THE MARS – Secrets and Facts – Documentary

You look, we’re looking fine. At the dawn of  the 21st century, space agencies in Europe and America began making plans to land the first  humans on Mars. Manned missions to the Red Planet had been proposed before. For some, Mars  holds the answers to mankind’s future in space. Others argue that Mars is too far, too dangerous,  and too expensive for humans to explore. In a world torn by troubles, some question the need  or will for mankind to reach into space anymore. More than 30 years after the last  Apollo astronaut walked on the Moon, the American manned space program  seems to have lost its way, unable to reach beyond even low Earth orbit.  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ NASA admits, having been literally going around in circles with  its space program for the past 30 years. Astronautical engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin has been  arguing for years that sending humans to Mars is the mission the space program needs. ‘It’s time  that we set goals for NASA that are worthy of the risks of human space flight. Mars is the  next logical step in our space program. It’s the challenge that has been staring us in the face  for the past 30 years. It’s the planet that’s most like Earth. It has the resources needed to support  life and, therefore, someday, a technological civilization. It’s the planet that will provide  us with the answer as to whether life is prevalent in the universe or exclusive to Earth. And it’s  the planet that will give us the critical test as to whether humanity can break out of the planet  of our birth and become a spacefaring species.’ In the early 1990s, Zubrin was the head of  the Mars Direct program at Martin Marietta Astronautics. His team developed a mission to  Mars that could be done at a fraction of NASA’s projected costs, using only existing technology.  Zubrin argues that the first steps on Martian soil could be made within 10 years. ‘There is  absolutely nothing in this that is beyond our technology. We are not ready to send humans to  Mars right now; we don’t know how to keep them alive there. There are people out there who say we  could go to Mars tomorrow. One of my requirements, one of NASA’s requirements, is that if we send  humans to Mars, we bring them back alive.’ For the past 15 years, Zubrin and his  colleagues have waged a campaign to convince society and the political class that  humans on Mars should be the goal for NASA. Now, this is the story of our cold neighboring  planet and the debate over whether man’s fate is tied to the Red World. It’s the  story of an engineer’s journey and the battle of ideas over which direction  in space will truly benefit mankind. ‘We’re at a crossroads today. We either muster  the courage to go, or we risk the possibility of stagnation and decay.’ The victor in this  debate could determine the fate of mankind. ‘Will we become a spacefaring species?  Will we live on more than one planet?’ In the winter of 2003, the Chinese put their  first ‘taikonaut’ in space. The Chinese Space Administration plans to begin a manned program  of Moon exploration by 2017. The European Space Agency has outlined a plan for humans to the  Moon by 2024 and to Mars by 2033. The Russians, building on years of experience, are conducting  tests for long-duration Mars missions. In America, with the impending retirement  of the Shuttle fleet and the completion of the International Space Station, the  Bush Administration announced in 2004 the Constellation program to return Americans to  the Moon by 2020. But the program was never fully funded and was eventually cancelled in 2010.  The Obama Administration announced its vision for NASA and human Mars exploration by the mid-2030s.  ‘I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth, and a landing on Mars  will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.’ With a new timeline for humans to Mars sometime  after 2035, and with administrations changing every four or eight years, it is far from certain  that such a plan will be realized. Twenty years earlier, the first President Bush also proposed  a long-term human exploration program to great fanfare. The program quietly died in Congress  a few years later. ‘If you want to go to Mars, you cannot do it in 30 years. You can’t do it  in 20 years. You’ve got to do it in 10 years. A less ambitious program starts all your  more ores, guaranteeing political failure.’ To date, only the Apollo Moon program,  which was announced in 1961 and had men on the Moon 8 years later, has succeeded in  getting astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. ‘I was five when Sputnik flew. While to the  adults, Sputnik was a terrifying event, to me, as a child who was already reading science  fiction, it was exhilarating because it meant that the possibility of a spacefaring  future was going to be real. And I was nine when Kennedy gave his speech committing  us to the Moon, to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because  they are easy, but because they are hard.’ ‘I grew up during the 60s when it was Mercury, it  was Gemini, it was Apollo. Every month, NASA was doing something more impressive than the month  before. We were going to be on the Moon by 1970, Mars by 1980, Saturn by 1990, Alpha Centauri  by the year 2000. We were moving out, and I wanted to be part of that. So, I got myself a  scientific education. But then, in the early ’70s, it all collapsed. We achieved the first part of  that program, the Moon by 1970, but the Nixon Administration shut down the rest, and we did not  move out into space. For a while, I accepted that grudgingly and became a science teacher. But then,  in the early ’80s, something hit me, and I said, ‘I’m not going to accept myself doing less than  what I had dreamed of doing when I was a boy.’ Zubrin went back to graduate school, getting  advanced degrees in engineering and aerospace. He then went on to work at Martin Marietta,  which later became Lockheed Martin, designing interplanetary missions. It was here that Zubrin’s  obsession with the Red Planet began to take hold. While at Martin in the 1990s, Zubrin  and his colleagues developed a plan for sending humans to Mars that changed  NASA’s thinking on the issue, but the plan has languished on the drawing boards ever  since. Now, as president of the Mars Society, Zubrin is at center stage in the debate over the  future of manned space flight. Known as a smart, visionary scientist, he has authored  several books on exploring space and is the self-appointed spokesperson for  the possibility of colonizing Mars. ‘Mars is where the future is. Mars is the  closest planet to the Earth that has on it all the resources needed to support life and  therefore technological civilization. It has water, it has carbon, it has nitrogen, it has a  24-hour day. It has a complex geological history that has created mineral ores. It has sources of  geothermal energy. Mars is a place we can settle. One reason for such optimism over a frozen world  like Mars is the evidence that, 2 billion years ago, Mars was a much warmer and wetter place.  “We think that at one time in the ancient past, Mars was very similar to the condition of early  Earth,” experts say. This Martian warm age lasted for over a billion years and could have been a  suitable environment for the development of life. “If we go to Mars and find evidence of  a second genesis on Mars, I think we can conclude that the universe is full of life.  We can probably conclude that on some planets, life evolves into more complex forms, and  it would be reasonable to conclude that intelligence could also emerge on some planets  as well. It really does answer the question: Are we alone? And that, to me, is a question  that transcends science. It’s a philosophical, societal, as well as scientific question.  To me, that’s the big prize. That’s why Mars is interesting. That’s why  human exploration makes sense.” Space programs are often criticized for  the huge sums of money they require. Although the American space program  is less than 1% of the federal budget, a human mission to Mars may have to wait  for better times. There are those who say that we have many problems to deal with  here on Earth and we need to postpone ventures such as human exploration on Mars  until these problems are solved. “Well, there were many problems in Spain in 1492, and  there still are,” the argument goes. “There are problems that need to be dealt with here on our  Earth and should be dealt with. But we also have to think of the future. We also have to think  about opening up new volumes in human history.” “I believe that it is essential for a positive  human future that humanity expands into space. This is really a rock and roll ride, isn’t it?  The greatest value that we got out of Apollo was the creation of intellectual capital through  the inspiring of millions to go into science and engineering, to be part of the great  adventure of human expansion into space. There’s a phrase that happened with the Apollo  program which was, ‘If we can go to the Moon, we can…’ and then everybody filled in whatever  they were interested in: build mass transit, cure cancer, do this, do that. The point is,  it did give us a sense that we could accomplish great things. It did bring out the best of us. We  excited a generation of engineers and scientists, the generation that built the computers and cell  phones and all the technology everybody uses today and takes for granted. If we set humans  to Mars as our goal, we’ll get millions of new scientists that will create new inventions,  new industries. This is the enormous payback, and we can get it if we set the kind of  challenge that will inspire the youth.” To Zubrin, civilizations, like people,  thrive on challenge and decay without it. “We have everything we have today  because of our predecessors who had the courage to leave the world of the known  and go out into the wilderness and build new cities. And if we stop being people like  that, then we will hand down much less to our posterity than our ancestors handed down  to us. So, there’s the choice in life: one either grows or one decays. Grow  or die. I think we should grow.” “History proves that we have never lost  by pressing the limits of our frontier.” In the summer of 1989, the first President Bush  announced the Space Exploration Initiative, directing NASA to draw up long-term  plans to get humans back to the Moon and begin developing a program of manned  Mars exploration. At Martin Marietta, Zubrin and his colleagues looked forward to  moving NASA’s space program outwards after two decades in low Earth orbit. “Of course,  we were very excited when Bush made his call, saying that he was making a national  commitment to implement such a program.” NASA assembled a large team to take on the  Space Exploration Initiative. In 90 days, the team developed a 30-year plan that required  an enormous buildup of space infrastructure. “What the NASA bureaucracy decided to do was basically  design the most complex mission they possibly could, in order to make sure that everyone’s  pet technology would remain mission-critical, which is the exact opposite of the  correct way to do engineering.” First, NASA would triple the size of the  planned space station and add enormous hangars, as well as free-floating fuel depots, checkout  docks, and crew stations. Then, on the Moon, they would construct more shipbuilding facilities,  bases, and depots. Next, the Moon crew would construct the Mars ship, a huge craft dubbed  by its detractors as “Battlestar Galactica.” This ship would carry everything to Mars over  an 18-month flight. Once in Mars orbit, a small group would descend to the surface, spend a few  days, then plant a flag in the ground and go home. The plan became known as the 90-Day Report. “To those of us at Martin who had been  engaged in designing Mars missions, when they saw the monstrosity of complexity of  the 90-Day Report, we were dismayed. And it was readily apparent to anyone with any insight  that that program would fail politically.” The plan was submitted to Congress. The estimated  cost: 450 billion dollars. The legislators went into sticker shock. “This would have been the  single most expensive program for the United States since World War II.” By the end of 1990,  Congress had refused all requests for SEI funding. When the realization came that SEI was doomed,  Zubrin wrote a memo to his colleagues at Martin Marietta, outlining his problems with the NASA  plan and arguing for a more direct approach. Zubrin favored launching a Mars mission directly  from the surface of Earth, using only existing rocket technology. This negated the need for a  lunar base and avoided the complexity and cost of building ships in space. He also objected to  NASA’s plan for a short surface stay on Mars, a mission that would amount to little more  than a flag-and-footprints exercise. To Zubrin, we were going to Mars to explore and develop  a new world. To maximize surface time, Zubrin proposed using a faster flight path  known as a conjunction-class mission. This would mean a crew could arrive on Mars  after only a six-month journey. They would then remain on the Martian surface for  a year and a half. This would give the team time to explore a wide area and conduct  detailed research about the planet. Then, as the Earth-return window opens, the crew would  launch from Mars for the six-month trip home. Zubrin was convinced that a simplified,  more robust, and cost-effective mission could be designed using these principles.  Along with several like-minded colleagues, Zubrin decided to ask management at Martin  to allow them to design alternative Mars missions. The management approved, and they  formed a team that was known as the Scenario Development Team, consisting of just 12 people  from the whole, very large Martin company. One team member whose thinking was closely aligned  with Zubrin’s was David Baker. “I went off to my office and said, ‘Alright, how would I do a Mars  mission if I had to pay for it and I had to go on the ride?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s going to be  simple. There’s going to be no on-orbit assembly.’ I really tried to take everything out of the  mission that didn’t absolutely need to be there.” While the rest of the team focused on longer-term, more traditional mission plans that required  on-orbit assembly, Zubrin and Baker decided to collaborate on a mission that could be done in  the near term. “We decided to do Mars the way Lewis and Clark did America. Okay, use local  resources, travel light, live off the land.” Zubrin and Baker were convinced that a Mars  mission could be launched directly from the ground. The other team members felt this was  impossible, that the weight of the rocket fuel required for a round trip to Mars was so enormous  it would render the launch ship impossibly heavy. To solve this problem, Zubrin explored a radical  idea that had been kicked around the aerospace industry since the 1970s. The idea was to  produce methane-oxygen rocket fuel directly from the Martian atmosphere. It was a relatively  simple and robust chemical engineering procedure that was commonly done in the 1800s, the era of  gaslight. If the idea worked, astronauts could land a relatively light ship with empty tanks.  They wouldn’t have to ship all the fuel with them for their return trip. This would radically  lower their size and weight. The only problem was methane-oxygen fuel requires a hydrogen component.  Hydrogen exists on Mars in the form of H2O, but water may be difficult or impossible to  extract from the Martian environment. However, the hydrogen was only 5% of the total weight of the  methane-oxygen propellant being manufactured. So, if you just say, “Okay, we won’t be pure. We won’t  get all of the propellant from Mars. We’ll just get 95% of the propellant from Mars. The other  5%, the hydrogen, we’ll just bring from Earth.” Another fundamental resource that could be  extracted from the Martian environment is oxygen. A second processing unit could  separate oxygen molecules from the thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, providing breathable  air for a Mars crew. If used intelligently, the same resources that make Mars interesting  are precisely what could make it attainable. Baker and Zubrin had greatly reduced their mission  mass, but they still found their ship was too heavy and would require two launches and assembly  in space. Then Zubrin hit on an idea. One of the key events of the Mars Direct development was  when Bob burst into Baker’s office one morning and said, “I’ve got it.” The idea that he finally hit  on in 1989 was that they would split the mission up into two parts and send the return vehicle out  first, with its own return propellant plant. So, the propellant would be made on Mars before  the first astronauts ever left Earth. With two separate direct-to-Mars launches,  a human crew would have a fully fueled ship waiting for them on the surface of  Mars before they ever left Earth. So, Zubrin and Baker had come up with a plan that  seemed to accomplish all of their goals. It was relatively inexpensive, development time  was short, they could use existing technology, and it allowed for a long stay on the Martian  surface. They dubbed their idea “Mars Direct.” Aboard an Ares rocket is the Earth Return Vehicle,  or ERV. No one is aboard this ship. It will pave the way for the astronauts who, years later, will  use the ERV to return to Earth. On its second day, the ERV deploys a small nuclear power reactor. The  reactor powers a chemical plant inside the ERV, which will produce the methane-oxygen  rocket fuel for the launch home. Nearby, a second robotic rover is guided to a  pre-picked landing site for the human crew. It places a radar transponder  to help guide the astronauts in. The long journey to land a human being on Mars  begins. Carrying the most skillfully assembled flight team in history, four astronauts begin  their 2 and a half year mission to the Red Planet. This will be the first time a human has  gone beyond the Earth-Moon system, 250 million miles farther than any person has ever been. To  counter the health problems of zero gravity and to fully acclimate the astronauts to Mars, the ship  will deploy a weighted tether attached to the last stage of the spent rocket booster. By thrusting  the ship into a rotational spin, the counterweight of the rocket will create centrifugal force  and thus artificial gravity. The crew will be able to live with their feet planted firmly  on the floor during their six-month transit. But the hab is not entirely alone on its  journey. Just ahead of it is a second ERV, identical to the first, launched just  a few weeks prior to the hab. It will prepare the way for a second human crew  that will follow two years later. It can also function as a backup for the first  mission if anything should go wrong. On the sixth month of the flight, the crew  will gaze upon an alien world. This is the new frontier. After days in orbit and  satisfied with the landing conditions, the crew will receive final word  from mission control on Earth: “All systems are go for entry, descent,  landing.” It will be a tense 40 minutes before people back on Earth get the signal  from Mars and know if everything has gone well. “Hey, 75 feet. Looking good. Down a  half. Forward. 60 seconds. Lights on. Forward. Forward. Down 2 ½. Forward.  Drifting to the right. Contact. Okay, engine stop. We’re seeing it on  the LTP. We’re on Mars, everybody.” For more than 500 days, the astronauts will live  on Mars and embark on one of the greatest journeys of discovery in the history of science. Will they  find life or the fossilized remains of past life? Such a discovery could tell us whether our solar  system has seen more than one genesis and answer the ultimate question: Are we alone? In any case,  these explorers will be learning how feasible the colonization of Mars really is and whether  or not mankind has a future among the stars. Then, when the time comes and the window for  Earth return opens, the crew will climb into their Earth Return Vehicle and head home.  They will arrive home as heroes, the first to stretch the limit of man’s expanse from one  planet to another. Their names will be added to the list of great explorers of new worlds.  In their footsteps, others will follow. What began as a trickle is free to  rise into a deluge of humankind, sweeping over a once barren land and  transforming it into a viable new world. When Baker and Zubrin presented Mars  Direct to their bosses at Martin, they expected the worst. To their surprise,  management was excited about it. They liked the fact that everything needed was relatively  simple and near-term. As time went on, Martin Marietta embraced Mars Direct as  their creation and put Bob and Baker on an airplane to several NASA centers to present Mars  Direct and try to build some momentum for it. Baker and Zubrin flew to the Marshall Space Flight  Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This had been one of the original design hubs for the Apollo moon  landings, but recently many of the engineers had become demoralized by the failure of NASA’s  SEI program. Tag-team style, Baker and Zubrin presented their alternative mission architecture.  The response was thrilling. The old-school Apollo crowd embraced it. This was a plan that  actually made sense and was within reach. Baker and Zubrin gave a number of briefings. The  first was at the Marshall Space Flight Center, next was at Johnson. “These people were  incredibly excited.” Over the next few weeks, Zubrin and Baker were flown around the country,  pitching to all branches of NASA. Everywhere they went, the response was electric.  The plan was standing up to scrutiny, and groups all over NASA were converting  to Mars Direct. Their tour culminated in a public presentation to the National Space  Society. The crowd gave the two aerospace engineers a standing ovation. A week later,  the story was in newspapers around the country. But a counterattack was beginning to form  within NASA. The space station teams and many in the advanced propulsion groups were  against the idea, since Mars Direct didn’t need their programs. They felt under threat. As  quickly as doors opened for Zubrin and Baker, they began to close. NASA didn’t want  to pursue a Mars mission at that time. They didn’t want to be derailed by  a bunch of Mars fanatics who thought that their idea of what NASA should do should  overwhelm what NASA thought NASA should do. What Zubrin and Baker did in Mars Direct was  literally come up with the leanest solution, the one that involved the least spending on an  assortment of technologies and infrastructural elements, including, for example, making no use  whatsoever of the International Space Station. So, people involved in all those programs were very  upset because they were showing that you could go to Mars without their program being required.  They felt that they were being de-justified. The NASA administration rejected Mars Direct.  The two engineers were outsiders again. But Zubrin remained determined. Bob had grabbed  hold of the idea, and I could see that it was his. No matter what I did, he was going to  do what he was going to do. He was going to be a proponent for it and push it. I really  saw my role sort of evaporate. It’s a little bit like being a dim planet next to a bright  star. Around him, in terms of his enthusiasm, you really can’t compete with that. All you can  do is decide how you’re going to deal with it. By February 1991, Baker quit Martin to  start his own firm. Zubrin battled on for the next year and a half. He tried to  get NASA to pay attention, giving speeches, writing papers, but Mars Direct’s time  seemed to have passed. Then, in 1992, a new administration came into power at  NASA, and Zubrin saw a second chance. He was invited to brief Mike Griffin, who  was the Associate Administrator for Space Exploration in charge of the whole Space  Exploration Initiative. Griffin immediately became a very strong supporter of Mars  Direct. But before the engineers at NASA would take another look at Mars Direct, they  wanted Zubrin to prove that producing rocket fuel on Mars could work. They gave Martin  Marietta a small budget to do an experiment. Zubrin and his team built a machine called  the In-Situ Propellant Plant. It could take carbon dioxide, the dominant gas in the Martian  atmosphere, combine it with a little hydrogen, and produce methane-oxygen fuel. “We did it in three  months with a very small team,” Zubrin said. “We built a plant that was 94% efficient, and no  one who actually participated in that effort was actually a real chemical engineer. They  were all aerospace engineers like me, who were simply dabbling in chemistry to prove to NASA that  19th-century chemical engineering really worked.” With the experiment a success, the administration  had Zubrin give detailed briefings of the mission plan to the engineers at the Johnson Space Center.  They liked it but had some problems. Dave Weaver, the lead mission architect, had  concerns. “There were a number of things that we were concerned about  with Bob Zubrin’s mission. First of all, we thought his estimates of mass were probably  too optimistic. He didn’t have sufficient margins for a variety of things, not the least of  which would be provisions for the crew, the amount of water that would be required.  We thought his ascent vehicle was very large, which meant his power requirements, his propellant  requirements, were much larger than needed to be. His trip times out were too long, and that for  very little effort, you could get them shorter.” Weaver took Zubrin into his office, and  the two men worked out a compromise mission architecture. First, Weaver wanted three launches  for every mission instead of two. The first year, three ships would launch: a Mars Ascent  Vehicle (MAV), an unoccupied Habitat (Hab), and an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV). The Hab and MAV  would land on the surface and begin producing fuel for the return flight and air for the crew. These  craft would spend two solitary years on Mars, allowing NASA to test all of the systems before  sending a human crew. Then, in the third year, three more ships would launch, this time  with the Hab occupied by astronauts. The other two ships are for a future mission, unless  needed as a backup for this crew. Once on Mars, the team could also utilize the first  Hab. Then, after a year and a half stay, the crew would climb aboard their small  capsule and rendezvous with the return ship. This ship would carry them back home  in a roomier environment than Zubrin’s ERV. Zubrin called the plan “Mars Semi-Direct.” NASA  called it the “Design Reference Mission.” “They had a larger crew than we had, they had  bigger ships, they had more equipment, they had heavier equipment. So, they  had to do the mission in three launches instead of two. But it was done with  the same principles of Mars Direct.” The plan was subjected to the same cost  analysis that tagged the 90-day report with a $450 billion price tag. The Design Reference  Mission came back at a fraction of the cost: $55 billion spread out over 10 years. It could  be done within NASA’s existing budget. The plan made the cover of Newsweek. Here was a mission  architecture that was affordable and could be done today with existing technology. But NASA’s  astronauts have not left low Earth orbit since. With the completion of the International  Space Station and the retiring of the Space Shuttle program, a debate rages over the  future of space exploration. Should NASA continue to focus on low Earth orbit,  developing technologies for the future, or should NASA have a goal like it did in  the 1960s with Apollo? “The way we got to the moon was by a presidential imperative that  demanded that NASA get to the moon within a decade,” says an expert. “So, NASA was forced  to sit down, design a plan for how to do that, and then fly the mission. Since that time,  without the presence of a driving imperative, we engage in basically a random set of  constituency-driven programs which are justified ad hoc afterwards by the argument that  they could prove useful sometime in the future.” “When you actually have a plan to go somewhere, I think NASA has focused on a steady process  where the government can’t just pull the plug on their funding. I think the Apollo  cancellation was very traumatic for NASA, and it really transformed NASA from what it was in  the 60s to more of what it is now. If you have a singular program like going to Mars, then it is  very vulnerable to having its funding pulled.” “NASA must be destination-driven. It is the only  thing that allows the agency to be productive. NASA was a hundred times more productive when it  was destination-driven than in the period that it has not been. And we have stagnated in NASA since  1973. More than a generation has been wasted.” “The American space program’s been stagnant for  30 years. There is a once-in-a-generation shot right now to get it moving again by giving  it a goal that’ll take it somewhere. So, the stakes today are high. And if you  ask me if I am nervous right now, I am.” Dr. Zubrin, why is NASA stuck in low  Earth orbit? “The problem with NASA’s lack of current achievement is not money. The  problem is lack of focus, it’s lack of a goal. It shouldn’t be humans to Mars in 50 years;  it should be humans to Mars in 10. We can do this. We do not need gigantic nuclear electric  spaceships to send people to Mars. That is pork; it’s nonsense. The primary question  I get from the American people is, ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’ There’s a big  sense of disappointment, almost verging on a sense of betrayal. The purpose of spaceships is to  actually travel across space and go to new worlds, not to hang out in space and observe  the health effects from doing so.” Dr. Zubrin, in your testimony, you were very  passionate, but you also were mad. You’re mad we haven’t done this, or that this vision has  been stolen from a generation. “I guess you could say that. It’s like Columbus coming back from the  New World and Ferdinand and Isabella saying, ‘Ah, so what? Forget it, burn the ships.’ Okay,  you know, that’s what has happened in this country. We’ve won our point that there needs  to be a destination. What we need the point we need to win on now is that the destination  needs to be Mars, and it needs to be soon.” The movement to send humans to Mars in the near  term began at the University of Colorado in 1978. A graduate student in astrophysics named Chris  McKay gave a small seminar on the possibility of introducing life to Mars. “I got interested  in Mars in graduate school. I entered graduate school the same year that Viking landed on Mars  and sent back these images, and it sent back data that showed all the elements needed for life  are here on this planet, and yet there’s no life here. I know that’s odd; it’s sort of the  lights are on, and nobody’s home. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s curious.’ So, some of my other  grad students and I, we sort of got together to talk about, ‘Well, if there’s no life on  Mars now, could we put life there?’ And that evolved also into the question, ‘Was maybe there  life in the past, and we could find fossils, evidence of it? Well, how would you do that?  Well, you do that by sending people there.'” Together with fellow graduate students,  the group decided to put together a small conference to discuss the  matter of human Mars exploration. We basically just started a forum. We invited  everybody from all the NASA centers and from all the universities involved in it, and  they all came. It really was, in retrospect, a very important step toward building a  consensus for human exploration of Mars. In 1996, I published my first book,  “The Case for Mars,” and the response was phenomenal. I got 4,000 letters  from all over the world. I had Parisian bankers and 12-year-old kids in  Poland, firemen from Saskatoon, and astronauts. They were all writing to me  and asking, “How do we make this happen?” Bob Zubrin came to the third Mars conference  and got very much involved. He was willing and interested in forming a society, forming  a group, and organizing. He said, “Look, if we could pull these people together,  if we can get them to work together, we could have a force that could  actually make humans to Mars happen.” The group formed the Mars Society. Robert Zubrin  became the president. They held their first convention in 1998. The convention was just magic.  We had no idea how many people were coming. They were there not just from the United States and  Canada and Europe; they were there from Israel, they were there from Mozambique, they were  there from New Zealand. It was astonishing. Since its inception, the Mars Society has  attracted members worldwide. Derek Shannon, the head of the Southern California chapter,  has met with political leaders from all over the country. “If you make them look at the whole  Mars vision in historical terms, it becomes a much easier sell. How will the Martians remember  our century? They’re probably not going to remember our deficit, our wars, our health care.  Those will be footnotes. What they’ll remember is that out of all of human history, there came a  generation that decided to take this amazing step out into space. And if you tell politicians  that they’re the ones whose names actually get to be remembered, that’s when hopefully  the space program starts going somewhere.” In order to further the knowledge necessary  for a manned mission to the Red Planet, the Mars Society has been building research stations  around the globe, all of them based on the design of Zubrin’s Hab module. Most recently, the society  set up a desert research station in Utah. Here, international researchers and aerospace students  come to do experiments under the harsh desert conditions and learn what’s necessary to  keep a Mars crew alive and productive. “Basically, what we’re doing here is undergoing  analog studies. Crews of up to six people at a time come together to live in a full simulation  environment for up to 14 days. So, what that means is every time we go outside the hab, people  have to don space suits, have to depressurize when we go outside. They’re called extravehicular  activities. They can only be of a certain duration due to the air supply. We have to recycle all our  water and basically have our own food as well.” “It’s great to fantasize, but it’s  another thing when you have to put it together when the nuts have to fit the bolts.” Like the Apollo missions to the Moon,  sending human beings to Mars will mean putting people in harm’s way. There  are many dangers in outer space, and many things could go wrong. A serious  equipment breakdown could doom the crew to their deaths. Some argue that the  risk of failure is simply too high. “You know, back in the days when  medieval man was looking out from Europe and thinking about exploring  the world, the world was unknown, and map makers populated their maps with  dragons. We’ve got the same thing today. There are people who are afraid to go out into  space, and they’ve populated their maps of the solar system with dragons. You know, we’ve  got cosmic radiation, we’ve got zero gravity, we’ve got back contamination. But  these are dragons that we can take on.” There are two kinds of radiation astronauts  must contend with in outer space: solar flares and cosmic rays. Solar flares  are floods of protons that burst from the Sun at irregular intervals and would be  dangerous to an unshielded human crew. “We are not ready to send humans to Mars  right now. We’ve got to know a lot more about radiation and radiation mitigation.  One of the Apollo flights barely missed, like by a week, a major solar event. If it  had gone off when the Apollo astronauts were on the way back and forth to the Moon, they would  have gotten their entire lifetime radiation dose in that one mission. That’s just one solar  flare, so that’s why we worry about this.” In the Mars Direct plan, Zubrin envisions  a central insulated core where a crew can retreat to while the radiation passes by. The  core would be surrounded by all the provisions of the mission. This should stop any harmful  dose of radiation from reaching the astronauts. “Basically, you use your pantry as your  storm shelter. So a solar flare happens, the alarm bell rings, the crew goes into  the storm shelter, they stay in there, cramped up pretty tight for a few hours  until the all-clear rings, and they come out. This is going to happen once, it might  happen twice in the course of the mission.” The second type of radiation is cosmic rays.  This constant rain of charged particles comes from interstellar space and cannot be  avoided without many meters of shielding. “We can experience some of this type of radiation  on Earth at high altitudes. Airline pilots who spend their careers flying high in the atmosphere  can receive almost as much of this radiation throughout their life as a Mars astronaut  would on a two-and-a-half-year mission.” “It’s a long trip. It’s a six-month trip there,  six-month trip back, it’s probably a year on the surface. That’s a lot of radiation. The best  estimates are that the magnitude of that dose is not that great, perhaps 60 rem of radiation  scattered over two and a half years. Now, 60 rem of radiation delivered over a long period  of time like that would not create any noticeable effects at all. It would, though, it is believed,  increase your statistical risk of getting cancer at some point later in your life by about 1%.  Right now, if you’re an average American and you do not smoke, you have a 20% chance you’re going  to die of cancer. This would make it 21. If you’re an average American smoker, it’s 40. So, in fact,  if you recruited the Mars crew out of smokers and sent them to Mars without their tobacco, you  would be reducing their chance of getting cancer.” With the immense distance from Earth  never before experienced by a human being, with the constant dangers of outer space  surrounding their small life-sustaining craft, and with nowhere else to go, the  psychological impact on a crew could be severe. “Fear is real. I mean, it would be,  to me, abnormal for a person to not feel the fear of getting on a rocket and  launching into space and going to Mars. So, I think fear is a very normal thing that all  astronauts, in fact, are supposed to have, and I would be afraid to fly with  someone who does not have fear.” Some psychologists worry that cabin fever could  set in and the crew might literally go crazy. “The human Mars mission is a more rigorous and  difficult condition than most of us experience in daily life, but it is hardly a more difficult  situation than many people have endured throughout human history. We could compare the Mars crew to  the crew of 19th-century or prior sailing vessels, many of whom were away from home for three  years or more, under conditions in which they’re eating extremely bad food, without  any medical knowledge to support their health, commanded by brutal officers. In every  respect, the crew of a human Mars mission, with the full support of mission support  and the whole world cheering for them, and great rewards awaiting them in life upon  their return, is in a vastly superior condition.” The Mars Direct crew will spend most of their  time inside the two-story Habitat (Hab), carefully designed to promote psychological  well-being despite the confinement. “The space where I think everybody would spend the  most time, just like a lot of homes on Earth, would be the galley/wardroom  area. There would be chairs, a table, and some kind of large screen for  entertainment. You would have individual staterooms about four or five feet wide.  The ability for them to communicate with loved ones and colleagues on Earth,  I think, will be almost unlimited.” A Mars crew will need to be carefully  chosen and thoroughly tested to ensure their ability to handle the extreme  isolation. “Wow, what a view, isn’t it, John? It’s absolutely unreal.” John Young,  who went to the Moon, used to say that he could cover the Earth by just lifting his thumb  up to it. “And he says that when you go to Mars, you are going to redefine the concept of  loneliness. And so, it is very important that the crew be well-balanced and well-chosen  so that they can support each other. Whoever gets picked to go, they will have to learn  to live together for two and a half years.” “If you put out a call for volunteers for  the first crew to Mars, they’d be lined up coast to coast. Most people recognize  what’s left after you go is the good you left behind. And to take part in an adventure  of this character, such a historic character of extending the reach of the human species,  this is something of immortal significance.” One of the most bogus threats associated  with a Mars mission is the so-called back contamination issue, which is the notion that  you go to Mars and discover these very disease organisms that you bring back to Earth and destroy  all life on Earth. “If we discover life on Mars, one fear is that our Earth biology will have no  defense against possible Martian pathogens.” Some argue that missions to Mars cannot be risked  until we can prove Mars is free from harmful contaminants. “This is completely nonsensical.  There’s natural transfer of material from Mars to Earth all the time. We get around 500  kg of unsterilized Martian rocks landing on Earth every year, and they have been doing so  for the past three to four billion years. And so, if there were Martian organisms that could  contaminate the Earth, they’ve already done so.” Although the prospect of Martian diseases  seems remote, lawmakers have required that NASA create elaborate protocols to ensure that  any extraterrestrial material stays contained. Like the Apollo astronauts, who spent 17 days in  quarantine after their return from a sterile Moon, a Mars crew will have to be thoroughly  tested for any harmful Martian pathogens. “The probability is infinitesimally tiny.  But nevertheless, this is our home planet, and it’s extremely important,  and we have to protect it.” “The idea of a pathogen on Mars is clearly  ridiculous because there is no megaflora or megafauna on Mars for pathogens  to infect. So, it is impossible to propose a credible life cycle for a Martian  pathogen. The diseases that afflict us have been co-evolving with us and our ancestors and  near relatives for the past three billion years, and they are specifically designed to live inside  the habitat of the human body and to overcome its defenses. And they’ve been engaged in an arms race  with the human defenses for those three billion years. This is why humans do not get diseases  from distantly related species. For example, I don’t know of any person who has ever contracted  Dutch elm disease, and trees don’t get cat flu.” When the first Mars lander touches down,  the crew will be staring out at a new world, a place that in four billion years no eyes have  ever seen. The crew won’t be alone. Millions of television viewers back home will be watching  as the first man or woman places their footprint into the rust-colored soil. The crew will  savor these moments, for here, someday, a new branch of civilization might begin, and future  Martians will remember and celebrate this day. There is much for the crew to do and explore.  One of their main mission objectives will be to search for signs of microscopic life. To do  this, they will follow the ancient water flows, for on Earth, where there is water, there is life.  To help the crew in their search, they will have a pressurized rover that allows them to explore  in a comfortable shirt-sleeve environment. This means the crew can examine a vast area around  the landing site during their 18-month stay. And there is much to explore. Mars has  58 different kinds of topography and a surface area equivalent to all the continents  of Earth combined. “To me, this is a surface over here.” If these explorers can uncover the  fossilized remnants of indigenous Martian life, they will redefine mankind’s understanding of  its place in the universe. “The big boulder, for if life arose separately on  a planet so close to our own, it strongly suggests that the universe is a  biologically rich place and full of life.” For some, the ultimate question of Mars, though,  is: Will there be human settlements on the planet? Will Mars become a new branch of human  civilization? As each subsequent mission explores a wider and wider area of the planet over several  years, an ideal site for a base will be found, probably one with a thermal vent that can  supply water and power. At that point, several Habs will be landed in this one spot,  with crews that plan to stay for four, eight, or even 12 years. The Habs will be interconnected,  and a permanent human presence on Mars will be established. This scientific community will  have to learn to become self-sufficient, to be able to survive on Mars without  supplies constantly being sent from Earth. But unlike any other planet in the solar system  besides Earth, Mars has all of the fundamentals needed to make this possible. Its 24-hour  and 37-minute day is critical for growing plants. It has all of the elements necessary for  creating building materials like plastics, metals, and glass, and it has tons of water frozen into  the soil. If we can develop the craft of living on Mars, then Mars becomes inhabitable, not  immediately physically, but intellectually. I mean, look, what determines whether an environment  is habitable or not? Is Colorado habitable? We’re not naturally adapted to live in Colorado; we’re  tropical animals. No one could survive a single winter night here without technology such as  clothing, efficient use of fire. We invented our way into becoming people that could colonize  such hostile environments. Eventually, with a lot of ingenuity and invention, the scientists will  learn to live off the land. They will grow crops in the iron-rich but potassium-poor soil, and  they will produce oxygen and energy from the water and atmosphere. Sooner or later, children  will be born, the first true Martians. They will grow up to see Mars as their home. With time,  more and more people will arrive. These won’t only be scientists but settlers, people who plan  to stay. They may come for all kinds of reasons, but to them, Mars will be a chance to start  over, to build a new life for themselves. The well of human social thought is not exhausted  by the present age, and I don’t think it will ever be. There will always be people with new  ideas on how humans should live together. With Mars so far away, the hold of Earth governments  on their colonies will be tenuous. The Martians will need to govern themselves. Mars is not  going to be a utopia; Mars is going to be a lab, an open frontier, a place where things are going  to be tried out. I think we’ll see a lot of noble experiments on Mars. Perhaps some of these  Martian colonies, with their novel ideas based on the best thought the 21st century has to offer,  maybe they’ll find ways in which humans create societies that are more humane and offer more  opportunity for human potential. The ultimate dream of the Martians will be to terraform their  planet, to make Mars as hospitable as Earth. This may not be as big a fantasy as it seems. Here we  are on Earth, a world that’s very sophisticated, developed, and complete, and anything we do is  just a subtraction. It’s because we live on such a biologically rich planet. When we go to Mars, we  have an opportunity that we don’t have on Earth. Here’s a planet that’s died, a world that’s not  full of biology, probably doesn’t have any at all. Well, there we can actually do something to help.  Once there are large human settlements on Mars that have significant industrial capability, we  could actually start addressing ourselves to the question of transforming the Martian environment  itself, terraforming Mars as it’s called. Because Mars was once a warm and wet planet, and it  could be made so again through human engineering efforts. With daytime temperatures in the Martian  tropical zone averaging around 0° Celsius, and with an atmosphere only 1% as thick  as Earth’s, exposure to these elements by a human without a spacesuit would be instantly  fatal. The first step to terraforming Mars and bringing it back to life will be for the Martian  colonists to warm up their planet. Well, we know how to warm up planets; we’re doing it on Earth  by putting gases in the atmosphere. On Earth, it’s not a good idea to warm up the planet;  the temperature was just fine, thank you, we don’t need it any warmer. But in principle, if  you could trap the sunlight reaching Mars today, every single photon that’s hitting Mars, Mars  would warm up in about 10 years. Well, obviously, you can’t trap every single photon that’s hitting  Mars, but you can trap about 10% of them with the greenhouse effect. So that would imply that Mars  could warm up in about 100 years. Well, 100 years is a long time, but it’s not astronomically long.  One idea is to build small automated factories that produce super greenhouse gases with no  ozone-depleting side effects. Although these gases would be unwelcome on Earth, for the Martians,  they would be an efficient way to trap heat. Then, within a few decades, we would raise Mars by more  than 10° Celsius. And if you did that, that would cause massive amounts of carbon dioxide that  is currently absorbed into the Martian soil to start to outgas. Carbon dioxide is also a natural  greenhouse gas. As it builds up in the atmosphere, more and more heat will be trapped, which will, in  turn, cause more CO2 to outgas. The process will become automatic, and as the atmosphere thickens,  Mars will eventually reach a state of equilibrium and stay warm naturally. The rise in air pressure  would mean that the human colonists could discard their pressure suits and walk around the  surface of Mars, carrying only a supply of oxygen. And as the temperatures rise on Mars,  water frozen into the soil will begin to melt out, and for the second time in its history, Mars  would have liquid water on its surface. Dry Martian rivers will start to flow, seas will rise,  and there will be rain clouds in the skies. The return of Mars to its warm and wet stage will make  it a fertile environment for life. Any indigenous Martian organisms lying dormant will begin to  grow, and Mars will be full of Martians. If no native life emerges or that life is all dead,  then humans could begin addressing the idea of bringing life from Earth. At first, it would be  simple organisms, perhaps genetically engineered, that would thrive in the Martian environment.  Then more complex plants could be introduced. The plants would be right at home in the carbon  dioxide atmosphere, and with no competition and a whole planet to cover, they could transform  Mars into a green world. Warming Mars so that it sustains life is rapid, but then the slow process  of making the atmosphere breathable for humans and animals starts, and that’s done by plants.  Although the process will happen naturally, if the colonists can’t find a quicker way,  it will take tens of thousands of years. This is a philosophical debate. Many people think  the universe has a big sign on it that says, “Do not touch, leave it alone.” It was made this  way; it is not in our purview as human beings to change anything. I can respect that view, although  I disagree with it. I think the universe has a big sign on it that says, “Go forth and spread  life.” Because when I look around the Universe, I think life is the most amazing thing we see. It is  just incredible, and we human beings are uniquely positioned to help spread life from this little  tiny planet, which it seems to have been started on, beyond. And that’s our gift. Earth’s gift  to the universe, I think, is the gift of life. But this scheme for terraforming Mars is based on  20th-century notions of engineering. I don’t think it is how Mars will actually be terraformed. What  you have here is a 20th-century mind trying to address a 21st-century problem. And so, I think  Mars will be terraformed by the 23rd century, not by the 33rd. By the 23rd, things that would  seem utterly fantastical to us as to how it will actually be done, but it’ll be done. We’re  at a crossroads today. We either muster the courage to go, or we risk the possibility of  stagnation and decay. The exploration of the solar system and expanding life through the rest  of our solar system, and someday beyond, is the kind of thing that will keep our civilization  going. We’re explorers by nature. Eventually, we will go to the stars. The question is, when  will we start? I think a manned Mars mission could happen within 15 years. Some days I’m  very optimistic. I think we can do it in 10, maybe 15 years. Other days, I see all the  political things going into the space program. I look back on 30 years we’ve been bogged  down, and I get more negative about it, and I say it’s going to be another three decades  or four decades. I would be surprised if we got to Mars prior to 2025 or 2030, understanding the  various political obstacles that exist and what we need to fight through to get the program started.  I believe that we will be on Mars by 2020. You have to believe in hope. You have to believe in  the future. There are more and more people coming around to the point of view that a positive future  for humanity requires human expansion into space. We will eventually break through the forces of  inertia that have been holding this thing back. The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, in the southwestern United States. These  are the members of Mission 118 at the MDRS. They call their assignment Kiwi Mars 2012.  Their aim is to discover what it’s like to live and work in an alien environment as  a prelude to humans one day going to Mars, the Red Planet. The technology for explorers  to reach Mars actually exists today, but the troubled global economy and the lack of political  will are just two major challenges to be overcome before such a journey can take place. The lengthy  duration of such a voyage is another hurdle. So, without the conditions aligning favorably for the  journey, it’s unlikely we’ll see footprints in the Martian dust anytime soon. Nevertheless, the  Red Planet is in our sights and within our grasp, but until a manned Mars mission is practical,  what can we do to prepare for humankind’s greatest exploratory endeavor? The answer for the crew  of Kiwi Mars 2012 is to learn something about exploring and living on Mars right here,  without leaving Earth, and perhaps in some small way contribute to the next giant leap for  [Music] mankind. [Music] [Music] [Music] The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) was built at the  beginning of the 21st century by the Mars Society, an international nonprofit organization devoted to  promoting the exploration and eventual settlement of Mars. The MDRS comprises a habitat, a  greenhouse, and a wastewater recycling plant, and nearby there’s a small observatory. The habitat  deliberately resembles a spacecraft that’s landed on the surface of Mars. It’s two stories high and  approximately 10 meters in diameter. The ground floor is given over to a science lab, engineering  bay, spacesuit storage, and bathroom facilities. The upper deck is where the crew cooks, eats,  plans work programs, relaxes, and sleeps in tiny cabins. Crews spend rotations of two weeks  each at the MDRS. They come from universities, science institutions, even space agencies from  all over the world, to experience this illusion of [Music] Mars. Kiwi Mars Commander Hara Mosanu,  who lives in New Zealand, first stayed at the MDRS in 2011 as part of a Romanian space agency  crew. “For me, this place is magical because it gives you the chance to feel the pressure  and the challenges of being a field astronaut, and there are very few places on Earth that can  make you do this because very few places on Earth have the equipment.” She enjoyed the experience  so much, she’s returned with a Kiwi crew, or more precisely, an Australasian crew. By the  time Hara had secured a slot in the MDRS schedule, she had little time to conduct a full recruitment  process. “We couldn’t really do too much about that in the little amount of time we had, but um,  these two Australians are very, very great guys, so they will only add to the crew. And at the  end of the day, the uh, crews that will go on Mars will not be from just one country, but they  will uh, be multicultural. So, I think one of the issues that we’re trying to address here is how  do we get along, being from so many backgrounds? I think this is the most important thing.” So, with  four crew members from New Zealand and two from Australia, drawn from Hara’s network of colleagues  and friends, Kiwi Mars 2012 is a Trans-Tasman mission. Heraa is the Kiwi Mars Mission commander  and represents the Kiwi Space Foundation, which aims to foster a New Zealand space industry  and education framework. Mike Bner is executive officer and mission journalist, contributing  daily blogs to the Kiwi Space Foundation website, with a particular interest in geology.  Ellie Harley’s role is Mission Specialist, Planetary Sciences, while teacher Bruce Narua  takes on the job of Health and Safety Officer, as well as communicating daily to an audience of  school students in New Zealand. From Australia, artist An Bey supports Kiwi Mars 2012  as Mission Specialist, Life Sciences, and is keen on exploring whether art might  have a place in interplanetary exploration. Fellow Australian Don Stewart, with experience  in meteorology, is the mission’s weatherman and engineer. But just how valid is a stay at the  Mars Desert Research Station? What does the crew hope to contribute to the knowledge necessary  to successfully reach and explore the Red Planet? “This environment absolutely is an analog for the  real thing, there’s no doubt about that. Look, even if you stripped all that away, what a great  place to come. So, for two weeks, I’m just looking forward to being in a totally alien environment,  something I’ve never experienced before. And I think the concept of living in a habitat, which  is back over there behind me, for two weeks with strangers essentially, is an intriguing one.  Whether we’ll all be speaking to each other at the end of it remains to be seen. Well, I hope  as an artist, I’ll try and find, I’ll be able to work with scientists and collaborate to try and  find other ways to interpret scientific data. Um, this is a field trip for me, and I’d like to  understand what confined spaces are and I’d like to understand more about an extreme environment.  It’s an adventure in different regards for me. It’s a geological adventure, that’s for sure. When  you see the photos of the area, you’ll understand why. Um, it’s an adventure about Mars. Uh, I do  believe we have to go to Mars. I believe we need to go to Mars because uh, we have a responsibility  to ensure the survival of the human species, and also to the sorts of factors that people need  to take into account if they live, maybe if they set up a space station on the moon, or on Mars,  or even in, I guess, a remote, a really remote, harsh environment on Earth. So, in some ways, the  sorts of things we’re doing here would be a little bit like going and living on the Cor Island in  Antarctica for 12 months, or a couple of weeks. Uh, it’s really about how my experience here,  living on Mars, will actually translate towards students in New Zealand, and that they can get a  better appreciation of what that means. This is why we are here, actually. It doesn’t matter what  will happen in the long term. It absolutely has no importance what will happen. Important is what we  will be learning from this experience. That’s why we have MDRS, that’s why we have uh, rotations,  which means the period of time when a crew stays at the Hub. It is a learning curve for everyone,  for us, for our society, and for humankind.” Even before the mission officially starts, Health  and Safety Officer Bruce Nay Arua is faced with a medical emergency. “I was just rushing.  I pushed that door too hard, and I sort of… Annelie has fallen down the steps outside the  habitat on the first day and twisted her ankle. If you just stay there and leave ice  on it for at least 15 minutes. Alright, take down the SWI communications from the habitat.  Pro difficult, so Hara and Mike drive the 11 km to Hanksville, the closest settlement, because,  um, although she says she’s not broken anything, we cannot really be sure. And I would like to  have an X-ray or something like that done to her, to make absolutely sure that she’s safe. I think  what’s such a shame is we finished the training on the ATVs, the quad bikes, before, and Annelie had  never ridden one before. And after the training, she went out on it and spent about 20 minutes  riding around. She came back with a big smile across her face and said, “That was awesome.” She  was so happy. And the next thing, she’s flying out the door and down the steps, and uh, oh dear.  Talk about going from one extreme to the other. “A crew member of mine, she fell on the stairs,  and I think she twisted her ankle. I hope it’s not broken, but because I have no way of knowing,  I need to make absolutely sure. Is it possible we could get an X-ray done? 300 West? Awesome,  thank you so much, sir. Okay, see you soon. Bye.” Not wanting to risk Annelie having a broken  ankle, Hara elects to take her for the almost 90 km drive to the nearest X-ray clinic. “Yes, it’s  not broken. Thank you for your help. Thank you for your help. Do you want this?” What the incident  reveals is that any crews on Mars are going to have to cope with injury and illness themselves  and be medically trained for any eventuality, from cuts and bruises to compound fractures.  The nearest hospital to Mars is going to be not 90 km away, but even at its closest, over 50  million km distant on Earth. A $300 X-ray later, and Annelie returns to confirm that it is just  a sprain. “$300 later, look at that. Awesome, what a great job. And he left his child’s birthday  party to come in. Oh wow. And the X-rays are fine, so it’s so great.” But she faces a frustrating  wait to see whether she’ll recover enough to take an active part in the rest of the mission. “On  first 24 hours, to keep it elevated. From that, it’s going to be all right. He said maybe  6 weeks, 6 weeks H. But it’s not broken.” Physical challenges apart, a psychological  trial Martian explorers will have to face is living together in close confinement. In this  respect, the MDRS is a good indicator of what to expect. The illusion is complete; crew cabins  are small, and private space is extremely limited. Beyond the sleeping quarters, it’s difficult  to find privacy, peace, and quiet. On Mars, will likely have to be timed and occasionally  negotiated. Living together in close proximity is nothing new. People have been doing it for  centuries, and any family that’s lived on board a small boat or in a camper van will know exactly  what the challenges are. At night, in the MDRS, for example, those who retire early are sometimes  frustrated by the noise from those who stay up talking or watching DVDs. And personal habits,  whether an ongoing sniff, a tendency to hum tunes, or the use of a certain repetitive phrase, are  magnified by confinement. On Mars, the last thing you’d want would be tensions boiling over due  to annoying personal habits, because it won’t be easy to escape them. Even a quick stroll outside  would involve getting dressed up in a spacesuit, and anyway, for safety’s sake, it’s unlikely  you’d be allowed to go alone. Within 2 days of the mission, tensions are running high. Hara wants to  fully enact a landing and arrival at the habitat, including a mock landing on Mars, reaching the  habitat, and an arrival ceremony. The others, also suffering from jet lag and exhaustion, aren’t  convinced such an act is necessary and just want to begin the simulation. “Are we landing on Mar  [Music] Mar? Can we do here compromise? Okay, do you guys want to? Well, the only thing I wanted  to include in the landing is the cultural part.” The arrival plan included a ceremonial burying  of some rocks which Hara has brought all the way from New Zealand. “By the way, it’s not  Hara and I aren’t arguing [Music] about it. It’s not that Hara wants to, and I don’t want to.  It’s just what…” After much debate, it’s agreed to abandon the arrival and delay the stone burial  ceremony. “We cannot do it. Fine.” “I think, um, you know, within the first 48 hours, we had all  been suffering from, um, tiredness, jet lag. Um, we all deal with that in different ways. Um, maybe  Ally just came out and was more overt about it. I certainly felt some tension, I have to say, in  that time. I’m not a person who actually speaks out like that, um, uh, but I did agree with some  of her comments. Um, so when she spoke about it, and she said, ‘Or does no one else feel the same  way?’ I actually did say, ‘Yeah, I do feel the same way in some regard.’ But I think it was more  important to actually talk about that, and um, for it not to be an impediment, um, for the rest of  the mission. And so, airing it was the best thing. Um, and I’m glad she did. So, I was actually,  I felt quite relieved after she said it, to be honest.” “She’s on there.” However, Bruce has to  exercise his health and safety authority to make sure Hara’s enthusiasm for the mission doesn’t  override her own basic necessities. “Old here, to eat something, otherwise she’ll flake. Yeah, she’s  not coming out unless she’s had breakfast. Right, y-yep, she said she’ll eat. If she doesn’t, let  me know.” Hara’s created a challenge for herself, though. After flying from New Zealand to Los  Angeles, she then elected to drive all the way to Colorado to rendezvous with the rest of  the crew. It took 15 hours, after which there was no time for rest before continuing on to the  desert research station. At this point, Hara has been on the go for over 30 hours. But then, Bruce  has his own condition to manage. He’s diabetic, but it’s not until everyone’s at the MDRS that  he tells Hara, out of concern she restricts him from driving the quad bikes or going on field  trips without full support. That gives a new dimension to the expedition. “I don’t think it  will change too much because commanders on Mars, or on any field expedition, they have to deal  with emergencies. Even if they won’t be able to come with us on the field, which is probably the  case more for Bruce surprisingly than for Annelie, we will have plenty of work for them to do at the  hab, especially that we need people to be in coms, in coms contact. And in a way, strangely, I’m a  little bit relieved that we can have someone at the hab that is not, um, going to be upset that  they’re not going to go on a field trip. Because, as you know, we cannot have, um, everyone out  on the field. There have to be two people at all times in the [Music] hab.” The MDRS crews’  work involves necessary daily routines, coupled with more specialist work, such as  geology field trips. Operationally, on Mars, crews will have to undertake certain regular  activities to ensure their habitat continues to function efficiently. Even here, in  the Utah desert, nothing can be taken for granted, and flight engineer Don Stew  monitors fuel and water supplies daily. For the purposes of the simulation, the water  and fuel tanks are regarded as being inside a controlled environment, so no spacesuit is  necessary. Water on Mars is likely to be a major challenge. Even at the MDRS, water is rationed.  Showers are limited to once every three days, and all water is used sparingly. Conservation  for the Ki Mars crew also means being careful with toilet usage. Another aspect of isolation the  crew becomes aware of is the importance of pumps. Pumping equipment on Mars will be essential  and widely used for airflow, water transfer, hydraulic operation of equipment, airlocks,  refrigeration, waste disposal, and many other functions essential to survival and comfort. The  Ki Mars crew is reminded of this when one of the water pumps fails, meaning Don has to resort to  good old-fashioned science, using siphoning to transfer water from the tank on the trailer to the  habitat’s main tank. “I’d be prepared to wait for a little while. What do you think? Just put water  on the top and then eat and they’re very ymy.” Food is another challenge for those living  in an alien environment. As with the water, the food at the MDRS is in limited supply  and is largely dehydrated and freeze-dried to simulate the sort of provisions that  early Martian explorers might have to take with them. The catering routine alternates  between one day of cooking and the next, more of a “Just Add Water” approach. “We  made a muck-up yesterday with the cooking days. We actually went to cook and we didn’t  cook, so we’re just going to put it on track again now. Have a long cooking day today  and one tomorrow, and then cooking day.” Crews who stay at the desert research  station also participate in a nutrition study undertaken by Cornell University for  NASA, and Kiwi Mars is no exception. Mission 118 crew members weigh themselves each  morning and record the data. Each evening, they complete a survey about what they  consumed, how it tasted, how it made them feel, whether they ate more, the same, or  less than normal, and so on. This is done online and received by Cornell University’s  researchers. The nutrition study is one genuine, practical contribution MDRS crews can make to  a successful mission to Mars, incrementally building up a picture over time about how useful  or effective various types of food might be. However, one challenge real Martian  explorers won’t face, hopefully, is the invasion of their food supplies by  aliens, in this case, desert mice. The Kiwi Mars crew discovers on the third day that mice  have successfully penetrated the pantry and eaten their way into some of the food stocks, which  are discarded for health reasons. It’s a blow, and from here on, the crew keeps all rodent-risky  food in plastic bins that can be sealed shut. Next to the habitat is a greenhouse. Originally,  this was built with the aim of recycling gray water and experimenting with growing different  foods. However, it’s fallen into disrepair, the gray water recycling equipment lying idle, and  the greenhouse shelves empty of plants. On Mars, it’s possible astronauts will be able to extract  water in the form of ice from below the surface, but on the long journey to reach the Red  Planet, efficient water recycling will be essential, just as it is today on the  International Space Station. Presently, the space station recycles  just over 75% of its water, so it’s not yet fully self-sufficient. But  research into how water can be totally recycled promises to have tremendous benefits here on  Earth, as well as for future space explorers. Although the atmosphere in the Utah desert  is perfectly breathable, MDRS crews have the option of wearing simulated spacesuits for  going on EVAs (extravehicular activities), including Annelie, whose ankle is now fully  functional again. Spacesuits on Mars will have to cope with incredibly cold outside temperatures,  an unbreathable carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, and extremely low air pressure. “Okay, now you  wait five minutes, and you…” Such suits are currently being designed and trialed. For example,  at the same time as the Kiwi Mars mission, a group from the Austrian Space Forum tests a  prototype Mars suit in Austria’s Dachstein Ice Caves. At the MDRS, crew members simply wear  overalls and boots for venturing outside but kit up with backpacks containing air circulation  equipment and helmets that, while not airtight, do at least give the wearer some idea of what future  Martian explorers will have to contend with. Like the spacesuits, the habitat’s two airlocks  are not pressurized or even airtight, but Hara asks her crew to at least pretend they’re  waiting for decompression before venturing outside. Once outside, there will likely be three  options for Martian explorers: go on foot, travel on a motorized buggy of some sort, or pile into a  pressurized rover, which would allow them to take off their spacesuits and travel longer distances  in reasonable comfort. At the Utah station, crews have access to their own mock pressurized  rover, a four-wheel-drive SUV, though it’s not practical or safe to wear the spacesuits inside  the vehicle. This means any such rover on Mars is going to either be restricted to two occupants  or be much larger than the hab’s four-wheel drive. The Mars Desert Research Station’s all-terrain  vehicles, the quad bikes, prove an easiest solution for exploring the local environment.  Their range on Mars would be limited by the air supply of the spacesuits, however, though  they could be fitted with auxiliary tanks if required. And of course, they’d need to be powered  by something other than a petrol engine. On Mars, human explorers will have the ability to do in  a few hours or days what currently takes rovers weeks or months to achieve. Just being able to  physically pick up or crack open a rock will provide a wealth of knowledge that, with rover  technology today, is so limited and so slow. Gathered here in Utah, Mission  118 explores the desert landscape, searching for geological specimens and evidence  of water activity. But today, without spacesuits, as it’s 36° C. The experiment is about  understanding the geology of a catchment area, and so you can collect your gravels to find out  what’s in them. In this particular gravel, we may have some Jurassic deposits, Cretaceous deposits.  We’ve got a lot of really, really cool stuff here. A key clue to previous life on Mars, and the one  that would be the Holy Grail of geological finds, will be fossils. In the Utah desert, fossils  are plentiful if you know what to look for. On the ridge above the MDRS is a field of  fossilized oyster shells, between 60 million and 160 million years old, a clear sign that  there was once water and marine life in what is today an arid desert. The strata, or different  colored layers so obvious in the desert landscape, tell a fascinating geological story. Each  sedimentary layer represents a different period of geological progress and gives clues as to  what was happening tens of millions of years ago. On Mars, with rovers such as Spirit, Opportunity,  and now Curiosity, NASA’s strategy has been to understand what happened to Mars’s water by  looking for particular rocks or features, such as those that form when water is  present, just as the Kiwi Mars crew is doing in Utah. Even on the observatory path  beside the hab, there’s evidence of past water activity. These little balls are called  concretions, and although they look man-made, they are actually perfectly natural, and  they’re made in a similar way to a pearl is made in an oyster, starting with a single grain,  which then builds up over time, in this case, to become perfectly globe-shaped. Fascinating,  but guess where else they’re found? That’s right, on Mars. They were dubbed “blueberries” by  NASA scientists after they were discovered by Opportunity’s close-up camera. “You can see that  there’s these beds there, kind of going like this, yeah, and then right above it, some of them  going like that, and then you see this layer here of rocks kind of extends into there.  Totally different flow regimes. This tells you something about the speed of the flowing  water that deposited the formation, the speed.” Halfway through the mission, the  Kiwi Mars crew hosts a visit by scientist John Rus from NASA Ames in California. So you can see how narrow this is. This was  a fast-flowing regime of water here, probably similar to what we were just standing on. John  was a member of just the second crew to stay at the Mars Desert Research Station and has extensive  knowledge not just of the Utah landscape but what to look for in terms of water, fossils, and other  evidence of life. “The environment around the hab is very interesting and it is relevant to Mars  exploration. While it isn’t a Mars-like atmosphere or Mars-like temperature conditions, it does have  features that geologically look similar to what we have observed on Mars, such as inverted river  channels, steep gullies that are incising into cut banks of large buttes, and other features that  look like boulders laying around on these plains that may have been eroded by liquid or flowing  water. So, the surface here has been dominated by water erosion, and in some places on Mars,  that is also true. It is hypothesized that life, if it exists on Mars, might exist in rocks or  underneath rocks. And out here in Hanksville, around the hab, there’s very rich field sites  that have hypoendolithic colonizing underneath rocks and within rocks. That gives scientists a  chance, an opportunity to test their ideas, their theories, and their hypotheses about the potential  for life to live in rocks, perhaps on Mars.” Back at the habitat, the crew’s rock and fossil  collection grows as the days go by. They’ve found fossilized shark’s teeth, gypsum, and plenty  of petrified wood, including out in the field, a whole petrified tree trunk many millions of  years old. “I have managed to find some just stunning specimens of petrified wood, wood that  looks like wood, like it was cut up this morning, but what that’s also been silicified, and  it’s all orange, it’s red, it’s yellow, it’s green, it’s beautiful. When you look  around this landscape, you’re seeing layers, very clearly delineated layers. It’s called the  Morrison Formation. It’s sedimentary and was laid down over the eons by freshwater, by seawater,  by desert, and by plant. Everything’s the same, so whether you’re looking at a large scale or  a tiny scale, everything is exactly the same. We were looking in this microscope just a second  ago. I asked you to look on the plate before you looked in the eyeglass. You said there’s nothing  on the plate, and when you looked in the eyeglass, there’s a little pebble with pebble  stuck in it. And that’s the perfect illustration of what’s going on out there in  that landscape. It’s all on relative scales.” Beyond the scientific work programs  Martian explorers will have, there will be a need for recreation,  for reflection, and for establishing their own personalities within the habitat and  maybe on the Martian surface itself. Mascots, for example, representing the two countries  of the Ki Mars Expedition, are Tupu, a kiwi, and Kim, the kangaroo, reminders of homes half  a world away. Mascots aside, one of the givens in terms of cultural identity is the symbolic  planting of a flag. It was one of the first things the Apollo astronauts did on the moon and  will likely be one of the first ceremonies to be performed on Mars. In Utah, there’s a permanent  flag on top of the MDRS habitat, the red, green, and blue of the Martian flag. Red for Mars, and  green and blue to represent what Mars could become in the future if terraforming were to result in  the establishment of seas, lakes, and vegetation. It’s a flag of hope and ambition. But the Kiwi  Mars crew members have brought a mixture of their own cultural identities and personal passions  to Utah. Bruce Narua draws on his Maori heritage by painting and displaying the Maori flag. Hera  likewise celebrates her Romanian origins, while Don and Annelie realize they’ve forgotten to bring  something important to them from Australia. “Uh, this is Don Stewart’s painting, uh, over the  Australian flag, and he’s painted the First Nation flag, the Aboriginal flag, over the top,  just to, um, just to highlight the fact that, um, original people were the original inhabitants of  Australia. So we thought they needed a presence here. We thought that was missing. So he’s  painted over mine. He’s painted over his own.” Realizing the artistic potential of the desert’s  soils, flight engineer Don decides to turn some of the raw material into clay. “I’m going to do  is to put in a tiny, tiny amount of water and let it sit overnight, and hopefully it’ll come back  to something like pottery clay, and I can either make maybe a little vase or whatever, or maybe  just some little souvenir discs for all the crew to take back to Earth.” In the end, he chooses to  make a bowl, though without any means to glaze or fire it, it’s eventually returned to the desert.  Annelie also turns her attention to art, preparing for a planned exhibition based on the mission.  “What I’ve been trying to do is I’ve been trying to do some, um, drawings of people in spacesuits.  So I woke up early this morning. I thought I’d paint, um, Alexei Leonov. There he is up there.  It’s from his book, um, ‘Time and Perception in Space.’ So I just thought I’d try and warm up. I’m  not really a watercolor painter. I haven’t really trained as a watercolor painter. But there,  look, I’m giving it a go. This will probably be the first of a number of, um, impressions,  just to see if I can get the hang of the suits.” Perhaps more important than what the crew has  brought with them is what they send back. Each day, teacher Bruce communicates with the Kiwi  Mars Mission Control at Wellington’s Carter Observatory, where hordes of school students  have been visiting and learning all about the mission and about the Red Planet itself. Via  online messaging, they send questions to Bruce and the crew about what the mission is doing,  what they’re looking for, what they’re eating, and generally what it’s like to live on Mars. “So  I’m telling them we eat all sorts of different foods. Um, all of it is rehydrated. In  other words, we’re just adding water, but it tastes just like the same kind of  food that we’ve got in New Zealand. And um, a lot of them are getting a great kick out of  that because, you know, they think it actually tastes quite different and horrible. The main  questions I’ve been asking is about how we’ve been getting on here. Um, some of it’s been about  what the food we eat. Some of it’s been around, oh, how do you go to the toilet? Um, what’s  it feel like to be in a spacesuit? Those kinds of questions. Um, we’ve actually had a couple of  schools come in specifically for Kiwi Mars because they are looking at space and they’re looking  at extreme life in their own studies at school, and it’s fitted in really well. We had some really  good comments from the teachers about that as well because it’s actually, if they haven’t learned  a lot, I mean, they’ve come with an imagination, and it’s fired them up to actually  learn more. So that’s really great.” On Mars, however, communication with Earth will  involve a frustrating delay, anything up to 20 minutes, even though radio signals travel at  the speed of light, due to the immense distances between the two planets. And so, the Kiwi  Mars mission goes on, with the daily routines, the field trips, and the ever-present  spectacular desert landscape to explore. With just one day left of the mission, and by  the light of a full moon, the Mission 118 crew, under Hera’s guidance, creates a ceremonial Maori  compass using rocks on the ground. Hera and Bruce also finally symbolically bury the rocks from  Irand Bay on the coast of New Zealand’s capital, Wellington. They’re from an area known,  appropriately for Mars, as Red Rocks. “By placing a Maori star compass in  here, in the solar garden at MDRS, I thought that we could put a symbol of our  curiosity because the Polynesian people, the Maori, are the people who  actually traveled the furthest, navigating by the stars. So they are, to me, the  biggest symbol of this. That’s why I wanted to have it here. It’s just a momental, a reminder  that you have to keep your curiosity open.” After two weeks at the Mars Desert Research  Station, the crew, on their last full day together, reflect on what the mission has  meant to them. “Seeing the lith canyon, seeing the fossilized tree down on Li Canyon,  was the highlight for me of all because it represented life. It’s a beautiful fossil.  It’s all chipping away and eroding away, but it was just a joy. The color of the landscape,  that’s the big thing for me. I didn’t expect it to be so beautiful, and how everything in it  has adapted to it. I think, as an analogy, it’s already been said here this morning,  about how people adapt, about how creatures, because we’re all creatures, adapt to their  environment. And when you’re outside there, and you look at the little rivulets where  water has run, that’s where you find all the plants, and you can see the life, the  lizards, the other burrowing creatures, even the ants building their homes. And we’ve  been here for two weeks, building our own home, transient though it is. But I think even in that  period, there’s been an adaptation on our part.” “I was extremely impressed with the amount  of learning that I had from this place. Like, the stuff that Ali taught us about the  stones and the geology of the place, and everything, that was just amazing.  And I’m just so much richer going back home now than I came two weeks ago. It’s  just unbelievable how much I’ve learned.” “One of the big highlights here is to actually  communicate with students. The views have been great, but to be able to actually communicate  that to them live and synchronously as well has been a real joy for me. It’s like  being in a huge classroom. I loved it.” “I think the highlight for me while we’ve  been here is seeing Factory Butte. It’s so impressive the way it just sticks out in the  middle of nowhere, and it’s draped by all that beautiful gray Mancos Shale because it really  symbolizes, if you like, just how incredible the whole landscape is, even immediately  outside the hab. You walk outside the hab, it’s incredible. And our place in it for the  last couple of weeks, the whole has been just a highlight in general. It’s been great. You  know, we’ve actually think we’ve done really, really well just to live and sleep and work  together all this time without anyone losing it.” And so, on the final day, it’s pack-up time.  But apart from the rewarding experiences, the crew takes back kilograms of geological  samples. In Allie’s case, cynics might say they haven’t really contributed to humanity’s next  giant leap, and that this has all been just an illusion. “For a start, we did all our research,  we did all the EVAs, we collected the samples, we took the pictures, we described in our words how  the Martian surface might look like for the school back in New Zealand. We interacted every day with  them through Carter Observatory, so I think it was a very, very successful mission. But it depends  on what objectives you’ve got by coming here, and every single organization sending people here has  a different agenda. So, I reckon it’s exactly as you would go to any camp, any other camp. Just the  uniqueness of this place is that it’s insisting on keeping people in sim, and as I said, the sim is  as real as you can have it. I’m happy. I don’t care if this is made of titanium alloy or of wood.  What I care about is what you get out of it.” So, it’s mission accomplished for  Kiwi Mars 2012. Perhaps the Mars Desert Research Station offers crews a  chance to realize their own potential more than contributing to the potential  for us to reach Mars. But in the end, the more we understand ourselves, the  better prepared we are for the future.