SpaceX Aims for Mars Expedition. Here's the Barriers Preventing Human Presence Until Now.

In the realm of space exploration, the red planet Mars has long been a captivating destination for humans. The idea of humans setting foot on Mars has been a topic of discussion for over 70 years.

Early Mars Plans

The journey began with Wernher von Braun, a German rocketeer who, in the aftermath of World War II, proposed the first plausible Mars plan in the form of a novel called "The Mars Project." This novel included detailed technical descriptions of spacecraft, routes, and launch dates for a manned Mars expedition.

NASA's first official study for a Mars mission in 1959 borrowed heavily from von Braun's ideas and employed nuclear-thermal rockets. However, new, up-close images of Mars revealed a barren surface pockmarked with craters and a much thinner atmosphere than previously thought, which ruled out cruising around on a Martian airplane.

The Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and Mars Direct

The Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), announced by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, aimed to put boots on Mars by 2019. The SEI was led by Vice President Dan Quayle and National Space Council head Mark Albrecht. However, disagreements between NASA and the White House soured the effort, and the initiative was ultimately abandoned due to high costs and lack of support.

Following the SEI's failure, the Mars Direct plan was proposed, calling for a direct mission to Mars with a robotic advance mission to supply the crew's living quarters and vehicles using Martian soil and atmosphere. This plan was strongly influenced by Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct concept, which was developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the 1990s.

Recent Developments

In recent years, private entities such as Dennis Tito's Inspiration Mars Foundation, the Planetary Society, and Lockheed Martin have proposed their own Mars missions, but with mixed results. NASA's Journey to Mars initiative, detailed in late 2015, breaks down the technologies and stepping-stones needed to get humans safely to Mars and back again, but it won't culminate with boots on the ground until the 2030s at the earliest.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced a plan to establish settlements of up to a million people on Mars by the 2060s. SpaceX's reputation for delivering on lofty rhetoric, particularly through regular cargo missions to the International Space Station and self-landing, satellite-delivering rockets, boosted excitement for the talk. NASA's in-house Mars mission takes cues from Mars Direct's lean, "live-off-the-land" approach.

The Politics of Mars Missions

The politics of such an undertaking are complex. It is an open question if a decades-long Mars project could maintain broad political support and funding in the U.S., even if it relied on international partners or private collaborators such as SpaceX. Budget deficits, unrest over the Vietnam War, and a disastrous fire on the Apollo 1 launchpad led to the cancellation of plans for a piloted Mars flyby in 1976.

Future Missions

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has been working on an elaborate "cycler" Mars mission since 1985, which requires two motherships revolving around the sun to routinely intercept Earth's and Mars' orbits. Aldrin believes that if humans are going to go to Mars, they might as well go big.

The non-profit Mars One has enlisted dozens of Mars enthusiasts for a one-way colonization of Mars by the 2030s, but has been criticized as a potential scam and its credibility has been undermined by financial questions.

A round-trip flight to Mars takes at least a year, making it comparable to visiting an inhospitable Antarctica, with an atmosphere less than two percent of what is found at Everest's summit. However, the adventure continues, with various entities working tirelessly to make the dream of humans on Mars a reality.

Recently, the announcement was made at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico on September 27, 2021, that SpaceX's reputation for delivering on lofty rhetoric could potentially impact their Mars ambitions due to a recent launch pad explosion.

The journey to Mars is a long and complex one, but the dream of setting foot on the red planet continues to inspire and captivate us.

SpaceX Aims for Mars Expedition. Here's the Barriers Preventing Human Presence Until Now.