Mars 10 years ago was a dream for mankind, traveling to Mars has been used in Sci-fi movies because it was so far away from reality it was perfect for TV, however by 2027 we hope to have a permanent human colony thanks to the Mars One project. A trip to mars according to the Mars One project will take approximately 7 months, a bit longer than what current astronauts stay on the ISS. The benefits of traveling to mars are astonishing, it will undoubtedly allow us to accelerate our scientific research and once again improve our presence in the solar system. Mars is also quite similar to Earth, which would allow us to learn about our home planets history and future.
NASA has a long term program called Orion in which they believe spaceflight to mars is anticipated by about 3035, 8 years after what Mars One have claimed. After the Orion project shorter flights up-to 4 person capsules will be involved, with experiments to protect from deep space radiation which is one of the bigger health hazards of long-term space travel. The amount of energy needed to transfer between planetary orbits between Earth and Mars is lowest at fixed intervals by the Synodic period. This period is every 26 months, so missions are planned to coincide with this 26 month pattern. The energy needed in these low-energy windows also varies on a 15 year cycle, with the lowest amount of energy needed being nearly half as much of the peaks.
Despite needing 26 months between setting the missions in motion, a round trip to Mars and would take 400-450 days according to Werner von Braun’s book, “Popular Science”. The downside to this kind of mission is the higher energy requirements. A faster Mars mission has been estimated at 250 days with on-board staging. The cost of sending humans to mars is estimated to be roughly 500 billion dollars, although those costs are likely to rise. Currently the largest limiting factor for space travel to mars isn’t the technology, it’s the fact that there isn’t enough funding for travel to mars. Despite funding being the biggest challenge, there are several key physical challenges as well.
Health threats from high-energy cosmic rays will produce a great radiation risk, the calculated radiation dose for a round-trip is 0.66 sieverts, the limit for a NASA astronaut is 1 sievert for their entire career. On top of that there is the chance of visual impairment due to prolonged exposure to weightlessness. The psychological effects of living as a hermit, with complete isolation from earth can be devastating to most humans. There is also smaller problems of the lack of medical facilities and failure of equipment which makes the entire mission not feasible.
The European Space Agency also has long term goals to send out humans but has not yet built the manned spacecraft required for this, however it has sent robotic probes and plans to launch an unmanned ExoMars in the coming years. Japan has attempted to send a robotic mission to Mars, however it failed to achieve Mars orbit. One technical hurdle of traveling to mars is the shallow atmosphere which will pose difficulty with re-entry and a heat shield would need to be used, further increasing the size.
Whilst traveling to Mars is becoming a reality for many scientists worldwide, we are still too far away to know how successful these projected timelines will be, and how much the total cost of a mission would be in the future. The Mars One astronauts are just like you or me, regular people who are going on a one-way trip for science, without any guarantee that what they do will survive for future generations. Travel to Mars is happening.