In the red sands of New Mexico this week, a small group of scientists and engineers are trying to figure out how to live off the land on the moon and Mars.
"We take certain things for granted here on Earth that we need to think about on Mars and the moon," said Mike Duke, staff scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute. "If you have people working in factories, then you need to design the place to allow for the fact that they'll be wearing these bulky spacesuits."
Duke is directing a two-day workshop, as part of this week's Space 98 conference, to prime the minds of a small but growing band of researchers who are working on disparate projects related to future habitation in these far-away environments. The goal of the session, which ends Friday, is to get people to think about ways of setting up shop cheaply on the moon and Mars.
The efforts of these researchers are feeding off the recent triumphs of NASA's Discovery program, a set of missions designed on the principles of better, cheaper, faster. With Pathfinder under its belt, Lunar Prospector and Mars Explorer already in space, and a series of unmanned Mars missions in the queue, NASA has demonstrated that less-expensive launches can generate abundant and good science. NASA's science on the moon and Mars is fueling the work of the researchers attending Space 98.
The key to building a habitable environment on Mars and the moon more efficiently is to mine the resources that are already there. For example, a researcher from the Czech Republic will discuss how he has melted basalt rock, a volcanic material scientists believe is abundant on Mars, and formed it into pipes and other useful materials. Several papers from NASA scientists will discuss ways to build solar panels and heat and sound insulators from minerals common to the moon and Mars.
By using the minerals on the planets -- and not having to pack building materials on a rocket -- scientists can develop a system to build a product that weighs more than the machinery flown to the planet to create it. For example, a machine weighing one ton will be worth the cost of sending it into space if it can produce 10 tons of fuel or other materials by using resources already on the planet. "That's 10 tons we don't have to fly up there, and it saves us on propellants produced here on Earth," Duke said.
Getting machinery to the moon and Mars is one thing, making these environments suitable for humans is quite another issue. For Michael Simon, the task of putting humans on Mars or the moon was too daunting to consider. Instead, he has opted to get his firm, International Space Enterprises, to send up a rover. Simon is hopeful that he and his business partners will round up enough investors to fund a series of missions to either the moon or Mars.
The rovers, whose actions will be captured on cameras held aloft by balloons, will be accessible to anyone on Earth via the Internet. The cost? Simon estimates it is around US$100 to $200 million, about 1 percent of what he believes a manned mission would cost.
"At minimum, a manned mission approaches the $10 billion mark," Simon said.
A manned mission requires a lot of weighty hardware. Duke said it takes 50 to 100 tons of hardware to support four people on the surface of the moon or Mars. "That's why it's feasible to ask and see about substituting materials and working out logistics," he said.
These logistics include the fact, for example, that Mars launches can take place only every two years, when Earth and Mars are aligned for the best flight path. So one mission would go up, taking the hardware to generate fuel for a return rocket and oxygen for humans. Two years later, humans would go up to work in the environment, and they would return two years after that.
But before taking these big steps, scientists first must learn to crawl technologically, Duke said.
"No systems exist that can do these things. We need to find out if it's plausible to use materials [on the planets] in a productive way in the near term."
With so much to tackle, Duke's workshop is at the beginning of a long journey.
