Will NASA or SpaceX get to Mars first?

[laszlo]

Unless SpaceX is running a suicide mission, they have possibly a decade or more of biomedical, life support,  food storage and production, long-term living in BEO, etc. research to do, which they then would have to turn into actual engineering. NASA doesn't have the transport capacity or the the funding for it. The only viable option for a near-term (less than 10-20 years) landing is a partnership of some sort.

[DistantTemple]

Unless SpaceX is running a suicide mission, they have possibly a decade or more of biomedical, life support,  food storage and production, long-term living in BEO, etc. research to do, which they then would have to turn into actual engineering. NASA doesn't have the transport capacity or the the funding for it. The only viable option for a near-term (less than 10-20 years) landing is a partnership of some sort.

SX just need to do a good study of these forums, and then head-hunt the best experts, and most innovative, (whilst skilled and reality-based) commentators.
However complete access to NASA's information and personnel on these matters has to also be a given, so a SpaceX ship will get there first, with quite a bit of NASA help and technology on those bits you specified. However I expect SX will take what NASA provides, and quickly apply it in larger creative ways. Most of this will NOT be in the Spaceship/Engines/manufacturing and even EDL areas!
So SpaceX will get there first with a significant essential NASA component.

[savantu]

Unless SpaceX is running a suicide mission, they have possibly a decade or more of biomedical, life support,  food storage and production, long-term living in BEO, etc. research to do, which they then would have to turn into actual engineering. NASA doesn't have the transport capacity or the the funding for it. The only viable option for a near-term (less than 10-20 years) landing is a partnership of some sort.

If you wait until you are ready, you will never leave Earth. We've been researching manned space stations since the '80s and what have we learned ? If 40 years of studies can't provide answers for manned presence on Mars, then maybe we need to cut off ISS.
There is a certain amount of risk and it has to be accepted. At the same time, you have a tool which can ensure years of sustenance on Mars.
You will not produce food on Mars, you just need to ship 50t of it with a SS. And another 50t for ISRU and redundant technical equipment. If you can mine ice and produce fuel; 90% of the problem is solved.

[laszlo]

Unless SpaceX is running a suicide mission, they have possibly a decade or more of biomedical, life support,  food storage and production, long-term living in BEO, etc. research to do, which they then would have to turn into actual engineering. NASA doesn't have the transport capacity or the the funding for it. The only viable option for a near-term (less than 10-20 years) landing is a partnership of some sort.

If you wait until you are ready, you will never leave Earth. We've been researching manned space stations since the '80s and what have we learned ? If 40 years of studies can't provide answers for manned presence on Mars, then maybe we need to cut off ISS.
There is a certain amount of risk and it has to be accepted. At the same time, you have a tool which can ensure years of sustenance on Mars.
You will not produce food on Mars, you just need to ship 50t of it with a SS. And another 50t for ISRU and redundant technical equipment. If you can mine ice and produce fuel; 90% of the problem is solved.

And if you leave before you're ready you'll die. There's a sweet spot somewhere between those extremes that they need to find.

By definition ISS won't give any answers to living on Mars because it's a space station, not a planetary habitat. It's giving us answers for how to live in an artificial 0-g environment like the one that has to be crossed to get to Mars. SpaceX will need that data.

Right now no one has a tool to ship 50t of anything to Mars and the only ISRU known to work on Mars has made grams of O₂. There is no known mining tech that will work on Mars. I know that lots of people are working on all these things, but they will have to be reduced to actual engineering before they can be used and so far they are just research projects. SpaceX is researching the transportation problem very aggressively but they are nowhere near ready for Mars, yet. If they want to get there sooner rather than later they'll need a partner to help with the rest of the stuff.

Yes there is a certain amount of risk that must be accepted, but it can't be so much that it makes failure a certainty. No matter how impatient we feel, there's a certain minimum amount of work that must be done for a successful Mars flight and the way to get to Mars is to do that work. A partner makes the work easier and faster.

[JWarner]

I doubt that, since Congress will be in the middle of funding Artemis (i.e. returning to the Moon) when SpaceX is ready to send humans to Mars. So Congress would have to fund both Artemis and a brand new Mars program in order to make SpaceX a vendor. I don't see that happening.

The reality is that SpaceX is leading the drive to Mars, and NASA is likely to come along as a minor partner, giving the U.S. Government bragging rights, but not enough influence to slow down what SpaceX is doing.

What Ron is saying is what I was saying in my previous post.

Congress is not going to get in on a Mars mission anytime soon. SpaceX will be ready to go and NASA will have to scrounge up some funds to send its astronauts along. Yes, SpaceX does want NASA to help them but they know if its up to Congress it won't be til 2040 or later.

[Joseph Peterson]

There is no known mining tech that will work on Mars.

Surely you mean that there is no industrial-scale mining tech that has been definitively proven will work on Mars.  Curiosity has a drill and a scoop.  Drills and shovels are tech that are used by the mining industry here on Earth.  This means there is indeed known mining tech that has been field tested and has proven it does work on Mars.

[deadman1204]

Unless SpaceX is running a suicide mission, they have possibly a decade or more of biomedical, life support,  food storage and production, long-term living in BEO, etc. research to do, which they then would have to turn into actual engineering. NASA doesn't have the transport capacity or the the funding for it. The only viable option for a near-term (less than 10-20 years) landing is a partnership of some sort.

If you wait until you are ready, you will never leave Earth. We've been researching manned space stations since the '80s and what have we learned ? If 40 years of studies can't provide answers for manned presence on Mars, then maybe we need to cut off ISS.
There is a certain amount of risk and it has to be accepted. At the same time, you have a tool which can ensure years of sustenance on Mars.
You will not produce food on Mars, you just need to ship 50t of it with a SS. And another 50t for ISRU and redundant technical equipment. If you can mine ice and produce fuel; 90% of the problem is solved.

Its decisions like this that kill people and end missions. Going to mars isn't like settling the new world. Things like "just mine ice" are incredibly complicated. Where is it? How do you extract it? How do you have all the energy to dig, move the rock, mine the ice, move it again, ect. What machines do you use? How do you service them? How do they function in -150 degree temperatures? Hydraulics need to be redesigned because anything we use today would freeze.

There is soo much to it, and anything that goes wrong means total mission failure.

This isn't to say we should never take any risks going to Mars, but major risk of total mission failure cannot be accepted. Imagine if the first ship of people all die horribly. It could setback mars settlement by decades. Its very much a social and political issue.

[Pitpen]

Unless SpaceX is running a suicide mission, they have possibly a decade or more of biomedical, life support,  food storage and production, long-term living in BEO, etc. research to do, which they then would have to turn into actual engineering. NASA doesn't have the transport capacity or the the funding for it. The only viable option for a near-term (less than 10-20 years) landing is a partnership of some sort.

If you wait until you are ready, you will never leave Earth. We've been researching manned space stations since the '80s and what have we learned ? If 40 years of studies can't provide answers for manned presence on Mars, then maybe we need to cut off ISS.
There is a certain amount of risk and it has to be accepted. At the same time, you have a tool which can ensure years of sustenance on Mars.
You will not produce food on Mars, you just need to ship 50t of it with a SS. And another 50t for ISRU and redundant technical equipment. If you can mine ice and produce fuel; 90% of the problem is solved.

Its decisions like this that kill people and end missions. Going to mars isn't like settling the new world. Things like "just mine ice" are incredibly complicated. Where is it? How do you extract it? How do you have all the energy to dig, move the rock, mine the ice, move it again, ect. What machines do you use? How do you service them? How do they function in -150 degree temperatures? Hydraulics need to be redesigned because anything we use today would freeze.

There is soo much to it, and anything that goes wrong means total mission failure.

This isn't to say we should never take any risks going to Mars, but major risk of total mission failure cannot be accepted. Imagine if the first ship of people all die horribly. It could setback mars settlement by decades. Its very much a social and political issue.

And that is why SpaceX, NASA and everyone with true ambitions of getting to Mars should focus on a closer, much realistic Moon base where you can test all the necessary features needed on Mars in a similar environment (radiations, low temperatures, lower gravity) than Mars (barring dust circulation). At the end of the day we do not have real data on the effect of long term exposure to interstellar radiation and efficiency of mitigation effects that could dramatically end a two year mission on Mars. There is a lot of work to be done before a human body could sustain 2 years of travel and on Mars surface and the pace of the involved researches is not proceeding as fast as the rocket supposed to bring us there.   

[JacobTheInvestigator]

It's hard for me to decide who'll be the first, but I think these two aerospace industry giants have better cooperate and reach Mars together.

[Vultur]

At the end of the day we do not have real data on the effect of long term exposure to interstellar radiation and efficiency of mitigation effects that could dramatically end a two year mission on Mars.

No, interstellar radiation (assuming you mean galactic cosmic rays) are only a long-term cancer risk. Dose rates are not even remotely close to sufficient to cause any kind of acute effects that would affect the mission itself.

There is a lot of work to be done before a human body could sustain 2 years of travel 

Not really. 14 months in zero-g has been demonstrated (on Mir) and a Hohmann transfer both ways is ~17 months in zero g. Starship will pursue a faster trajectory, so it should be less zero-g than is already demonstrated.

Sure, a lot of work beyond the rocket itself needs to be done (ISRU/mining...) but Starship's mass capacity should make this way easier than extremely mass limited traditional space engineering.

[StarshipSLS]

But will Orion fly to Mars with the Deep Space Habitat and then dock to Starship, or will the entire mission only have Starship?

[Pitpen]

At the end of the day we do not have real data on the effect of long term exposure to interstellar radiation and efficiency of mitigation effects that could dramatically end a two year mission on Mars.

No, interstellar radiation (assuming you mean galactic cosmic rays) are only a long-term cancer risk. Dose rates are not even remotely close to sufficient to cause any kind of acute effects that would affect the mission itself.

I don't know your sources, but that's the kind of approach that I classify as taking unknown risks. A single sample cannot lead to anything but a start point to further tests and research. Maybe the astronauts would survive a Mars mission, but at which cost and what consequences on their health? I wouldn't define it as a show stopper in the long term, but as of now to me it really is.

http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/The_radiation_showstopper_for_Mars_exploration

There is a lot of work to be done before a human body could sustain 2 years of travel 

Not really. 14 months in zero-g has been demonstrated (on Mir) and a Hohmann transfer both ways is ~17 months in zero g. Starship will pursue a faster trajectory, so it should be less zero-g than is already demonstrated.

Try to think how they manage to exit Soyuz after six months in free fall around Earth.....They need to be lifted out of the cabin by arm strenght, they won't find anyone on the Mars surface, so they need to be fully healty in order to start doing anything good for sustainable Mars presence. Mars has lower gravity and it will help, but any additional effect introduced by radiation is unacceptable.   

[electricdawn]

I think a Soyuz capsule is a bit... cramped compared to the luxuries of Starship. After the landing, astronauts will have all the time in the world to adjust to the gravity. I don't see much problems with that. And of course nobody is seriously entertaining the thought of sending a whole bunch of unexperienced settlers to Mars in the first go.

This will not happen anytime soon.

First we need to get there at all.
Second we will start getting the basics up and running.
Third we will build a small base.

And so on and on... This is a long and arduous process. And yes, it will be rife with danger. But it is nothing that humankind cannot overcome if they're willing to do so.

[savantu]

..

Its decisions like this that kill people and end missions. Going to mars isn't like settling the new world.

Really ? We know much more about Mars than Columbus knew about the new world.

Things like "just mine ice" are incredibly complicated. Where is it? How do you extract it? How do you have all the energy to dig, move the rock, mine the ice, move it again, ect. What machines do you use? How do you service them? How do they function in -150 degree temperatures? Hydraulics need to be redesigned because anything we use today would freeze.

We have found large ice deposits already on Mars, billions of tons.  You extract it with heavy machinery, an excator and a dump truck at the minimum which are electrically powered. There are solutions for hidraulics just as we mine the Arctic. Usual temperatures on Mars are plus +20 / -70C, which is something you find on Earth as well. Spirit encountered between +25C to -110C. The closer you get to the poles, temperatures will drop, but those are not planned landing sites.
The equipment problem is actually simple, dust and heat removal are probably a bigger headache rather than hydraulics operating in the cold.
Power source as in banks of RTGs or small reactors, I'd say you need a few hundred KWs installed power to operate a base.

There is soo much to it, and anything that goes wrong means total mission failure.

There's not too much.
You need :
-an underground habitat to ensure long term survival
-machinery to mine ice and build the habitat ( basically dig trenches, put in pre-made structures and cover it with dirt )
-power generation ( mix of solar and nuclear ? )
-ISRU plant to refuel starship

All necessities ( water, food, clothing, medical, spares ) are brought by a cargo Starship. When you can land 50-100t on Mars, that's a game changer. Heavy equipment already works in harsh environments.  You have exacavators and trucks working 24/7 at -50/-60C. Cold-proofing them further isn't rocket science. Probably Caterpillar could build some prototypes and test them in 2-3 years for a few hundred million $. Caterpillar already started work with Nasa on a conceptual phase for mining equipment on Moon and Mars. If Musk is serious about Mars, I'm sure he will contract a mining equipment OEM to build these machines.

This isn't to say we should never take any risks going to Mars, but major risk of total mission failure cannot be accepted. Imagine if the first ship of people all die horribly. It could setback mars settlement by decades. Its very much a social and political issue.

This glamour dissapears the moment others are pursuing the goal as well. When you really want to go there, you'll find plenty of solutions of the shelf. What you are doing is just looking at Nasa rate of advancement/progress and doing parallels. What NASA sees as the path, is for sure not the way. They have had no way for the past 40 years.

[dondar]

Imagine if the first ship of people all die horribly. It could setback mars settlement by decades. Its very much a social and political issue.

Why?

[DreamyPickle]

As soon as SpaceX proves that they can land people on mars for an acceptable cost NASA and politicians will be happy to pay for the establishment of a small base on Mars. Around $1B/year would be very reasonable, a relatively small amount relative to the budget of NASA and a major image boost for any president who champions it.

People seem to this think that a Moon or Mars base requires a superhuman effort that no government is willing to fund when in fact it is merely a technical problem regarding the cost of transportation.

For reference the US Antarctic Program is less than $400M and there are no serious objections against permanently maintaining it.

[Vultur]

I don't know your sources, but that's the kind of approach that I classify as taking unknown risks

No, GCR levels outside the earth's magnetosphere have been measured, and we know what sorts of radiation levels cause acute problems in humans; they're not remotely close.

It is a "showstopper" only in the sense that it may exceed some arbitrarily-set limit on future cancer risk.

And even that assumes the calculations of cancer risk apply to this situation - I think there is good reason to believe that current linear extrapolation from short-term high dose rate to long term low dose rate is too conservative. Human cells are not inert blocks passively accumulating damage; DNA repair exists.

Try to think how they manage to exit Soyuz after six months in free fall around Earth.....They need to be lifted out of the cabin by arm strenght

Didn't Polyakov specifically walk out on his own feet after 14 months, specifically to demonstrate he could?

Also, they wouldn't have to start doing EVA on Day 1, and Mars gravity is significantly less.

Mars has lower gravity and it will help, but any additional effect introduced by radiation is unacceptable.

1) GCR isn't relevant here, there will be no effects on the "during the mission" timescale. The cancer risk is decades later.

2) who defines what risk is acceptable? If SpaceX is flying private passengers as opposed to NASA astronauts, I don't think that question has been answered yet.

[Vultur]

Imagine if the first ship of people all die horribly. It could setback mars settlement by decades. Its very much a social and political issue.

Why?

It could go either way, depends on how it is viewed politically.

If it is seen as basically a private adventure, it might be no more politically damaging than Virgin Galactic's fatal accident or Everest climbing deaths.

If it is seen as basically a NASA effort with SpaceX as contractor, it could be a huge national crisis.

Right now the FAA mostly just regulates risk to the uninvolved public... would that still be in place then? If so, a major accident might change that - or it might not. Who knows...

[Robotbeat]

Apollo 1 and Challenger and Columbia didn't end human spaceflight.

[su27k]

But will Orion fly to Mars with the Deep Space Habitat and then dock to Starship, or will the entire mission only have Starship?

Two types of mission designs, each has some variations:

1. NASA only mission: This is the mission design NASA is publicly presenting, no SpaceX hardware. SLS will launch Orion to NRHO, where it will dock with Deep Space Transport (DST, habitat plus a Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) module), crew transfer to DST, Orion either returns to Earth or fly to Mars with DST (latter is less likely given SEP is pretty weak). DST fly to Mars then return to NRHO, either use docked Orion to return to Earth, or meet up with another Orion, crew transfer to Orion and return to Earth.

2. SpaceX mission: Crew launch on Starship, which will be fully fueled in LEO then perform Trans-Mars Injection (TMI) from LEO, Starship flies to Mars, direct entry into Mars atmosphere or aero-capture then entry, lands on Mars.

A joint SpaceX/NASA mission would probably be a variation of the SpaceX mission design, but using Crew Dragon to launch crew to meet up with fully fueled Starship in LEO, at least initially, to avoid the complexity of human rating the Starship launch itself. No Orion necessary.