We know that Mars has no breathable air, poisonous soil, and deadly solar radiation. Traveling at least 70 million miles there and back could take 570 days.
As a result, NASA’s focus has included six technologies:
- Advanced propulsion systems
- Inflatable landing gear
- High tech spacesuits
- Mobile homes
- Surface power systems
- Laser communications
Perhaps, though, preparing for Mars, we need to think more about ourselves.
Preparing For Mars
Rather than technology NASA’s CHAPEA group (“Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) is focusing on our human capital. On Mars for the first time, away for more than a year, each person will need to survive an isolated environment. In isolation studies, scientists observe that individuals initially display high spirits but then they get increasingly irritable, hostile, and finally hallucinatory.
On June 25, 2023, four CHAPEA participants entered a warehouse in Houston, Texas that recreated a Mars habitat. In a tiny space, four strangers will live together for 378 days. From their moment of “ingress,” none of them was allowed to communicate normally with family or friends. Like on Mars, as a round trip, messages sent home take at least 44 minutes. But most will take much longer as they queue in the simulated Mars link, with each being sent one by one.
In this environment, scientists want to see how Mars visitors manage their daily lives. They will observe the impact of low salt, prepackaged astronaut meals on spirit, appetite, and weight. Intentionally, their 6 x 11 foot bedroom spaces have different ceiling heights to minimize monotony. While they don’t need to grow plants, there will be some to “humanize” their living space. As for their Mars walks, they have a tented sandbox that mimics the terrain while virtual reality goggles are supposed to convey the real experience.
Still, one NASA researcher says she has 800 problems that need to be solved. By monitoring food intake and clothing, a propulsion expert hopes to calculate the weight of the flight more accurately. And from there, taking the leap to colonizing Mars, scientists planned what we could bring. Concluding structures and energy are too heavy, they proposed using solar power and building structures with a Martian based cementy material.
This is a structure that they describe in a Nature article:
Our Bottom Line: The Factors of Production
As economists, we know that we are really talking about the factors of production. Composed of land, labor, and capital, the factors of production contain the ingredients for all that we produce. In the United States, during the past 200 years, our factor recipes have shifted from agricultural dominance to capital dependency to sophisticated technology.
Now, preparing for Mars, again our recipes will change. But, as always, called our human capital, the ability to learn and apply our knowledge will be crucial. Consequently, the impact of isolation could topple all that we build.
My sources and more: This article and The Daily returned my thoughts to space travel and colonization. From there, NASA was my next logical destination as was Mars colonization.
While our featured image is from In-the-Sky, this NASA animation perfectly shows the trip to Mars and back. Do take a look.
