I have written a lot about the plan and motivations for going to Mars.    In summary, I believe in Elon Musk’s and other believers in humanity that there is a greater purpose of man to explore and take ourselves beyond one planet.

One might say that all the success of science fiction movies and literature reflects a huge pent up desire for humans to go beyond our current little ball.

We as a species could use something to focus our attention on something bigger than any one person’s dream or nations.  We are talking about something to pull all of humanity together and to excite large numbers of humans to stop fighting amongst ourselves and work toward a bigger purpose that enhances all humans.

When you consider the scope of the universe and look at the scope of time you realize we are an infinitesimal spec in a large universe.  A lot of people if they don’t believe in god are looking for a larger purpose.  I think we have a lot of social problems because people don’t see any purpose other than the fulfillment of their own needs.

I am not saying this could be the only purpose but it is a useful and good purpose to devote ourselves to something that transcends race, gender, species and is something that is so hard and difficult it requires a large commitment but is achievable.

Some might argue it is not achievable.  It may not.  The purpose of my plan is to determine that early.

The overall plan

I have outlined much of the plan in the other blogs on this site.  The major arc of the plan is to first build infrastructure and test different systems to support the colony.  This would be done primarily as robotic.  The fact we have new autonomous driving projects and the development of better AI says that this is viable.  However, we are not there.

I have outlined the initial system and architecture of the colony.  I have outlined the transportation systems and the safety systems.   I have outlined the resources needed, the different systems we need to produce all the necessities to support a colony independently as much as possible.

I do not anticipate complete independence.  Every country is not completely independent.  Presumably there will be eventually a trade and way to sustain the economic arrangement so the colony is not entirely dependent on the Earth.  To do that I call this bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping

The term refers to getting something up and running the first time on new hardware.  Since there is no software running initially you have to load up everything you need to get going and then you load more and more.

In effect, when the colonists started America they had to bootstrap themselves.  They had a huge advantage over space colonists.  America had a breathable atmosphere.  It was safe from radiation and there was an indigenous food supply.  A few ships could land and start a colony.  Nonetheless in the day it was considered expensive.

This bootstrapping is an incredible task.  We need to supply colonists with enough to sustain themselves in this harsh environment but also everything they need to continuously produce food from scratch, mine materials and construct as much of everything they can themselves.

Fortunately, technology has evolved in many directions to facilitate this.  Besides the development of autonomous driving and AI technology we have much enhanced communication and power systems.  We have things such as 3D printing which allows us to literally fabricate random things out of raw materials.  Thus we don’t need 1000 factories to produce every imaginable thing.  As long as it can be built from some materials we can fabricate we can build almost anything.

What this says is that our technology has evolved to make this conceivable.   At least we appear to be on the cusp of imagining how to do these things.  I have laid out the materials (15-22 million lbs) of materials and equipment before humans arrive.

Now that we imagine bootstrapping is possible what are the barriers to making it happen?

Making this interesting

NASA’s current approach is showboating.  I have appreciated the great shows NASA has put on.  There are the scientific missions you could say are more directly valuable and I certainly think these are worth the effort but I speak mainly of the manned efforts.

Many people think without man nobody will be interested in a program that is all robots.  This has been a significant policy block on robot missions.  People don’t get all excited unless a human life is hanging in the balance it seems.  There is also the significant achievement of putting a human in such a dangerous environment.  It awes us and it should.  We have evolved from the monkeys and the industrial revolution.  We are now in the phase where humans have such a grasp on our universe we can venture out from the lonely and safe womb we are in now.

I personally am fascinated with technology as you can probably tell from these blogs.  However, to humanize the effort to colonize during the beginning years I propose a new idea.   4K VR on everything.

When Neil Armstrong put a foot on the moon he said: “One step for man and a leap for mankind.” (Well that’s what he intended to say,) .  His voice even without very good graphics and knowing he was there was enough to awe us.

However, the moon program was a showboat.  We went there and collected rocks.  We never established anything permanent that could be used for the future of mankind.  In the movie “Mars” the astronaut at one point is able to relax from the near continuous effort to keep himself alive and is able to collect rocks from the surface.  He says:  “I finally feel like an astronaut.”

In fact, it was the opposite.  Everything he was doing to keep himself alive was what astronauts ought to be doing.  Collecting rocks is not.

What if instead of a voice of an astronaut walking on the surface of Mars telling us how great a leap this is or describing the terrain if instead we built a virtual reality of Mars that people on Earth could go to Mars and walk around and travel?

The idea is that all the equipment we put on Mars has 4K VR cameras on them.  We probably need cameras anyway in order for the machines to be able to do their job since they have to be autonomous.

The communication time to Earth is minimum 4 minutes, so you can’t operate anything with a 4 minute delay between each and every move it makes.  So, the equipment has to be able to see and to operate largely within a plan we send to accomplish things without needing to be send new commands for every step.

So, the technology we have for creating virtual environments isn’t perfect yet but it is pretty impressive and by the time we send these robots it can be almost as realistic as being there.  If you have seen 4K TV’s it is pretty hard to tell that you aren’t looking at something that really exists.  Higher frame rates also make things seem more realistic and less like a movie.  VR allows you to move around and for the computer to fabricate the view you see as if you were there doing the same thing.

If you have not played with a VR headset you should try it.  When you move your head the scene follows your head movement and the vision in front of you shifts as if you were actually there looking around.  You can also move around and the experience is replicated so that it appears you are moving in the environment.  In other words it’s like you are really there.

Of course if you reach out to touch something it isn’t there.  If you go beyond the data that the computer has it cannot manufacture things it doesn’t have.  So there are limits.  You can’t smell the environment or feel the temperature.  Some people are trying to improve other aspects of VR but just the visual part is stunning and when it is full 4K it will be very much like you are there.

What do we need to enable every human to walk on Mars and have their own unique experience on Mars anytime they want it?

The technology is well understood.  We need:

1. GPS system to map the landscape in extreme detail with high precision
2. VR Cameras which we have mounted and traversing the terrain getting the low level detail in 3D.
3. Autonomous robots traversing the terrain
4. Enough power to run the robots and communications and other systems.
5. Extremely high bandwidth communication to the Earth to transmit the very very large data that is needed.

Elon Musk is planning to go someday but not initially.  You can go virtually very soon using this approach

All of the technology I describe above is engineered today and feasible.  It simply requires the budget and desire.  The question is if having such a system in place replaces the excitement of having a human there at least until we do put humans.

My goal is not to put humans until we have the wherewithal to support them safely.  That means quite a bit of robotic technology, infrastructure development, food supply etc is already there.  It will take 10 years to make that all happen.  People will get bored and VR is a useful and powerful way to socialize the mission to Mars and all the work being done.

I propose the very first mission in my plan includes everything needed to do this so that the first mission I currently plan for 2025 would establish this and within months we would have people walking on Mars …. virtually.

There is excitement in robots too

As the robots planned traverse the planet they will see the amazingly diverse terrain of Mars.  The surface of Mars has a grand canyon that is twice as deep as ours.  It has a mountain that is 50% higher than Mt Everest.  It has floodplanes where oceans and rivers flowed and it has holes and caves.  There are storms and colors and stuff we will never see on Earth.

As the robots work to build and explore we will be able to follow along as if we were the robot.  With VR technology we can do our own path.  Once the robots have collected the data it is possible for a computer to construct your path.  Take your own journey.  Stop and look at a view as long as you want.

It’s not like a video.  It is interactive.  The data is on Earth. No communication with the robot or Mars occurs when you are traveling.  As long as the data gets here we have it permanently here even if the robots disappear and we can construct arbitrary personal experiences from whatever data we have collected.

The First mission to Mars

The goals of the first mission are as follows.  It consists of about 250K lbs of equipment.  This has all been thought out.

1.  12 GPS satellites for establishing GPS location of anything on Mars with high accuracy.
2.   3 high speed high functionality rovers for exploration and life search on Mars
3.   ultra high speed communications array for transporting data to Earth
4. Various autonomous robots to facilitate building the power systems and repair or other
5.   A power system and battery dispersal system to power everything on Mars
6.   The first warehouse to start collecting and storing materials
7.   The first drilling machine

Each of these pieces fits together and is described in more detail in my article on the first 2 missions.

The most important parts are the communications, power, gps, and rovers.   The rovers are a 3rd generation rover from the rovers we sent 10 years ago called Spirit and opportunity.  The second generation rover is being sent in 2020 and is on plan right now.  The second generation rover has significantly enhanced capability.

The third generation rover is another leap.

Life on Mars?

The most important mission of the rover is to determine if life exists on Mars.  This is critical because we have to know before we go forward with colonization if we are going into a world with an existing form of life or not.  It may change our plans and even if it doesn’t we need to discuss it and debate it and not destroy it accidentally.

Determining the existence of life on Mars even if it is microbial will be one of the most significant scientific achievements of man.   We need to know if it exists or existed and where it is before we go farther in our plans to colonize.

The current efforts to determine the existence of life have been inconclusive.  They are inconclusive because the experiments were very limited.  Some of the experiments appear to have been corrupted.  The experiments didn’t have equipment to actually observe life or to test it.  They only looked for signs.  We need to be able to really go to the next level.  The second generation rover will have much better capability and I propose the 3rd generation will have more.

This is incredibly important and must be definitive.  One advantage of these missions is that the rovers can transport samples back to the base station and the next mission to Mars will be able to pick up samples and deliver them to Earth if needed.  So we can finally get the answer to this question.

I have 3 of these robots on the first mission but each of my first 3 missions has 3 of these rovers so that by the end there are 9 rovers scouring Mars more or less continuously looking for life.

Determining what’s there

The second purpose of the rovers is to scan the surface of Mars and also to depth using microwave technology.  The second rover will have this capability.  We only have 1 or 2 second generation rovers.  I propose 9 third generation rovers so we can map a large part of the surface of Mars.

The purpose of this is to establish the location of key minerals and materials as well as locations for exploring and colonies.  The rovers have the capability to scan into Mars to 500 feet or deeper with an accuracy of close to an inch.  They can see through density what is likely to be there.  Are there lakes underneath?  Are there veins of iron or other minerals?

The rovers might also have explosives on them and superior drilling technology.   The current rovers can drill a few inches into the surface.  The second generation won’t be much better.  The third generation I propose might have better and also the ability to deploy explosives if we find spots where we want to dig.

Okay, now will that provide a good movie?  🙂

The first rovers were powered by sun.  This is problematic and weak.

The 2020 and future rovers are powered by thermoradioactive generators.  These have been used on craft back for 40 or 50 years and are incredibly reliable, consistent and powerful.  I propose having significantly more power on the third generation rovers.

VR and mapping

The next most important goal for the rovers is to have VR cameras and to basically record their journey in incredible detail so that humans can pretend they are the rovers.

As the rovers traverse the surface and record the video they will be also annotating it with GPS information.   This means that we will be able to map Mars like we do with Google Earth.  You could literally have Mars on your computer screen and click on a location and get a high resolution picture of what’s there at ground level or any level.  You could also don your VR headsets and suddenly be on the surface at that location looking around.  Turn your head.  The scene turns as if you were on Mars.  Whatever the rover saw we can have.

Practicalities

It will take time for these rovers to traverse the surface.  Many areas of Mars are quite difficult.  As I said there are mountains that are 50% higher than Everest.  How to climb the mountain may not be obvious.  The rover may need to stop occasionally and get guidance from a human how to proceed.    The rovers will travel at most 15mph most likely.  The current rovers top speed is 3mph.

Some places may be impossible to get to.  The polar regions are particularly interesting but also incredibly dangerous.

The poles experience massive melting and venting as well as 400mph winds during the transition from summer to winter.  There is millions and millions of tons of co2 and water at the poles.

The rovers are not even the main focus of the first mission

Back at camp while the rovers are exploring Mars there will be a base.  The base initially consists of a power supply, a storage warehouse, robots that ferry batteries and some construction robots as well as a drilling robot.

The first thing the robots at the base will be doing is deploying the solar power system foils and electrical system.  Laying out the solar panels, connecting them up and maintaining them.

A number of robots will help assemble this and other things.  They will be general purpose robots able to do more than assemble solar panels.

A huge advantage on Mars is that lower gravity means that everything needs less power to do.   However, the Mars environment is very corrosive and stressful.  Everything has to be designed to be industrial strength unlike the traditional NASA approach to building components that they expect to last 6 months or whatever.  These things may need to last 50 or 100 years.

After the solar panels and electrical system is first set up a recharge station is setup that allows the power to be stored and then robots can deliver batteries to other devices.  A sophisticated planning and automated system is planned to deliver replacement batteries to robots as needed.

As I said all the equipment and robots will have VR capability so that we can also get this virtual reality and be at the base.  Watch it evolve.  Be with the robots as they build and do the work to start to build our first base.

The GPS satellites in orbit will also be part of a network of ultra high speed possibly laser based communication system to get data back to Earth.

The colonization effort will have a number of missions sent every year.  Those missions will be in transit going or coming back.  They will be able to help distribute and collect information.  The goal is to have literally 100 megabit communication to Mars.

This is electronics and on the scale of the cost of the program to go to Mars it is trinkets compared to the cost for the transportation and other elements of the program.

I also put one of the first functional robots on the first mission.  A digging robot to explore under the surface of Mars.  This is important for a number of reasons but we can also deliver explosives to facilitate exploration as we did in the early days of exploring our world.

Is this exciting?

To me this is pretty exciting.  The idea that humans would be in such a large scale endeavor but also the use of VR so we can virtually be there.  The variety and excitement of Mars is tantalizing.  I have mentioned only the barest of things we could see.

I hope this gives you the idea what is possible very soon.

No, there is no man in this journey and a lot of work has to go into planning the GPS satellites, communications, robots,… but it is eminently possible all with basically current technology or very close.

Next Steps?

NASA ANNOUNCES ITS NEW GOAL IS TO BOOTSTRAP HUMAN BEINGS ON MARS OVER THE NEXT 30 YEARS.  CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION TO HELP THE EARTH MOVE TO MULTI-PLANETARY CAPABILITY AS A GOAL

I think the announcement of such a program would be amazing.  We need to have discussions and a price estimate to do all this.

I want NASA to develop many of the robot technologies and the plan overall.  I want NASA to take responsibility but I want private companies to provide the majority of the actual technology and infrastructure.

In order to do this the first thing we need is to scale up the cheap SpaceX reusable launch capability because we will need to lift a lot of stuff into space and it is too costly with any other system NASA has or is planning.

We need to start working on the 3rd generation rover, the GPS and other components.

I believe we should task SpaceX with the ISS (Space Station) and upgrading it to be a platform for missions to Mars which will include 4x increase in power, 2x increase in space.  Many more arms and robotic technologies.  They will supply all the rockets and transportation systems.

This will allow NASA to get out of this infrastructure stuff and move to doing research like the robot stuff and colonization planning.  This is more appropriate for it.

I think such a program will galvanize a great respect for America if it spearheads the program as well as starting to move focus from the selfish concerns of each other and to the bigger goals of all humanity.