believe that humanity will reach Mars ...

Photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters