Lessons from Apollo for Mars One

Mars One has generated a lot of debate about its one-way mission plans. Can history be a guide to them? (credit: Mars One/Bryan Versteeg)

Mars One is promoting the challenging goal of establishing the first colonists on the Red Planet only 11 years from now. NASAs Apollo program had an even shorter time horizon (eight years from John F. Kennedys public national commitment to place a human on the Moon to the Apollo 11 mission) so its inevitable that these two very ambitious space projects will be compared.

A general impression is that the crew risk for the Mars One mission and for Apollo expeditions may be of a similar order of magnitude. However, some aspects of safety are not comparable. For example, in all segments of an Apollo mission there was a way to terminate the trip and bring the crew back to Earth. The lack of a return-to-Earth option is the key feature that makes Mars Ones goal feasible, but it also makes the risk harder to quantify.

Equipment failures are inevitable on an open-ended Mars colonization effort. This was not a big concern on the one- to two-week Apollo lunar expeditions. Machine technology has advanced tremendously in the last 50 years, so mechanical and electrical failures are less frequent, better understood, and more predictable that ever before. Techniques to detect impending failure can drastically reduce the risk of adverse consequences from that hazard.

Apollos early preliminary design concepts, though feasible, were soon obsolete as more efficient and safer ways to accomplish the mission were developed. In similar manner, Mars Ones plans may change a lot before they freeze the concept and progress on to detailed design. Flaws that appear as major risks in the current preliminary scheme should not be viewed with undue alarm.

In the early 1960s, the Apollo program gambled that it would be able to take advantage of several newly emerging technologies. NASA judged these developments to be so very desirable as to warrant the risk that they might not be perfected in time. These technologies included high power transistorized electronics, miniature on-board guidance computers, and the liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine. If there had been problems that slowed development of any of these, the lunar landing would not have occurred in the 60s.

Problems with major new hardware did come very close to delaying the lunar landing program. Two examples were the catastrophic failure of bearings on the giant crawler transporters that moved the Saturn rocket out to the launch pad, and the structural failure of a huge space simulation vacuum chamber built to qualify the Apollo Command and Service Modules for space.

Mars One will also have to gamble that new, enabling technologies (such as advanced spacesuits) will be perfected in time for use on the planet.

From the earliest years of the human space program, NASA and its contractors faced unprecedented technical problems. For solutions they needed the best talent they could find. Many of the countrys most motivated engineers were attracted to the program because they wanted to be part of something exciting. And it wasnt just engineers. Other people, from nurses to machinists, wanted to make history so they migrated to the NASA centers. The working environment was especially stimulating because the Space Race with the Soviet Union to land humans on the Moon was a real competition. Employees felt like they were on a team participating in a sporting event.

NASAs efforts to obtain outstanding talent included personal visits by managers to college campuses, where engineering school deans had been asked to look for exceptional students. When such individuals were identified, the agency would encourage them to come work for the government after graduation. Thats how legendary engineer Max Faget (whose name is on the patent for the Mercury capsule) and Guy Thibodaux (designer of the Scout solid fuel satellite launcher) were recruited. NASAs talent search was not restricted to just the US. In the early 1960s, Canada cancelled its AVRO Arrow supersonic interceptor aircraft project, and suddenly scores of top engineers and designers didnt have a job. NASA was able to scoop up these Canadians and relocate them to Texas to take critical roles in the Apollo program.

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Lessons from Apollo for Mars One