For the past 70 years, everyone has dreamed of getting to Mars: engineers, scientists, ordinary people like you and me. But their beautiful plans never went beyond the blueprints. But something seems to be changing: NASA needs astronauts. Ideal candidates should want to go to Mars. The space agency, apparently, is actually going to Mars with its future Space Launch System rocket, for which it is recruiting astronauts "in preparation for the agency's trip to Mars."
But keep in mind, when it comes to manned missions to Mars, NASA's "preparation" has been in full swing for 70 years.
This delay is at least partly technical. A trip to the Red Planet is comparable to a visit to Antarctica, only more inhospitable, and its atmosphere is two percent of what can be observed at the top of Everest. Not to mention the fact that only one road will take at least a year. In short, very, very ambitious plans on paper will turn into ten times more gamble.
However, for decades, engineers and politicians have dreamed of overcoming all these obstacles on the road to the Red Planet. Some projects were meant to be inspiring; others were aimed at putting a human foot on the Martian surface. But they all had one thing in common:
They. Never. Not. Incarnate. Into reality.
Disney and the Germans (1947-1957)
Promotional video:
The first plausible plan for Mars came from an unexpected source: a horrible novel by a genius scientist who used to work for the Nazis. After World War II, German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, who later designed the Saturn missiles for the Apollo mission, was effectively captured as a spoil of war for the US Army's V-2 missile test.
In an attempt to liven up his days, von Braun wrote Project Mars, a novel about a manned mission to Mars. “The main idea, I think, was to get away from where he was,” says David Portree, archivist at the Astrogeological Science Center. A detailed technical addendum to the novel described a physically viable series of spacecraft, paths, and even launch dates.
Von Braun planned a mission to Mars in 1985, with ten 4000-ton ships and 70 crew members. After many months of cruising, the fleet was to land a landing on the Martian caps on gliders, equipped with skis. The astronauts then had to travel 7,500 kilometers to build a runway for the rest of the ships near the equator.
Collier's editors soon became entranced by von Braun's ideas and published a series of richly illustrated articles on the future of space exploration. In 1957, von Braun and former V-2 colleague Ernst Stühlinger teamed up with Walt Disney for several space-themed episodes for the Disneyland television show, including the one about people on Mars.
Von Braun's plans - and their relentless popularization - helped to soften the American public's perception of space travel. “They created a pop-cultural concept that this is real,” says Longsdon.
NASA's first plan: nuclear missiles (1959-1961)
After some six months from the beginning of the official existence of NASA, the agency was eager to send a mission to Mars. Its first official study served as a blueprint for NASA's future plans and borrowed heavily from the "von Braun paradigm," although it was much smaller and involved highly efficient nuclear thermal rockets that used fission reactors to heat hydrogen in plasma exhaust.
The US government conducted ground tests of these nuclear missiles in the 1960s, and they have remained popular with NASA mission designers ever since. But sending nuclear weapons into space seemed politically unsettling: to get such a rocket into orbit, huge amounts of uranium would have to be launched into space. Therefore, the rockets never left the Earth's surface.
Photos of Mars attract onlookers (1965)
In 1966, NASA fought for the right to send astronauts to a passing Mars in 1976. The Joint Action Group (JAG) plan was to send a crew of four to Mars and back without landing, equipping them with a 40-inch telescope with which they could study the planet's surface as they approach.
However, new images of Mars nullified the whole venture. A flyby of the Mariner 4 probe in 1965 showed that the planet's barren surface was littered with craters, and its atmosphere was much thinner than previously thought, destroying our venture to fly around Mars by plane.
Budget deficits, unrest following the Vietnam War and a terrible fire at the Apollo 1 launch site added fuel to the fire. Congress refused to fund the JAG program, ultimately drowning plans for a flyby by 1968. In subsequent years, the Apollo mission supplanted all other plans for Mars.
Buzz Aldrin's Big Plan (1985 - present)
In 1985, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin began work on a complex cyclic mission to Mars, which involves two mother ships orbiting the Sun and periodically intercepting the orbits of Earth and Mars. At the height of the mission, this interplanetary bus route would have to transport groups of astronauts annually to permanent colonies on Mars and Phobos, one of Martian's moons.
If the plan sounds crazy, then it is: Aldrin believed that if people were going to go to Mars, they would go further.
Over the years, he has fleshed out his plan in numerous books. In April, Purdue University students completed a detailed technical analysis of Aldrin's plan. Aldrin himself recently opened a research institute at Florida Institute of Technology to develop his idea for space buses.
But for the foreseeable future, Aldrin's wings have been clipped by politics. NASA has a stricter plan called Travel to Mars, but details have not yet been announced. Obviously, the close-up will require long-term spending, supported by several successive US presidents.
The collapse of the USSR and the road to Mars (1989-1991)
On the twentieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, President George W. Bush announced his Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), a powerful reorientation of NASA priorities, which was to culminate in a landing on Mars by 2019, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11..
It is unlikely that Bush himself invested in this plan personally, although he appeared to be a space enthusiast. In the months before the announcement, he essentially delegated White House space policy to Vice President Dan Quayle and White House space advisors, including National Space Council head Mark Albrecht.
But from the very beginning, the plan was flawed: disagreements between NASA and the White House completely ruined everything. “There was an incredible misunderstanding,” says Albrecht. "NASA should have gotten carte blanche, but no."
By the time SEI made it to Congress, its $ 450 billion conservative price tag that made people hair on end alarmed key members of Congress who killed the initiative completely.
People on Mars - by 1999! (1990 - present)
After the Bush plan failed, Mars supporters began looking for a cleaner, simpler plan. In other words, why not go straight to Mars?
So they called it: Mars Direct. Developed by a pair of aerospace engineers, the plan included an advanced robotic mission to support crew living quarters and transport using derivatives of Martian soil and atmosphere. It would be followed by people who would have to spend about 500 days on the surface of Mars, and then return home.
As president of the Mars Society, engineer Robert Zubrin has championed his mission for the past 25 years, citing NASA itself as the only obstacle. An early version of the plan implied that the agency could put humans on Mars by 1999 if it dared.
Although NASA did not decide to develop the Zubrin plan, the agency's own Mars mission borrowed a lot from the Mars Direct approach. NASA's upcoming Mars 2020 rover will also carry out experiments to extract fuel and oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.
Private money, common problems (2010 - present)
In the absence of decisive action by NASA, private organizations like the Dennis Tito Mars Foundation and the Planetary Society got involved in this struggle, proposing their own missions to Mars - all with different results.
The nonprofit Mars One is arguably the most prominent initiative to send dozens of Mars enthusiasts on a single path to a colony on the Red Planet by the 2030s, but it also has obvious problems and questions.
Mars One is considered by many to be a scam and fraudulent program. Analyzes show the organization's colonists will starve, and funding issues raise doubts about Mars One's credibility.
Journey to Mars (2013 - present)
Those who are going to become astronauts, perhaps, can look forward to a trip to the Red Planet.
NASA is actively developing technologies for flights to Mars, such as the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System. However, the agency's current schedule reflects a slow and steady test of equipment - but no plans for Mars. The plan for which the astronauts will go to Mars has not yet been officially released.
It remains an open question whether the long-term Mars exploration project will be able to support US policy and funding, even if it is outsourced to international partners or private contractors like SpaceX.
However, this does not prevent astronauts from dreaming big. In the end, space will be mastered by the flying one.
Based on materials from National Geographic
Ilya Khel