MSGT Journal - News and Views from the Mars Society at Georgia Tech

There is a meeting Tuesday, March 11, at 11 am in Guggenheim Building (School of
Aerospace Engineering) Room 244. This meeting will be a send-off
ceremony for our Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) Crew 69.
This is a great opportunity to meet the crew and see what kind of projects
they will be working on. It is also a good time for you to find out how you can
participate in this unique program this year by signing up to be a mission
support volunteer.
Again, the meeting will be on March 11, at 11 am, in Guggenheim 244!
Come and enjoy the FREE PIZZA!

EMS Technologies, Inc. was a sponsor last year for MDRS Crew 47.

ATLANTA, Oct. 3, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) — EMS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ELMG - News) announced today that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has awarded EMS Defense and Space Systems a $1.2 million contract to provide Ka-band antennas for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) exploratory rover. The MSL is scheduled for liftoff sometime in September 2009, during a narrow launch window that occurs for only a few weeks every 26 months.

The MSL is twice as long as and carries a greater payload than the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. At liftoff in 2009, the MSL will carry the largest, most advanced set of instruments for on-the-spot science duties ever dispatched to the Martian surface. The rover is being designed to assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support life.

The Ka-band antennas, which use EMS’s patented slot array technology, are a critical part of the Terminal Descent Sensor (TDS), which will guide the MSL to the surface of Mars. Unlike previous Mars rovers that used inflatable airbags to bounce the rovers to a halt on the planet’s surface, the MSL rover will use precision landing techniques to steer itself toward the Martian surface. EMS anticipates that the TDS antennas will be used on other future Mars missions as well.

“We are proud to be a part of this NASA mission of discovery that will vastly enrich our knowledge of the red planet,'’ said Jay Grove, senior vice president and general manager of EMS’s Defense and Space Systems division. “EMS was selected for this exciting program because of our technical strength, our forty years of space flight heritage, and our ability to meet the critical schedule this program requires.'’

About EMS Technologies, Inc.

EMS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ELMG - News) is a leading innovator in the design and manufacture of wireless, satellite and defense solutions, and focuses its unique range of advanced technologies on the needs of broadband and mobile information users. The Company is headquartered in Atlanta, has approximately 1,200 workers worldwide, and operates manufacturing facilities in Atlanta, Ottawa and Brazil.

EMS Technologies’ Defense and Space Systems Division develops advanced technology systems for military and space applications. The division provides critical subsystems for communications, radar, and electronic warfare systems.

For more information, visit EMS on the World Wide Web at http://www.ems-t.com.

Crew assignments have been made for Georgia Tech’s Crew 47 to the Mars Desert Research Station. Congratulations everyone!

Station Crew:
Dr. Jan Osburg - Commander, Communications Engineer, and Human Factors Researcher
Anne Campeau - Engineer, Polymer Fiber Tools Research
Emily Colvin - Executive Officer, Engineering Upgrades (including power meter installation), IT Specialist, Logistics
Meryl Mims - Biologist, Geologist, Health and Safety Officer
Jennifer Rome - Astonomer, Logistics, Sextant Navigation Research
Jason Sherwin - Radiation Officer, Public Affairs Officer, In-situ Construction Research

Mission Support Team:
Elizabeth Tang - Mission Support Lead, Greenhab Research, Outreach
Gregory Lantoine - Mission Support Specialist, In-situ Construction Research
Jonathan Sharma - Mission Support Specialist, Mission Support Interaction Research

Georgia Tech’s Crew 47 to the Mars Desert Research Station will be training together on a backpacking trip on a segment of the Appalachian Trail.

Cambridge, MA - The 4Frontiers Corporation (www.4Frontiers.com), today
announces its plan for the first permanent habitation on another planet,
revealing technical and social aspects of establishing an initial human
settlement on Mars. The bold plan is based in part on the work of the Mars
Foundation (www.MarsHome.org) but will be carried out within an expansive
4Frontiers business plan. 4Frontiers is actively engaging with space
transportation, technical, policy and financial partners to develop the
systems and technologies needed to establish this new branch of
civilization. The business plan also calls for the establishment of a
revolutionary Mars Settlement Outreach and Research Center, here on Earth,
to advance these efforts.

While a number of companies have set their sites on advancements in getting
to Mars, few have laid out plans with technical reality and actual designs
to quickly and affordably establish settlement. For example, Elon Musk of
Space Exploration Technologies (www.SpaceX.com), is developing the
human-rated Falcon 5 launcher, and has plans to develop a super-heavy lift
rocket as part of a strategy to get to Mars. However, “4Frontiers is
positioned to be the leader in actual “on-the-ground” settlement housing,
life support, and industrial technology,” said Mark Homnick, CEO of
4Frontiers. “We have utilized detailed knowledge of the planet and the
extensive know-how of our technical team to develop a plan for a small but
sustainable settlement, leveraging use of locally derived materials,” said
Joseph Palaia, VP of Research & Development.

A settlement on Mars would translocate the human genome to another planet
effectively creating a new Biosphere. While it may take “rocket science” to
get to Mars, once there “The lessons learned from large scale closed
systems, such as Biosphere 2, a project supported by billionaire Ed Bass,
have demonstrated a clear path for small-scale sustainability and offer
critical elements for a Mars based ecologically sustainable settlement,”
said Bruno D.V. Marino, a consultant to 4Frontiers and former Director of
Science and Research at Biosphere 2. 4Frontiers has already begun extensive
research programs covering in-situ manufacturing of building materials,
extraction of oxygen and water, and the establishment of Martian ecosystems
to produce diverse food crops. The company plans to unveil additional
research and development programs in the near future.

4Frontiers is making strides in establishing a Mars Settlement Research and
Outreach Center. “This unique facility will serve as a nexus for space
technology development and consultancy, focused initially on technologies
having commonality with those needed both for Mars settlement and for the
President’s Moon Mars Initiative,” said Bruce Mackenzie, 4Frontiers VP and
Director of the Mars Foundation. The 25,000 sq foot facility, assuming the
form of a full-scale replica of the actual first settlement, will provide
the public an unprecedented glimpse of life on the early Mars frontier, and
will allow the public to interact with scientists and engineers who will be
turning this vision into reality. 4Frontiers is presently in negotiations
with a number of agencies, investigating the possibility of locating this
facility in New Mexico, Central Florida or Colorado.

More information about 4Frontiers is available at www.4Frontiers.com.

NASA has posted a cool, slick commercial. It’s short, and pretty much awesome. Go watch. (Via Instapundit, reposted from Amygdala.)

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0705/28edequal.html

The time has come for America to commit itself to the human exploration and settlement of Mars.

Despite the greater distance to Mars, we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to launch humans to the moon in 1961 when John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to achieve that goal. Given the will, we could have our first teams on Mars within 10 years.

It needn’t break the bank, either. Some previous NASA plans for human Mars missions were very expensive because they involved developing orbiting spaceports to construct giant interplanetary spaceships filled with all the supplies needed for a round trip to the red planet. But technology has now been demonstrated that would allow us to manufacture a rocket’s return propellant out of the Martian atmosphere. Our spacecraft can be dramatically smaller and cheaper if we don’t use them to ship to Mars things that can just as easily be made there.

If done in this way, the cost of the Mars program would be about $20 billion to develop all the hardware needed. After that, each mission by the copy would cost between $1 billion and $2 billion. It’s a sum this country can easily afford.

But why do it?

For the knowledge. This past summer NASA scientists revealed a rock ejected from Mars by meteoric impact, which showed strong evidence of life on Mars in the distant past. If this could be confirmed by actual finds of fossils on the Martian surface, it would show that the origin of life is not unique to the Earth, and thus by implication reveal a universe that is filled with life and probably intelligence as well. From the point of view of humanity learning its true place in the universe, this would be the most important scientific enlightenment since Copernicus.

Robotic probes can help in such a search, but by themselves they are completely insufficient. Fossil hunting requires the ability to travel long distances through unimproved terrain, to climb steep slopes, do heavy and delicate work, and exercise very subtle forms of perception and on-the-spot intuition.

For the future, Mars is not just a scientific curiosity, it is a world with a surface area equal to all the continents of Earth combined, possessing all the elements that are needed to support not only life, but technological civilization.

With Discovery’s successful launch this week, the nation now has a chance to lift its eyes and accept the challenge of opening new frontiers of new worlds. It is a historic opportunity. We should seize the time.

Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer, is president of the Mars Society.

Reading, Massachusetts - The Mars Foundation ™ has completed a
comprehensive, 8-month, pre-design study of the first human settlement on
the planet Mars, an effort called the Mars Homestead ™Project. This study
verifies that a permanent settlement can be established early in the course
of human Mars exploration by using near-term technologies and local mars
resources. The unprecedented, unified Mars settlement design and vision
places the Mars Foundation at the forefront of understanding in this field.

The Mars Foundation’s global team of 21 scientists and engineers has
examined the needs of the proposed settlement, developed technical concepts
for Mars-based life support and resource utilization, and identified core
technologies. Detailed concepts have been generated for many technical
disciplines including agriculture, architecture, electrical distribution,
bulk gas, HVAC, instrumentation and controls, information technology,
medicine, psychology, nuclear power, waste recycling, polymer manufacturing,
and metals manufacturing systems.

The Mars Homestead team will present results of this study in various
peer-reviewed publications and conferences, beginning with the July SAE-ICES
(International Conference on Environmental Systems) in Rome. At this
conference, Georgi Petrov, team architect and recent graduate of the MIT
School of Architecture, presented a paper that describes the Homestead’s
architectural design. In August, at the Mars Society Convention in Boulder,
Colorado, the team will deliver a track of eight presentations covering
multiple technical areas. Additional presentations of study results and
technical concepts will be given at the Meridiani Base Workshop in August,
and at the ASCE Earth & Space, AIAA Habitation, NSS International Space
Development, and MIT Mars-Week conferences in the coming year.

The Mars Foundation’s scientific and technical team continues to refine and
expand upon these concepts. They have created a settlement technology
roadmap, and are establishing a series of special task forces that are
making more detailed investigations of specific technical areas not covered
in the initial study, including space suit design, Earth-Mars transport,
robotic automation and surface vehicle design. These efforts are being
pursued with the assistance of student groups at MIT, University of
Illinois, University of Central Florida, and University of Michigan.

More information about The Mars Foundation is available at www.MarsHome.org
“Mars Foundation”, “Mars Homestead”, “Mars Homestead Project” are trademarks
of the Mars Foundation.

Crew 37 to the Mars Desert Research Station has gone and returned, covered by lots of difference news agencies - we’ve got an article in a British tabloid, a 3 part series that ran on Atlanta’s 11Alive as well as a station interview with them, a segment in the History Channel’s Modern Marvels, an article in the Fayetteville Citizen, and more! Visit the MDRS Crew 37 website at http://www.gtmars.com.

Journalist Steve Featherstone spent a crew rotation at Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, and is writing a Slate Dispatches piece on the experience. Monday’s entry is linked above, and the tabs will take you to the other posts as the week progresses. Should be good PR for Mars Society.

An Austrailian man is making a 500 km trek across the Outback to help research the psychological and physical effects of a long walk on the Moon or Mars. He is, of course, supported by the Aussie chapter of the Mars Society, though I don’t see anything about it on their website just yet.

While I see the value in this research, it’s likely going to be an underestimate of the true psychological effects and an overestimate of the physical effects. Psychologically, he hasn’t been trapped in a spacecraft for six or so months traversing the solar system, only to find he’s millions of miles away from home. Physically, Mars has only one third Earth’s gravity, and the Moon one sixth. So it’s not going to be perfect.

But it’s better than what we have now, which are anecdotal reports from people who have voluntarily chose such solitude for other reasons. I wonder if anyone has looked at that existing body yet as a sort of baseline.

Update: See also this AFP story on the project.

Recently, Ray Bradbury presented his testimony in front of the Aldridge Commission. His testimony relies primarily on an “aesthetic” argument—that the trip to Mars, and beyond, should not be about profit, or even about practicality, though those can definitely come along for the ride. Instead, expansion to Mars is the next step of discovery that has been given to us; a gift of the universe.

Pretty persuasive, I think, to us Mars Society types, but then again, we didn’t need convincing. I have to agree with Mr. Spudis that the American public won’t be so easily convinced, just based on my experience in talking to others. So it is important to push Mars not just on the Sir Edmund Hillary argument (”because it’s there”), but because Martian exploration will bring tangible benefits to humanity.

The remaining question is, what benefits are those? Comments are open for this one.