Want To Explore Mars? Send Humans To The Moons Of Mars First: Phobos And Deimos

humans to Mars that's the plan right the problem is that sending humans down to the surface of Mars is one of the most complicated and ambitious goals that we can attempt it's a huge step to go from low-earth orbit then lunar landings then all the way to Mars a journey of hundreds of millions of kilometers in two years at the least but there are two places humans can go which are a stepping-stone between Earth and Mars base camps that would let us gather our resources in relative safety before dropping down into that gravity well I'm talking about the moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos all the focus is on Mars and with good reason it's pretty much the only place that kind of resembles Earth in the solar system it has the same length of day polar caps of carbon dioxide and water ice and daytime temperatures that can be almost reasonable but we've also seen that Mars eats spacecraft for breakfast of the 18 spacecraft given the task of landing on the surface of Mars only nine have actually made it down safely and we're able to carry out their mission that's 50% are we willing to risk the lives of half the people we send to the Red Planet not to mention the increased challenge of landing heavier payloads on Mars filled with soft and squishy humans now I've done a whole video about why this is so difficult and check it out here but Mars has two moons Phobos and Deimos offer an interesting alternative instead of going directly from Earth to the surface of Mars humanity could set up a station on these rocky moons a base camp for a serious and safer attempt on Mars Phobos is the larger of Mars's moons and it's 27 kilometers on its longest time engine it's similar in composition to a C type or carbonaceous chondrite asteroid planetary scientists think it was either a captured asteroid or the debris from an ancient impact a long time ago it's covered in fine powder made from eons of micro meteorite impacts and has absolutely no atmosphere the moon in orbits above Mars at an altitude of 5000 989 kilometres and takes only seven hours and 39 minutes to complete an orbit around the planet damos is smaller just 15 kilometers across at its longest part in orbits Mars every 30 hours had a much higher altitude of twenty three thousand four hundred and sixty kilometers so what would it take to set up a base on these moons and why is it any better than just going directly to Mars even though it's less massive than the earth Mars still has a significant gravity well in order to go from the surface of Mars to low orbit you need a velocity change of three point six kilometers per second and if you want to go from Mars back to earth you need a velocity change of six kilometers per second in 2015 three engineers from NASA JPL proposed a minimal architecture for human missions to Mars proposing a series of missions which establish a beachhead on one of Mars moons first before sending humans down to the planet they suggested that a campaign to send humans to Mars would be broken up into four major stages first missions would be sent to Phobos to set up infrastructure on the moon next astronauts would go down to the surface for a one month day then a longer one-year expedition would be carried out and finally there would be the move to a permanent presence on Mars setting up a presence on Phobos would require four launches of the Space Launch System block two but SpaceX starships would work nicely to the first three rockets would carry supplies a Phobos habitat and a return vehicle for astronauts to come home the fourth launch would take an Orion capsule with four astronauts to Mars following a 200 to 225 day trajectory to bring them to Phobos the astronauts would live on the Fobo station for about 500 days performing science on Phobos then they'd come home maybe even make a side visit over to damos on the way taking another 250 days to return based on the lessons learned from the Phobos mission the actual landing on Mars would take another six SLS launches there'd be more supplies and a 75 ton Mars landing vehicle which would wait in a high Mars orbit finally crew would launch from Earth make the journey to the Fobo station and then prepare for a landing on Mars when the conditions were right two crew would transfer to the descent vehicle and land on Mars spending about a month down on the surface while the other two astronauts remain on Phobos the first human would set foot on the surface of Mars sometime in the 2030s or 2040s at the end of their month they'd climb into their ascent vehicle returned to Phobos and then all the astronauts would come home again with everything tested and proven more Rockets would launch to Mars carrying more supplies for the Fobo station and a growing Mars base and astronauts would carry out year-long expeditions on Mars and eventually there'd be a permanent presence on Mars with overlapping crews at Phobos at the growing Mars base and in transit now I know the joke you're gonna make that SpaceX will be sending starships a decade earlier and this whole process is relevant haha stupid NASA maybe but Mars is completely hostile to human life there's absolutely no infrastructure there today and nobody has fully thought-out the thousands of details it'll take for humans to survive there permanently it's hundreds of days away with our fastest rockets and anyone who does go to Mars will be beyond any kind of rescue if anything goes wrong and when it comes to Mars you need to assume that things are going to go wrong anyway if starship does fly then NASA just becomes a customer and gets to do these missions cheaper faster with more redundancy and safety remember that NASA is SpaceX's biggest customer it turns out that Phobos might actually make the perfect spot for a partial space elevator in a 2003 paper entitled space colonization using space elevators from Phobos NASA engineer Leonard Weinstein looked into the feasibility of this idea a tether could be lowered down from Phobos ending just above the atmosphere of Mars from the surface of Mars the end of the tether would be moving through the sky at a velocity of only half a kilometre a second passing over a spot on Mars twice a day payloads could be launched from the surface of Mars and get captured by the bottom end of the tether and then carried up to Phobos over about two days a second elevator could even carry material up to the orbit of Deimos and I know this sounds kind of extreme but when you think about the orbital mechanics it actually takes less energy to carry material from Phobos to lunar orbit than it does to get it from the surface of the Moon we've talked about Phobos as a way station with a shortstop to Deimos but it might be that Deimos is actually a better place to set up shop and I'll get to that in a second but first I'd like to thank Richard Campbell Michael Valles cristobal and the rest of our 818 patrons for their generous support the educational content should be freely available to anyone in the world and the patrons make this possible join our community at patreon.com slash universe today and get in on the action in the 2013 presentation Lockheed Martin engineer Josh Hopkins proposed that Phobos and Deimos make sense as the first place for exploration by humans and made this case that damos is even better both Phobos and Deimos are tidally locked to Mars which means they always show the same face to the surface of the planet astronauts stationed on one of these moons would be able to tell or operate Rovers and sample return missions with essentially no delay from its higher altitude damos actually sees more of the surface of Mars than Phobos 98% of the planet is visible from the moon with its slower path across the sky Deimos would have the ability to communicate with the surface for almost 60 hours continuously while Phobos slips over the horizon every four point two hours regions near the North Pole of damos would be in constant sunlight and also have a constant view down to the surface of Mars getting to and from damos would actually be easier needing about 400 meters per second last change in velocity so imagine everything I said for a mission to Phobos but replace that with damos instead but if we really want to stay we'll want to tunnel down inside Deimos and this is according to Jim Logan the co-founder of the space Enterprise Institute during a recent presentation at a conference in Seattle about space settlement Logan suggested that it should be possible to build a permanent habitat inside damos I wasn't there for the seminar but Alan Boyle from geek wire was and he captured this cool photo of Logan's talk according to Logan the original idea for an O'Neill cylinder underestimated just how much radiation shielding would be necessary by about a third so remember when I said that they'd need forty five thousand starship launches to build an O'Neill cylinder it turns out we might need a hundred and fifty thousand instead but it should be possible to dig a tunnel right through the center of Deimos from end to end and maybe call on Elon Musk's boring company to do the work the interior of Deimos is assumed to be porous and engineers would find reserves of water ice precious metals and minerals as they dug through which would support pretty much any scale of Base it could even be large enough to put rotating habitats inside the moon to provide artificial gravity for the inhabitants positions solar panels at the poles where they get almost eternal sunlight all this focus on Mars but there's a case to be made for the moons of Mars Phobos and Deimos to serve as the first places we visit in the region then we've got a good solid base camp and we make a serious attempt on the red planet what do you think does it make more sense to focus on Phobos and Deimos first let me know your thoughts in the comments here are the names of the patrons who support us at the $10 level and more want to see your name here in the work we do go to patreon.com/scishow verse today once a week I gather up all my space news into a single email newsletter and send it up it's got pictures brief highlights about the story and links so that you could find out more go to universe today comm slash newsletter to sign up did you know that all of my videos are also available in a handy audio podcast format so you can have the latest episodes as well special bonus material like interviews with me show up right on your audio device go to Universe Today calm some audio or search for Universe Today on iTunes Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts I'll put a link in the show notes if people do start to explore the surface of the Moon or Mars the one a place that's safer and protected watch this video to find out why lava tubes make the best place to start

Channel: Fraser Cain

Views: 44,501

Rating: 4.8816838 out of 5

Keywords: universe today, fraser cain, space, astronomy, mars, planet mars, phobos and deimos, mars moons, mars moon phobos, mars moon deimos, asteroids, carbonaceous chondrite, mars missions, mars lander, mars rover, space elevator, nasa jpl, spacex starship, boring company, space launch system, space colonization, lunar orbit

Id: E8A9r2AqZvA

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019