Lack of money delaying trip to Mars
Print Edition
IF you’re dreaming of a trip to Mars, you’ll have to wait at least 15 years for the technology to be developed, the head of the European Space Agency said yesterday.
“If there was enough money then we could possibly do it earlier but there is not as much now as the Apollo program had,” Director-General Jan Woerner said, referring to the US project which landed men on the moon.
Woerner says a permanent human settlement on the moon, where essential items needed for the two-year trip to Mars could be manufactured, would be a major step toward the red planet.
US space agency NASA hopes to send astronauts to Mars in the mid-2030s and businessman Elon Musk, head of electric car maker Tesla Motors, says he plans to put unmanned spacecraft on Mars from as early as 2018 and have humans there by 2030.
Woerner said that it would take a little longer.
A spacecraft sent to Mars would need rockets and fuel powerful enough to lift off for the return trip and the humans would need protection from unprecedented physical and mental challenges as well as deep-space radiation.
Woerner would like to see a cluster of research laboratories on the moon, in what he calls a “moon village,” to replace the International Space Station when its lifetime ends and to test technologies needed to make the trip to Mars.
That could be funded and operated by a collection of private and public bodies from around the world, he said.
“There are various companies and public agencies asking to join the club now, so they want to do different things, resource mining, in situ research, tourism and that kind of stuff. There is a big community interested,” he told reporters.
“The moon village is a pit stop on the way to Mars,” Woerner said, adding that 3D printing technology could be used to build structures out of rocks and dust, cutting the cost of transporting everything needed for a mission. “To test how to use lunar material to build some structures, not only houses, but also for a telescope or whatever, will teach us also how to do it on Mars,” he said.
In March, the ESA, working with Russia, sent a spacecraft on a seven-month journey as part of the agency’s ExoMars mission, which will use an atmospheric probe to sniff out any signs of life on Mars and deploy a lander to test technologies needed for a rover scheduled to follow in 2020.
Woerner said that Europe was looking at ways to lower the cost of launches but did not plan to copy Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is trying to develop relatively cheap, reusable launch vehicles.
“We should not copy. To follow and copy does not bring you into the lead. We are looking for totally different approaches,” Woerner said.
The ESA was examining all manner of new technologies, he added, including air-breathing engines that do not need to tap into oxygen from a spacecraft’s tank.
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