Mars, Curiouser and Curiouser

Almost four hours ago the Mars Science Laboratory, including the car-sized Curiosity rover, successfully launched from Cape Canaveral and is now on its way to Mars. With the Russians still struggling to salvage the Phobos-Grunt mission, which has been trapped in Earth orbit for weeks now after its engines refused to fire, one can only hope that the hunger of the Great Galactic Ghoul has been sated for now and that MSL and Curiosity will make it to the Red Planet. If all goes according to plan, this time next year the largest Mars rover in history will be driving around Gale Crater and vaporizing rocks with its laser, because it's about damn time we sent out a rover with a laser. So it can blast annoying Martians and, through the wonders of spectroscopic examination, gain new awareness of their material composition. ("We are v-r-r-iends! Ouch!")

It's a welcome step forward for Mars research, particularly since there's now no longer any threat of the probe being cancelled because of economic factors. What I'm not looking forward to is the possibility that Curiosity will be more grist for the mill of the unmanned-boosters' peanut gallery. That is, the people who almost seem to be offended by the idea of human space exploration, or who think that calling spaceships "canned monkeys" is an endearing habit that totally makes people want to come over to their point of view.

The history of robotic Mars exploration has been incredible, all right. It's incredible that we've got as much out of robots as we have, and the ultimate cost of all their scientific insights would probably be incredible as well. There's one thing I'm curious about that, unfortunately, Curiosity won't be able to help me with; it's the question of whether all the science done by all the probes that have ever been landed on Mars over the last forty years could have been replicated by an astronaut actually on Mars in one week, or if it would be more like two weeks.

That rock had it coming. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

I'm not saying this to denigrate the people behind the actual Mars probes. Mars is a forbidding environment full of challenges alien to Earth, and it's hard enough to build a machine that works properly - let alone a machine that's rugged enough to keep on trucking in an environment that no human has any direct experience with. Yet, the limitations imposed upon past probes as a consequence of building them to endure the Martian environment had a definite effect on what they could actually do there. Remember Sojourner, the first successful Mars lander after the original Viking probes? It was a technical triumph - but that triumph wasn't free. Sojourner was not that much bigger than an Xbox 360, had a maximum speed of 0.036 kilometers per hour, and could operate as much as five hundred meters away from its lander. Over the eighty-three sols - that is, Martian solar days - it was in operation, Sojourner took five hundred and fifty photographs and analyzed sixteen locations.

It was a technical triumph, yes. But it also sounds like the sort of work that a lone astronaut, operating from a fixed base on Mars, could literally do in about an hour and get back to base in time for lunch. I expect that Curiosity will do good science, and will help pave the way for future human exploration, but it's inherently limited by the fact that it's a robotic rover at least partially dependent on a mission control which could be anywhere from three to twenty-two light-minutes away.

I'm not sure what the unmanneders - though there's got to be a better word for those people who support robotic missions and denigrate human ones - want me to take away from their arguments. What I usually end up taking from them is that they are willing to accept the return of a limited scientific payload in exchange for the expense of sending humans to do all this science themselves. Personally, though, I can't see myself coming around to that point of view - I can't yet accept the notion that, for a given amount of scientific returns, it would be cheaper to use robots than astronauts. Robots leave humans out of potentially dangerous situations, yes, but we pay through the nose for the privilege.

Nor do any of them, from my perspective at least, have the sort of psychological weight as the idea of boots on Mars.

Have Mars Suit, Be Visible

This is a special time. Sometime next month, NASA's Human Space Flight Review Committee will announce its conclusions on whether NASA should pursue its spaceflight goals as they are currently planned. It may be that by September, ideas of a crewed Mars mission in 2030 will have been relegated to the same dustbin as the Apollo-tech Manned Venus Flyby¹ or the Delta Clipper. Until we know the shape of the future, though, there's plenty of speculation to be made on what challenges that mission may face.

Humans can't walk in shirtsleeves on the Red Planet, but neither would they wear off-the-shelf spacesuits either. Modern spacesuits, as found on the shuttles and the International Space Station, are meant for a very specific purpose - to maintain a comfortable pressure and insulate its wearer from temperature extremes, radiation dangers, and other environmental hazards present in the vacuum. They'd be perfectly functional on Luna, but Mars is not quite as harsh as that pitted, airless world. Most likely, a Mars expedition would take with it specialized Mars suits optimized for conditions on the Martian surface.

There are a few efforts currently underway to design a functional and effective Mars suit. In August 2004, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on one of them, the MarsSkin project, attempting to simulate Martian suit conditions on Earth. At the time its prototype suits were being tested in South Australia, and were "elasticised to counter the effects of the lower atmospheric pressure on Mars." This is most definitely the sort of research you want to do, and do right, before you leave home or you will look worse than Doug Quaid after he got sucked out the alien chamber in the Pyramid Mine.

There's one detail that could easily be overlooked in the shuffle of assembling an effective personal environment, though; the color. The MarsSkin suits photographed in the article are deep blue, close enough to black in shadow. Visibility is important everywhere, but the hostile environments we find throughout the solar system make it key. If a Martian traveller takes a fall and finds the suit's emergency beacon broken, say, a noticeable paint scheme could well be the difference between death and survival.

Popular depictions of Mars don't have much agreement. The first major Mars-focused movies I thought of, 1978's Capricorn One and 2000's Mission to Mars, use ordinary white spacesuits that would not look one bit out of place on the International Space Station. Red Planet, also from 2000, has its astronauts wear black suits - which could be an advantage in terms of heat retention - and 1990's Total Recall begins with a dream sequence where characters wear khaki suits with disturbingly fragile faceplates.²

For a while I thought MarsSkin was really on to something with their blue suits. After all, there's not much that's blue on Mars - all but, it seems, the sky. Although it appears salmon or butterscotch through the cameras of our probes there, the evidence I've found suggests that its true color is the same familiar blue as on Earth. This question won't be settled once and for all until people actually see it with their own eyes.

I brought the idea of this post up with a friend, and she didn't waste any time in coming up with a preferred color: green. And, you know what? I think she's right.

Its sky aside, Mars is red, thanks to the plentiful iron oxide dust. Not only are red and green close complementary colors, there is absolutely nothing on Mars that is green that would not have been brought there by humans. There are no Martian trees, no Martian grasslands, no Martian jungles. The smallest swatch of green in that rusted desert would be all the more starkly visible for its loneliness.

Should NASA's human spaceflight ambitions go ahead, and should humans walk on Mars in my lifetime or anyone else's, I think it would be best if the color they wore was green. Our presence there alone would make it appropriate - bringing living nature to a lifeless (according to current evidence) world.

¹ Although, James Nicoll had a rather sensible objection to this plan.

² 2009's Watchmen also had scenes on Mars, but Dr. Manhattan is above such petty requirements as "air."