Landing Sites

EarthWolf · 2004-07-22 09:38:07

Hello,

Has there been any talk of potential landing sites for the ESA/NASA manned Mars missions?

Cordially,

EarthWolf

bolbuyk · 2004-07-26 14:16:44

I would like to land at Mangala Vallis, near the martian equator, at the border of the rough southern terrain and the smooth northern terrain. In the neighbourhood of a crater Nicholson, all kinds of things together.

Near equator means rather low delta-v for launch for travelling back.

Commodore · 2004-07-26 14:23:03

There going to have to balance it between a good spot to build a base, mineral resources, polar water, and interesting science locales.

SpaceNut · 2004-07-27 07:27:54

No need to rush to pick the best landing site. We have lots of time(2035 ish) to land probes every two years until we get it right.

SpaceNut · 2004-07-30 12:34:05

Also we will have a very long wait for Mars as it would seem. Before we can get to go to Mars we will need to have the CEV for manned flight which will be used for Lunar use first under NASA current plans.

MarsDog · 2004-07-31 06:47:01

Mars needs to be scanned for caves and lava tubes.
One meter resolution mapping of the entire surface would be useful.
Then, all of us could become armchair explorers; suggesting where to send the rovers.

DERF · 2004-07-31 14:52:32

Or...wait...we could randomize the terrain using a giant supercomputer so that it looks like Mars but random variables are thrown in (so we don't have to actually scan the surface). This would be much cheaper and is therefore a good idea. GO armchair!

Rxke · 2004-07-31 15:42:43

Mars needs to be scanned for caves and lava tubes.
One meter resolution mapping of the entire surface would be useful.
Then, all of us could become armchair explorers; suggesting where to send the rovers.

Check the "Marsoweb" thread, it's exactly what you describe!

MarsDog · 2004-08-01 07:53:37

Will have to wait till http://www1.nasa.gov/lb/audience/forstu … l]November 2006

Then 1 meter/pixel, with 25 cm vertical accuracy.
Sub pixel and stereo will make good armchair exploration.

SpaceNut · 2004-08-03 07:02:14

So Nasa is making this available for free... Where is the self funding approach in that.
I believe that Nasa was trying to go towards the Federally funded research and design ceter approach. Why wait if it is possible to start generating a brand new revenue stream..

SpaceNut · 2015-05-11 19:39:25

I see that we are still talking even today as to what makes the best landing site for any future crew to land at. As well as whether its exploration or colonization that we are going to mars for.
We do have some baselines since the beginning of the topic was so long ago in the sites that we curently have rovers at as well as planned sites for future rovers to visit as places that would help in the down selection process.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-05 16:33:38

What would happen if we landed on the North Pole? Would that be such a terrible environment compared to the equator? The Martian atmosphere is still a laboratory vacuum, even if the suited astronaut is standing on a sheet of ice. Water is not a problem at the poles, you have a ready source of rocket propellant, and since a Martian year is twice as long as an Earth year, You have an Earth year's worth of day light.

GW Johnson · 2015-09-07 08:57:42

There's nothing wrong with a polar site except the harsh cold. Most of the equipment and technology that we have is impaired severely, or even disabled completely, in that kind of cold. The polar lander was an extraordinary design effort to cope with it.

Protecting humans outside in suits will be even more difficult under conditions that harsh. We're not yet technologically ready to take that challenge on. In a few years, perhaps, with some experience in the more temperate regions nearer the equator.

GW

SpaceNut · 2015-09-07 11:15:24

The suits and other equipment become brittle to the cold and a shock strike of any type could cause it to rupture and crack quite easily. The surface is hard due to the cold unlike the equator which allows for the easy to use materials are picked with little energy required unlike the harsh polar area.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-07 20:47:53

GW Johnson wrote:

There's nothing wrong with a polar site except the harsh cold. Most of the equipment and technology that we have is impaired severely, or even disabled completely, in that kind of cold. The polar lander was an extraordinary design effort to cope with it.
Protecting humans outside in suits will be even more difficult under conditions that harsh. We're not yet technologically ready to take that challenge on. In a few years, perhaps, with some experience in the more temperate regions nearer the equator.
GW

Let me remind you that the atmosphere of Mars is considered a laboratory vacuum, how good is a laboratory vacuum at drawing heat out of a space suit?. With a conventional pump, we can evacuate a chamber on Earth so that it has the same air pressure as on the surface of Mars, we can't do much better than that, and that kind of vacuum usually suffices in insulating that which is separated by that vacuum. The only places where much heat would be lost through the suit is from the soles of the space suit boots and those gloves which handle rocks and regolith. What temperature does a vacuum have? It doesn't have any temperature at all, because you need particles moving slowly with relation to each other to be considered "cold!" Now if the suit has a heater, the heat can only escape from the suit through radiational cooling for the most part, the trace gases can't carry much heat away from a suit through convection despite being cold. If Mars had a substantial atmosphere, then its Polar Regions would be very harsh, but Mars doesn't have a substantial atmosphere, is it much worse than the Lunar Poles? Compare an astronaut standing on the South Pole of the Moon with an Astronaut standing on the South Pole of Earth, lets say the astronaut is wearing the same Moon suit whether on the Moon's South Pole or in Antarctica Lets say its in Polar Winter in Antarctica and their is a strong wind blowing snow in the astronauts face plate, the heater is working as hard as it can to keep the astronaut warm, but the wind and the snow just carries the heat away through the skin of the space suit. Now imagine that same astronaut standing ont he surface of the Moon, he is in a dark crater, but there is no blizzard, he feels no wind, just the cold surface under his feet and the stars above. Which situation would be more taxing for the space suit?

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-07 20:52:41

SpaceNut wrote:

The suits and other equipment become brittle to the cold and a shock strike of any type could cause it to rupture and crack quite easily. The surface is hard due to the cold unlike the equator which allows for the easy to use materials are picked with little energy required unlike the harsh polar area.

Why should the suit become brittle and cold? presumable the suit has a heater, what carries the heat away from the suit? If you took the same suit and somehow transported it 1 light year away from the Sun, as cold as interstellar space gets, and I bet the suit would function just the same so long as its heater was working, dropping it into a vat of liquid nitrogen would draw more heat away from the suit than dropping it in the middle of interstellar space, about as cold as the Universe gets! But without the mass of gasses surrounding the suit, the suit simply retains its heat. That is how I believe a suit would function at the poles of Mars.

RobertDyck · 2015-09-07 21:13:01

The only heater will be body heat. Actually, because Mars atmosphere is partial vacuum, you won't lose body heat very quickly. But touch a rock at -101°C (-150°F)? Ouch! Don't expect fingers to keep your gloves warm while a rock or Mars soil is draining heat away that fast. Your suit has to be able to handle the cold of Mars. It doesn't matter if body heat keeps most of your suit warm, most of the time. If one small part becomes embrittled so it breaks, you could be in real trouble. Whether it's the bladder of a gas bag suit, or the pressure layer of an MCP suit.

At one point a member on NewMars gave me a link to NASA's dataset for the Viking 2 lander. I went through it in detail, found the coldest temperature recorded was -101°C. I then went through the product catalogue on Dow Corning's website, found a type of silicone rubber that didn't become embrittled until -102°C. Material for the soles of Mars boots. Viking 2 recorded temperature for more than a Martian year (orbital period), and recorded temperature hourly. The absolute lowest temperature was -101°C. For that site, and that year. But only one degree difference doesn't give you much of a margin. One solution is stay inside when it's that cold.

Understand why we need to stay at relatively warm latitudes?

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-08 07:05:02

RobertDyck wrote:

The only heater will be body heat. Actually, because Mars atmosphere is partial vacuum, you won't lose body heat very quickly. But touch a rock at -101°C (-150°F)? Ouch! Don't expect fingers to keep your gloves warm while a rock or Mars soil is draining heat away that fast. Your suit has to be able to handle the cold of Mars. It doesn't matter if body heat keeps most of your suit warm, most of the time. If one small part becomes embrittled so it breaks, you could be in real trouble. Whether it's the bladder of a gas bag suit, or the pressure layer of an MCP suit.
At one point a member on NewMars gave me a link to NASA's dataset for the Viking 2 lander. I went through it in detail, found the coldest temperature recorded was -101°C. I then went through the product catalogue on Dow Corning's website, found a type of silicone rubber that didn't become embrittled until -102°C. Material for the soles of Mars boots. Viking 2 recorded temperature for more than a Martian year (orbital period), and recorded temperature hourly. The absolute lowest temperature was -101°C. For that site, and that year. But only one degree difference doesn't give you much of a margin. One solution is stay inside when it's that cold.
Understand why we need to stay at relatively warm latitudes?

I think its quite possible to produce foam pads at the bottom of one's boots, they don't have to be flexible, so long as they insulate as for gloves, astronauts can use special tools for handling rocks and collecting soil samples rather than touching them with his gloves, its just a matter of designing the right suit, and its much easier to insulate a boot or glove than an entire space suit! A Titan Space Suit would be much different from a Mars suit, even one designed for its poles. Under the conditions in which Titan Exists, the entire Martian atmosphere would be a solid sheet of dry ice!

GW Johnson · 2015-09-08 14:21:23

Tom:

What if you fall down and pass out, for whatever reason? Any reason at all. You wake up, very chilled if not frostbitten where you were laying on the ground, and when you move, your embrittled suit splits wide open. It's awfully hard to survive while trying to breathe 6 mbar CO2, even if it's not so lethally cold at -101 C. Unconscious in about 15-60 seconds, brain death in about 5 to 10 minutes.

THAT'S the sort of thing that is the real reason why we don't want to go polar on Mars first. Better to first gain some experience where things are not so extreme. There are some very real limits to human technology. We do have to live within them. It takes experiences to expand those limits. Most of those experiences result in deaths, but in spaceflight, there is nothing so expensive as a dead crew. Better to avoid the deaths, if at all possible.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-09-08 14:23:10)

SpaceNut · 2015-09-08 20:17:14

If a rovers aluminum wheel can have holes in them from just rolling what do you think would happen in even colder temperatures.....

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-09 13:45:47

GW Johnson wrote:

Tom:
What if you fall down and pass out, for whatever reason? Any reason at all. You wake up, very chilled if not frostbitten where you were laying on the ground, and when you move, your embrittled suit splits wide open. It's awfully hard to survive while trying to breathe 6 mbar CO2, even if it's not so lethally cold at -101 C. Unconscious in about 15-60 seconds, brain death in about 5 to 10 minutes.
THAT'S the sort of thing that is the real reason why we don't want to go polar on Mars first. Better to first gain some experience where things are not so extreme. There are some very real limits to human technology. We do have to live within them. It takes experiences to expand those limits. Most of those experiences result in deaths, but in spaceflight, there is nothing so expensive as a dead crew. Better to avoid the deaths, if at all possible.
GW

People who fall down and pass out probably shouldn't have been selected for the mission in the first place. A person could be in a perfectly safe space suit and have a heart attack and die. The chances of dying during a Mars mission is much greater than that of dying in an Apollo Mission, if for the only reason that a Mars Mission would be much longer. If astronauts stayed on the Moon's surface for over a year, their chances of dying would be greater also. I think by the time we finally do get astronauts on Mars, the state of robotic technology would be much higher than it is today. It would be possible to astronauts to control drones remotely operated at the planet's poles, that can scoop up ice and deliver the water to a Mars Base, maybe an airship drone can ferry ice from the poles to the equator Ice can be dropped at night and retrieved by astronauts before the sun rises too high in the sky.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-09-18 11:26:19

How about Grover's Mill, New Jersey?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27 … New_Jersey

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