Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: ustrax Oct 31 2006, 01:42 PM

Yes, the title says it all.
What would be the major benefits of a mission, let's say, to Mars, with a single crew member.
The reduce of weight would one major issue, I guess.
Of course it would have to be someone extremely ultra prepared to correspond to the mission demandings, someone covering areas such as geology, biology not to say the technical issues concerning a spaceflight...
Against? Isolation?...
Maybe by reducing the mission to the minimal accepted period and inducing long periods of sleep during the voyage...
Are there any available studies regarding this matter? All the things I've read point to a >1 crew, I would like to see something discussing the one man possibility.

Posted by: RedSky Oct 31 2006, 01:57 PM

I haven't heard of a one-man Mars mission.... but I have read several things (in all seriousness) about a manned one-way Mars mission! Here is a link to one plan...

http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200402/index.html[/url]

There was another plan by Paul Davies for a one-way Mars mission... but I can't find the link to his proposal right now.

(Ed. to remove wrong article).

Posted by: PhilCo126 Oct 31 2006, 02:07 PM

Who would wanna go one-way ? An important decision !

Posted by: ustrax Oct 31 2006, 02:22 PM

A multitud of candidates would show up, I'm sure...

Edited:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/669/1

http://www.redcolony.com/art.php?id=0403130

Lots of information around...

Edited II:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/702075/weakest_link_in_a_manned_mars_voyage_probably_man_international/index.html?source=r_space

Posted by: MarkL Oct 31 2006, 04:01 PM

One way trips to Mars are a very silly idea. Sick even. Who cares who would volunteer? We wouldn't send them knowing they couldn't come back and shake our hands afterward. We care about life. I can't imagine any serious space agency sending an astronaut on a guaranteed suicide mission. Risk is one thing. Certain death for the volunteer is quite another.

Posted by: ustrax Oct 31 2006, 04:20 PM

Isn't death certain for all of us?...
If conditions were created for this astronauts/future martians to endure on Mars, being the ones opening roads for a future colonization why not?
There were other occasions when Mankind had to make decisions and then moutains were climbed and seas were crossed...
Discovering, going onward, is in our genes.
And that must start with a single step.
I'm not defending this hypothesis but seems as risky (if conditions are not created) as a return mission...

"We care about life." Yes we do, that's why we fight, study, love and dream, to take our seeds as far as we can.

I would go.

Posted by: ngunn Oct 31 2006, 04:27 PM

I agree any space agency proposing a suicide mission would get fried politically. However the idea of a one-person mission raises the intriguing possibility that the solitary crew might undergo some sort of mental process (voices? visions? messianic revelation?) on the trip and simply refuse to return.

Posted by: ustrax Oct 31 2006, 04:30 PM

I was saying I would go but not on a one man mission...
About what you're saying http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2798...

Posted by: ngunn Oct 31 2006, 04:51 PM

Thanks, that was indeed an interesting discussion which I did not follow at the time. On a related point an interesting paper on Martian sky colours which was linked somewhere here recently (I'll find it if you want) included speculation that the buff-to-blackish sky tones might induce depression in humans. At any rate the psychological perspective cannot be ignored and would be even more unpredictable and problematic on a one person mission where all the psychological eggs are in one basket, as it were. For that reason alone I doubt if it will be tried.

Posted by: ustrax Oct 31 2006, 05:09 PM

Yes, please.
I agree that a solo mission might bring some psychological surprises but...can't a crew of several develop the same problems, the same sense of mission?...Agravated by the fact that you'll have to deal with different personalities...Competition, sexual instincts...
There's difficulties in them all, our mission, as species, is to overcome them...

Posted by: algorimancer Oct 31 2006, 10:00 PM

As to the one-way mission concept...

I think one point of confusion is the notion that the intent behind a one-way mission would be that the participants travel to Mars, then quietly die when their supplies run out.

I think a perfectly feasible approach would be to simply plan for continuous resupply. The resupply aspect need not cost or mass any more than the current rate of unmanned missions. Assuming a large enough pool of colonists, in time there would develop progressively greater degrees of independence, though the demand for high-tech items would no doubt remain for some generations. It seems to me that this approach would be an order of magnitude cheaper than a round-trip visit, and be a heck of a lot more productive. Consider the difference in cost and complexity between MER and a sample return mission, for instance.

I would have volunteered for this sort of thing up until around age 30, I think, but since then I've become a bit too settled.

Posted by: David Nov 1 2006, 01:13 AM

Back to the original question:

The obvious upside of a one-person mission (the astronaut need not be a man) is that you can devote much more of the load to supplies, and those supplies will be consumed less quickly. There also won't be any problems with intra-crew disagreements, because there will be only one person. And if anything goes seriously wrong, well, it's "only" one person.

That's about all I can think of on the upside.

On the downside, you can get your one astronaut and a whole lot of equipment to Mars, but who's going to operate all that equipment once (s)he's there? Maintaining a Martian outpost isn't really a one-person job, and lacking at least a second person would greatly increase the likelihood of boneheaded (and possibly fatal) errors by an astronaut who has no one to second-guess his or her judgments.
The psychological stress of being alone for the duration of a voyage to Mars is not to be underestimated. I'm not saying the astronaut would go crazy; but a trip to Mars alone would be dreadfully boring. Imagine sitting in a waiting room full of magazines that you've already read and nothing to eat but yesterday's stale crackers. You'd get cranky pretty quick. And cranky astronauts, as we know from experience, as a big pain for mission controllers to deal with. You might expect, not insanity, but a sluggishness of response and a diminishing of enthusiasm. And do you really want to hear:
"Yeah, um. Ellis here. Uh, yeah, this is Mars. Looking out the window, well, it's mostly red. [Long silence.] I don't feel like going out today. And, uh, tomorrow's probably not going to be good either. By the way, you guys still haven't sent me the latest issue of Rod and Reel. So I say, screw Mars..."

If you were going for the smallest possible crew, I'd suggest sending a wife and husband team, who have already lived together in close quarters for 20 years.

Posted by: ngunn Nov 1 2006, 11:37 AM

QUOTE(AlexBlackwell @ Sep 26 2006, 10:53 AM)

My understanding is that the Bell et al. paper, "Chromaticity of the Martian sky as observed by the Mars Exploration Rover Pancam instruments," is going to be published online tomorrow in JGR-Planets as part of the special section noted above. Non-subscribers might keep an eye on the Pancam publications page; it looks as if the team posts a few of their reprints there.


As expected, the paper is now available free from the publications page.
Direct link

Soddit. Cutting and pasting seems to de-activate the direct link to the PDF. I'll identify the post above and get back to you.

Posted by: ngunn Nov 1 2006, 11:48 AM

That link is in 'Opportunity', 'JGR-Planets . . .' post no. 16 from slinted at Oct 1 2006 10:18 AM. Must learn how to do this properly!

Posted by: ngunn Nov 1 2006, 01:57 PM

Posted by: MaxSt Nov 1 2006, 02:55 PM

Is it possible to get into space suit without help?

Posted by: AndyG Nov 1 2006, 04:16 PM

Thanks to the link to the paper, ngunn. It's excellent. Note how black the dustless Martian sky would appear.

For those wanting an insight into the NBS/ISCC colour system, http://www.anthus.com/Colors/NBS.html. And for the CIE diagram, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/cie1976.html has a good one.

This is worth a thread on its own, imo.

Andy

Posted by: dvandorn Nov 2 2006, 03:58 AM

Depends, both on the suit design and the level of safety you're willing to risk.

You can get into a Russian EVA suit pretty easily -- you just open a hatch in the middle of the backpack, wriggle in, and close the hatch with a conveniently-placed lever. Attach your comm carrier into the suit comm circuit, turn on the backpack, don gloves, lower your visor, and you're ready to go.

An Apollo A7L suit, on the other hand -- you could put it on by yourself, but if you had to don and hook up a PLSS, your safety level might have been impaired. (The Apollo CMPs regularly donned and doffed their suits alone, perfectly safely, but they had no need to don a life-support system on top of that.)

By the time we send people to Mars, I would hope we will have designed suits that are relatively lightweight and easy to don, operate and maintain. And which have gloves that don't maim the fingers of the wearers...

-the other Doug

Posted by: lyford Nov 2 2006, 04:40 PM

This sounds waaaaaay too much like a sitcom....

"Don't you drag all that Martian dirt in here after I just cleaned all our floors! We can't have nice things!"

Though maybe that could be an alternate source of funding - some sort of Big Brother To Mars show. Now that would generate interest in manned and womanned space flight!

Or maybe we can still get Lance Bass to volunteer for a one way mission.

Posted by: ustrax Nov 2 2006, 05:35 PM

Thanks ngunn!

Posted by: climber Nov 2 2006, 09:22 PM

I get the point Ustrax. Anyway, if we take the exemple of Mount Everest, there are some doubts of WHO get to the summit first. It could have been Mallory and Irvine back in the 30's but they never came back alive. Firsts to get back from summit where Hillary and Tensing. If YOU go to Mars on a one way ticket, everybody will know you'll be the first but I don't think people will associate your name to a Hero but to a suicide man instead. Exploration is inspiration and the followers needs inspiration, they need Heros. If you die on Mars while you are on a return ticket, you'll inspire people to do better next time (as for the Everest) but you'll not inspire people on a sucide mission, they'll think more of the sucide than on the benefits of what you'll do. This is a general point of view; I believe this but I agree personaly that I'll prefer to go for such an endeavour now than to die in an hospice at 95...

Posted by: Aldebaran Nov 2 2006, 11:46 PM

Can't get the song "Ground Control to Major Tom" out of my head when I read this topic

Posted by: nprev Nov 3 2006, 12:27 AM

Can't I just volunteer either of my ex-wives as a solo...?

Posted by: Bill Harris Nov 3 2006, 01:57 AM

And this gives me the mental image of Cosmonaut Andropov (from the movie Armageddon)...

A solo mission might work better if the astronaut stayed in orbit and directed landers/rovers/sample return robots. Less overhead to keep a human in orbit than as a lander.

--Bill

Posted by: ustrax Nov 3 2006, 05:22 PM

http://spacesuitlab.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_spacesuitlab_archive.html

Posted by: PhilCo126 Nov 7 2006, 09:17 PM

Although we all know that a Mars mission will have a crew of minimum 4 and maximum 6, the idea of a 1 man mission would solve the problem of the " leader figure " in a crew and could save some money on wristwatches as well
http://www.expeditionexchange.com/omega/indexmain.shtml

Posted by: climber Nov 7 2006, 09:35 PM

You're right Phil. I'll add :
One small shed for (a) man, one giant ship for Mankind