Author: w.steve.wilson

When I first planned this installment of the Mars Beckons blog, I thought I’d be discussing what the astronauts/settlers would do on the way to Mars. Once it’s time to go, about every two years, we’ll see anywhere from four astronauts (the crew size of NASA’s Orion spacecraft) to one-hundred settlers (Elon Musk’s reported passenger compliment on Starship) heading out on a six-month journey to The Red Planet. That’s a long trip and a long time to be in transit.

So—what will they do?

There’s not much information out there. Science and Research. Health and Fitness. Leisure and Relaxation. That’s it. Those are all the details I can find.

To be sure, we’ve learned from the almost twenty-five years (twenty-five years on 11/02/2025) of occupying the International Space Station (ISS) that health and fitness are a must. Six-months of living on the ISS can cause muscle weakness, bone loss, immune deficiencies, etc. Exercise and constant health monitoring are essential. Consider the challenges of six to nine months of transit time to Mars, a year or more in partial gravity (Mars’s gravity is about 38% of Earth’s) and then a six to nine months return trip. The Health and Fitness requirements are compounded.

And of course, we all need time off to recharge, enjoy our personal interests, connect with friends and family, and so on. The first travelers to Mars will need the same. But how will that work with twenty-minute delays in communication, limited space (and mass) for non- critical materials and supplies? And you better enjoy the conversation of your fellow travelers.

These are all topics that could deserve their own blog post series. If you’re interested in a more detailed discussion of these topics, I’d suggest checking out the NASA site for the ISS at International Space Station – NASA.

But I can imagine, as any science fiction fan can, how they might feel in the confines of a steel box, traveling twenty-five thousand miles an hour, tens of millions of miles from Earth. My research led me to consider the “steel box” aspect of the trip.

For NASA’s Orion spaceship, the confines are just that—confining. The craft is approximately sixteen feet in diameter, ten feet tall, and tapered. That’s smaller than my living room, and I don’t live in a large house. Imagine spending six months in that space—with three other people. [Image Credit: Orion Interior – NASA] I would find that claustrophobic and anxiety-laden. At the very least, I’d need to get away from my fellow travelers and have some “alone time.” I’m pretty sure I would not be a suitable candidate for the trip. Would you?

Now that space won’t carry all their supplies, plus the room and equipment for the essential activities “detailed” previously. The information I can find is that Orion will dock with a larger habitat module, still under design. We’ll see what that module looks like when details become available. [Note: if anybody has found an early rendering, let me know in the comments.]

Then there’s Starship. A larger spacecraft, maybe accommodating maybe 20. One schematic shows areas for sleeping quarters, equipment storage, etc.

[Note: this is not a SpaceX rendering. Image Credit: All+Decks+of+SpaceX+100-passenger+Starship+design+by+Ace+%26+Michel+Lamontagne.jpg (1371×1673)]

Starship is still in development, and the component planned to travel to Mars is not finalized; that’s years away. But that’s not to say we can’t consider what might be on the ship. Unlike Orion, docked to a larger habitat module, which will not land on Mars, Starship is expected to do just that. We can expect then that Starship will have space and equipment for the journey to Mars, plus what the astronauts will need to land and operate on Mars.

One futurist has prepared a short (~13 minutes) video about what Starship might look like. [Video URL: https://youtu.be/XC3dwEVxYEM]. Although Elon Musk has mentioned one-hundred people per trip, the video suggests it will probably be closer to twenty. But the ship in the video looks spacious and accommodating.

Of course, movies have contemplated the interiors of Mars-bound spaceships for years. Their design aesthetic

is interesting to ponder. I’ve always loved the aesthetics of the 50s. Plenty of room to conduct experiments. Like today, 1959’s The Angry Red Planet contemplated doing scientific experiments.

Plus plenty of room and time to have interesting discussions, when you’re not pressing all the buttons, turning all the knobs, and pulling all the levers.

[Image Credits: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Angry+Red+Planet+Faint+Nora+Hayden&FORM=IRIBEP https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIP.iK3ov0FKwI9kTGjCyjnZlgHaEL?r=0&rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain&o=7&rm=3]

As we move forward in time, the sets become more “futuristic” but are of a type that the Dragon craft sports.

Sleek. Clean. No knobs and buttons. This aesthetic actually isn’t that new. Just nine years after The Angry Red Planet, we got 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Image Credit: 2001-A-Space-Odyssey-57.00-Jupiter-Mission-Exercise-1340×602.jpg (1340×602)]

Which is of a type reflected in the movie The Martian, from the novel by Andy Weir of the same name. If anything, the latter interior is busier. [Image Credit: OIP.QiuX7Nv8LKWrsbuDrfBNGgHaD1 (474×245)]

In all these instances, there’s plenty of room to move around, exercise, spend leisure time, conduct work, and engage in other useful activities. It seems the filmmakers, as far back as at least the 50s, knew what NASA and SpaceX are addressing. On long missions, people need to pursue: Science and Research. Health and Fitness. Leisure and Relaxation.

Are you ready to sign up? Let me know what you think about spending six months in a steel box, traveling twenty-five thousand miles an hour, tens of millions of miles from Earth, with your soon-to-be closest friends.

Don’t forget the Scabble game.

Thanks for stopping by.

A few years ago, I attended a science fiction convention where one presentation discussed the number of launches it would take to achieve Elon Musk’s goal of moving one-million people to Mars over an assumed 10-year period. At 100 passengers per launch, that would be 100 launches per year (10,000 people)—two a week. SpaceX Mars colonization program – Wikipedia.

I’d travel to Starbase in Texas to watch that.

I should note here, the presenter estimated about 10 times that number of launches to send materials, components for the habitat, fuel for getting the Starship upper stage to and from Mars, landing on Mars, and so on. That required 1,000 launches per year or 20 per week. Putting is gently—he was a skeptic.

But I would look at this from a different perspective and consider how much weight Starship can launch into orbit. To keep it simple, I’ll use the information from Wikipedia and use the figure of 150 metric tons per launch. SpaceX Starship – Wikipedia (Note: the space shuttle could deliver 25 metric tons to orbit. Space Shuttle – Wikipedia)

Let’s suppose we want to send one-hundred people, including their “luggage” allotment, at 500 pounds per person. That’s about 226 kilograms per person, or 22.6 metric tons of people and their stuff, per launch. So what do you fill Starship with? What makes up the other 125 metric tons for that launch?

Good question. You’ll need supplies, of course, for the three-month trip. But you could throw in, say, 100 metric tons of supplies.

Why is that important? Well, one estimate we can use is they’ll need 1 million tons of supplies and materials to build a city for the 1 million people. That would be about 6,700 launches. But maybe some of that could go with the passenger launches, perhaps as much as 100,000 tons. Consider that a contingency perhaps.

Regardless, 10,000 launches might not be a bad estimate of what it would take.

Which brings me to the other two drivers of how we can get the materials needed to build a city on Mars and move 1 million people: how many ships are available and how much time does it take. Let’s start with estimating 40 years to complete the project. If we do indeed need 10,000 launches, that’s 250 launches a year, 5 per week. That still seems like a lot, but there’s been talk about a sub-orbital, rocket system for passenger service around the world. (see my blog Breakfast in New York – Lunch in Singapore – Dinner in London); 5 launches a week might just be doable.

Finally, how many ships would we need? If the refurbishment/turnaround time is one month, for example, some number of ships are in transit, and maybe some stay in orbit or on Mars, would 100 be unreasonable? Numbers are feeling more manageable.

To put it in human-size terms, we’d need 100 ships, launching 5 times per week for 40 years. That’s manageable in less than a single lifetime. If I had a trillion dollars, I might do that; perhaps somebody will.

Or we could do one and done. (Of course, I have to bring sci-fi into this.) In the classic 1951 film, When Worlds Collide, humanity is saved in a single ship, with a single launch, with everything they need for the new world, including livestock.

Doable? Likely not, but a fun movie.

Check it out: https://youtu.be/avtQ8elxL-o?t=96

(My apologies for any YouTube ads).

 Buckle up, we are go for launch.

Thanks for stopping by.

Mars—that reddish sparkle in the night sky. Mars—a planet empty (we think), cold, dry, and dusty. Mars—it beckons.

I’ve been reading about Mars for probably as long as I’ve been able to read. I’ve read Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter Mars series more times than I care to admit. In fact, a paper I wrote on the series was one of the few A’s I received on an English paper in high school.

Expeditions to our neighbor and the amazing things we’ve learned have kept me just waiting for more: more missions, more progress, and more movies and more books. I even ventured to Southern Utah last year to immerse myself in all things Mars. (You can read about that adventure at Mars Analog 2: An Expedition to the “Martian” Desert.)

And here we are. Robot landers and rovers are hard at work. Orbiting observatories are mapping and analyzing. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a human landing in the near future. (I keep my fingers crossed for every Starship launch and can’t wait for the next Artemis missions to the Moon as stepping stones to an expedition to Mars.)

At the risk of sounding obvious, the challenges are legion.

As I discussed in my opening page for the year CE 2025, I’ll turn my comments and posts to the idea of establishing a human foothold on The Red Planet. As we proceed through the year, I hope you’ll follow along and that my posts spark some thought on what it would take to get there and what we’ll do when we arrive.

Here are nine top level topics to get us started, in no particular order:

• Rocketry. Getting us off the planet Earth and on our way.
• Transit. Surviving and thriving during the extended trip to Mars.
• Settlement. Living and working in a hostile environment.
• Resources. Supplying the settlement from Earth or locally.
• Agriculture. Feeding the settlers.
• Economics. Making the society self-sufficient.
• Population. Growing the human presence.
• Cultural. Developing a Martian identity.
• Politics. Governing the settlement.

So, over the next several months, I’ll share my thoughts on these topics, provide some sources that reveal what’s being done or discussed in these areas, and, of course, make the occasional reference to science fiction movies and books.

There’s lots to cover and no shortage of fascinating stories.

I’ll do my best to be informative and entertaining. If you have a topic, you’d like to cover or have questions as we go, leave a comment, or send me a note using the Contact form.

Buckle up, we are go for launch.

Thanks for stopping by.

Welcome to my blog for the year 2025. The first half of the year has been busy, so we’ll need to cram a lot into six months.

In past years, I’ve roamed across topics and shared my thoughts and excitement about recent developments and interesting topics in Science and Technology. And those are broad topics and could cover just about anything.

This year I’d like to take a focused approach and talk about topics related to putting humans on Mars and developing a permanent presence on The Red Planet. In the first blog post I’ll layout the topics that we’ll cover for the year. Then each month, I’ll post a more detailed recap of the topic. Along the way, I’ll bring in other sources you can check for more detail, and I’m sure I’ll refer to where and when Science Fiction tackled the topic. Stay tuned.

This should be fun. I love research, and building a possible future world on Mars means I get to cover a wide swath of our modern society. You never know when you’ll come across an idea or a surprise solution. So, I’ll share what I discover and hope you find it interesting.

I hope you will enjoy my posts, and if you’d like to discuss a particular topic or stay connected, please slide over to my Contact page. Please join my email list as well to receive advance notice of upcoming stories of aliens, strange worlds, and mysteries on the short fiction tab.

Thank you again for visiting my blog.

Trans Earth Injection was successful!

I have returned from my trip to The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) as part of the Refit Crew. A team of Mars enthusiasts spent 9+ days upgrading, refurbishing, and renovating The Mars Society’s Mars analog in Southeast Utah.

The place felt like Mars; a quick look out the window would make that real. The colors were ruddy; there was no vegetation but plenty of empty space. The only clues you were on Earth (as a view) were the larger sun and the beautiful blue sky. One wonders how visitors to Mars will adapt. Will they miss a bright yellow Sol? Will they miss clear blue skies or clouds? All questions that I’ll bet are under study. Just Google researching the psychology of living on Mars, and you’ll find any number of articles on the topic. [Note: the link is that search prompt entered into Google.]

Simulations, including the recently completed CHAPEA Mission 1, are attempting to address these issues. One question that may have to wait is how the dynamics of a small team in an isolated habitat play out when the team knows they aren’t just an airlock door away from Earth when they are actually on Mars. That’s a topic for another post.

But, back to the Refit Expedition. The Refit Crew was tasked with upgrades, refurbishment, and getting the MDRS ready for the first crew of the following research season. Here’s a short list and some pictures:

Rebuild the shower

Install padding on the ladder steps (so you don’t need boots to climb the stairs)

Re-model two crew staterooms

Dig trenches and lay stone walk areas (it might not rain on Mars—yet—but it does rain in Southeastern Utah, and flooding can be a problem)

Get the rovers out of storage and charged up

Upgrade the wall/floor interface (looks finished and keeps out the little, furry “locals”—again, a Utah issue, but not yet a Mars issue)

Patch and paint walls, handrails, airlock doors, and airlock openings

We were awed by the view of our home galaxy (at least this “city boy” was), caught a glimpse of the aurora borealis (through our iPhones), and even met one of the locals.

Last, we had a great team: an astronomer, a planetary scientist, a book editor/coach, a game developer, a couple of retired IT guys, a wetlands/reclamation specialist, a bio-medical student, an architect, a software engineer, etc. plus the site director. We were a mixed bunch but with mad skills and a shared interest in Mars and all things interplanetary. We shared one thing, though—we’ve all seen (and mostly liked) every science fiction movie from the Seventies. One of the crew members mentioned it might be because there are so few of them compared to later decades. Needless to say, our dinner discussions were heaven for a sci-fi geek like me.

We had a fabulous time. We worked hard, had fun, “worked” the daily checklist, and enjoyed the area’s natural wonders and good food and conversation when we trekked into town.

I can’t wait ’till next year.

In the meantime, check out The Mars Society (The Mars Society) and the MDRS (Mars Desert Research Station (marssociety.org)), and support them if you’re so inclined.

Thanks for stopping by.

Mars Analogs. Not a term I’d heard until a few months ago when The Mars Society put out an appeal for volunteers to join a re-hab crew at the Mars Desert Research Station in southeastern Utah. I’d heard of specific facilities and experiments run by NASA, but not the MDRS nor the term Mars Analog. (MDRS: Mars Desert Research Station (marssociety.org))

As I prepared to head to Utah to join the re-hab crew, I thought I’d check in on what’s going on at other analogs. There are more than you might think, and certainly the ubiquitous Wikipedia page lists several, with links to their details (List of Mars analogs – Wikipedia).

Several analog cycles have concluded in the last couple of months. Most notably, CHAPEA Mission 1 (CHAPEA Mission 1 – NASA) wrapped up in July with the crew exiting the habitat after 378 days in isolation.

NASA’s Antarctic facility (referred to as “white Mars”) is part of the Human Research Program (Antarctic Stations – NASA) NASA states:

“Antarctica’s climate, terrain, temperature, and isolation provide an environment on Earth that closely parallels the conditions of isolation and stress that astronauts will face on long-duration missions in space. This analog provides a unique and accessible test bed to develop prototype systems and technologies for use on the Moon and Mars.”

And yes, you read that right, I’m heading to the MDRS in the near future. But no, I’m not joining a Mars simulation mission, but rather joining the team that is prepping the facility for the next research season that starts in mid-October. I’d love to be part of a real research cycle, maybe play the role of the useless stowaway that rises to the occasion to save the day. But my guess is, that’s not a role they typically fill.

So I’m excited to go and spend a couple of weeks working on the habitat and, as my wife puts it, “geeking out” with my fellow Mars enthusiasts.

But as you know from past issues, I can let a post go by without a movie reference.

I will try to avoid embarrassing myself and thus include only this passing reference to the absurd Bio-Dome (included here only in reference to my remark above about the useless stowaway) and move on to darker reference to a Mars-like habitat in the 1977 science fiction thriller, Capricorn One (2-minute video).

[Image Credit: v67566dd67m.jpg (442×800) (rovicorp.com)]

The movie centers on a Mars mission, doomed to failure. The “government” decides to have the crew live in a simulated Mars environment, send back updates, and ultimately return to Earth—sure, what could go wrong. No spoilers here though.

So, I guess when the first mission to Mars is launched, the conspiracy theorists will be staking out all the Mars analogs that are around the world.

I just hope they don’t show up when we’re re-habing the MDRS.

I’ll provide a mission de-brief when I return from Utah and let you all know how it went. In the meantime, check out The Mars Society (The Mars Society) and the MDRS (Mars Desert Research Station (marssociety.org)), and support them if you’re so inclined.

Thanks for stopping by.