In a Major New Report, Scientists Build Rationale For Sending Astronauts To Mars (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0180349509
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/12/09/2318208/in-a-major-new-report-scientists-build-rationale-for-sending-astronauts-to-mars
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/in-a-major-new-report-scientists-build-rationale-for-sending-astronauts-to-mars/
> The report, two years in the making and encompassing more than 200 pages, was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Essentially, the committee co-chaired by Newman and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, director of the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, was asked to identify the highest-priority science objectives for the first human missions to Mars. [...] "There's no turning back," Newman said. "Everyone is inspired by this because it's becoming real. We can get there. Decades ago, we didn't have the technologies. This would have been a study report."
>
> The goal of the report is to help build a case for meaningful science to be done on Mars alongside human exploration. The report outlines 11 top-priority science objectives. [...] The committee also looked at different types of campaigns to determine which would be most effective for completing the science objectives noted above. The campaign most likely to be successful, they found, was an initial human landing that lasts 30 days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery to facilitate a longer 300-day crewed mission on the surface of Mars. All of these missions would take place in a single exploration zone, about 100 km in diameter, that featured ancient lava flows and dust storms.
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> Notably, the report also addresses the issue of planetary protection, a principle that aims to protect both celestial bodies (i.e., the surface of Mars) and visitors (i.e., astronauts) from biological contamination. [...] In recent years, NASA has been working with the International Committee on Space Research to design a plan in which human landings might occur in some areas of the planet, while other parts of Mars are left in "pristine" condition. The committee said this work should be prioritized to reach a resolution that will further the design of human missions to Mars. "NASA should continue to collaborate on the evolution of planetary protection guidelines, with the goal of enabling human explorers to perform research in regions that could possibly support, or even harbor, life," the report states.
[1] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/28594
[2] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/in-a-major-new-report-scientists-build-rationale-for-sending-astronauts-to-mars/
Cause it's fuckin cool bro (Score:3)
What's wrong with spending $100 billion to do something cool as shit? The world wastes multiples of that every year on stuff quickly moved to landfills that no one will remember, nigh everyone on earth will remember when the first human landing on Mars happens.
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> What's wrong with spending $100 billion to do something cool as shit?
Heck, Americans have spent that much this year paying for Trump's tariffs!
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At least $100 Billion. The tariffs have raised "As of August 2025, tariff revenues since January 2025 totaled $149 billion" (https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2025/trumps-tariff-revenue-tracker-how-much-us-collecting-which-imports-are).
This is much less than la Presidenta's claim of $22 Trillion (last we heard, inflation tends to raise his estimate week after week). For comparison, the entire U.S. GDP for 2024 is $29.184 trillion (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp). We cannot trust any
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He wants to pay for healthcare with tariffs. Americans are so screwed if he cuts back to that.
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That $100 would be better spent on probes to planets, not attempting to cram people into a tin can and sending it to Mars....unless.....if they promise to cram Elmo in, then I might support it.
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That's silly, Elon is altruistic and he will definitely let other people have that opportunity before him. He will praise them as heros while he stays here.
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> Cause it's fuckin cool bro
For bonus points, produce an analysis that's neither subjective nor stupid.
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Realistically the two things that will make it happen are
1. China is doing it
3. Billionaire joyrides
Yes. Let's do this. (Score:2)
Make it fucking so.
Venus is orders of magnitude easier to colonize (Score:3)
A floating ship in the Venusian atmosphere is far more habitable than Mars will ever be. An airship filled with breathable air will float in Venus's atmosphere at 50km above the surface where the temperature is 23C and the air pressure is one earth atmosphere. The atmosphere outside the balloon contains all the main chemicals for life and everything you need to make plastics. Solar panels would get 4 times the energy they do on earth and the Venetian atmosphere bellow your airship is so reflective you can put solar panels under your ship. The Venetian day is so long that a small amount of propulsion would allow you to always stay on the day side of the planet. Transit times between Venus and Earth are also faster and more plentiful. On Venus there is no need for radiation shielding. Holes in your balloon are not fatal. The gas on both sides is at the same pressure so there would only be diffusion through the holes. The Venetian atmosphere is corrosive to many materials but it isn't toxic like Martian dust so to leave the inside of the airship you don't need a pressure suite or anything much more fancy than an airtight hazmat suit and you can just be showered off on reentry. The two main issues with Venus are the difficulty of putting any robots on the surface for any length of time and the fact the delta V to orbit is almost as high as Earth's. Mars on the other hand is toxic, near zero pressure, radiated and cold. Venus is orders of magnitude easier to colonize.
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Uhh,, are you crazy?? It's got an atmosphere with clouds of pure acid that snows lead sulfide on a surface that'll melt you face in 5 seconds. That said, we ought to do it.
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Still more friendly than Mars, with more usable local resources
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I dunno, balloon cities .. how stable is the atmospheric layering? We may be better off inhabiting space itself in modular space stations built from asteroid minerals. I would not be opposed to trying it though.
Re: Venus is orders of magnitude easier to coloniz (Score:2)
Recent studies suggest that it does not have anywhere near as much acid in its atmosphere as we thought, especially in the upper atmosphere where heâ(TM)s talking about.
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Acid is easy to take care of. We use stronger acids everyday and most of them washoff with water or are harmless if diluted enough. Martian dust is toxic. I will choose corrosive acid over poison.
Where are you going to live on Mars? You need meters of concrete above you if you don't want to die from the radiation.
You need an insulated, radiation proof pressure suit to do anything outside on Mars. An acid resistant suit is all you need in my cloud city on Venus. Temperature is perfect, pressure is fi
Re: Venus is orders of magnitude easier to coloniz (Score:1)
Your same hypothetical ship parked on the surface of Mars will do much better.
Rationale (Score:2)
If you need a rationale, you already failed. Going to Mars if fucking cool, next level amazing. It's another fucking planet. A wandering point of red light in the sky our ancestors could only wonder about. How the F can any "rationale" be more compelling than that?
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I can't really support doing things for coolness factor while we have so many problems here on earth. I think it would be cool to go to Jamaica, but not at the expense of defaulting on my mortgage. Because that's how responsible adults think.
Meh. We find life on Mars so what. (Score:2)
Being able to live on Mars is the cool target. Our descendants need that. Doomsday is just around the corner on the cosmic clock.
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Good luck with that. Birth rate might be declining in many countries, but we're still spawning around 100m new humans every year. That's an awful lot of human freight just to break even, and while prioritising shipping those of breeding age to transfer the newborns off-world (with all the physical development complications that likely entails) might help a bit, the reality is there are only two ways we get to point where more humans live offworld:
1. We take a long, long, long, time doing it.
2. A massi
Beware of advice from one who confuses yes with no (Score:2)
If that quote is correct
"The answer to the question 'are we alone' is always going to be 'maybe,' unless it becomes yes."
we can probably disregard the advice of that professor, who can't use yes and no properly.
The answer to the question 'are we alone' is 'maybe' until we find proof of other life, and then it becomes 'no', not 'yes'.
Food (Score:2)
I keep saying it:
We have not fed one human for one entire day using food produced independently of Earth.
Not one day. Sure, we've played and grown cress on the ISS and all sorts of other nonsense but we've never made FOOD in FOOD quantities to FEED even a single human for a single day.
If you go to Mars, you have to send a regular, consistent, constant stream of food up to them. As well as all the other materials and any experiments you want to do... like soils and hydroponics.
But even with all the kit, we
I bet I know who is behind this (Score:2)
Elon Musk needs to keep the Mars thing going so the Government keeps SpaceX flooded with tax dollars
Re: Send the billionaires please, one way (Score:2)
I'm cool with also sending anyone else who trusts their vision and wants to be a part of this great experiment. Meanwhile I'll re-play BioShock to remind myself of how this plays out.