How Much Money Would It Cost To Go To Mars?

As society contemplates expiration to the moon or Mars, there's a ascension consider as to whether it's worth spending billions of dollars to send on humans to other planets if a robot or rover can perform the necessary science.

I think National Aeronautics and Space Administration needs to ship some humans and machines. Let me explicate why.

I started bump off my 28-year life history at NASA as an engineer on the shuttle training aircraft – an airborne simulator of the space birdie. During my 17 years as an cosmonaut, I flew on three space missions. Cardinal of those were shuttle missions, STS-117 and STS-119, to the International Space Base.

Jaunt 39 Flight of steps Railroad engineer Steve Swanson of NASA works out on the Cycle Dynamometer with Vibration Isolation System (CEVIS) in the U.S. research lab Destiny of the Planetary Quad Station. National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The main goal of some of these missions was to build the actual ISS, leaving little time for actual experiments. However, our mission was fulfilling because we were building a science laboratory in space. During my third mission, ISS Expedition 39 and 40, I washed-out v and a half months happening the ISS.

While we were on board, my crewmates and I performed more than 300 different experiments. Some we did not touch, like the alpha magnetic mass spectrometer that scans the universe for antimatter. Others we set up and the missionary work controls then took over. For different experiments we set them upwards and performed the experiment. In some, we astronauts were the guinea pigs.

Hence, we used our time to squeeze the most science out of our ISS visit by collaborating with the scientists along the establish. Done this mix of hominian and automatic experiments, NASA exaggerated the amount of science beingness conducted on the ISS.

Apollo 17 versus Curiosity

To hear to liken knowledge base output between a crewed and a robotic mission, let Pine Tree State contrast the Apollo 17 – the endmost moon mission of December 1972, in which Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent 75 hours on the lunar surface – with the Mars Curiosity bird of passage with respect to three variables: distance traveled, cost and soil samples taken. While these two missions are distinctly different – the quondam being satellite and the latter on Mars – there are similarities that help us compare their productivity.

This self-portrayal of NASA's Oddment Mars rover shows the vehicle at the Big Flip site, where its practice session collected the mission's twenty percent taste of Jump on Sharp. NASA

When it comes to distance covered, the humans won. The deuce Apollo 17 astronauts drove a length of 35 kilometers on the moon in the span of three days – that's approximately 11.6 kilometers per day. As of February 2022, Peculiarity had traveled 20.16 kilometers on Mars - an average of 9 meters per day since it began its journey along Mars in August 2012.

Immediately I'm not knocking Curiosity or its team up. But capital punishment a task is extremely problematical when dealing with a rover 55 to 400 million kilometers out, depending upon the relative positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits. If the Earth-based Curiosity team issues the wrong commands to the wanderer, IT could jeopardize or straight-grained end the mission. Thence, they have to move slowly and verify every step. That means that something a human could fulfi in a couple of hours – equal taking multiple rock samples – take occupy a robot weeks.

During Phoebus 17 the astronauts self-possessed 741 rock and soil samples, including a deep-drill CORE try out 3 meters long. This amounts to 247 samples every day. I had some difficulty finding the equivalent information for Rarity. What I did discover was that as of Jan. 15, 2022, Curiosity had drilled 19 sites and had taken two samples without drilling. So Oddment has taken at most 30 soil samples while on Mars. That is, on average, 0.013 soil samples per day – which shows how delicate IT is to operate a piece of machinery remotely. When equipment such as a practise malfunctions, which it has on Curiosity, there is nobody there to repair it. So the squad mustiness see workarounds to the problems for them to stay to get skill.

Phoebus 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan drives the lunar roving vehicle during the early part of the first moonwalk at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. The LEM is in the scop. NASA/Harrison Schmitt

Cost of Apollo versus Wonder

In 2022 dollars, each of the 7 satellite Apollo missions cost about US$20 billion. The cost of Oddity was about $2.5 billion in 2022.

Yes, I am comparing a lunar mission to a Mars mission, which isn't exactly fair. So, let's use an estimate of what a frail military mission to Mars is expected to cost – the enumerate ranges from around $100 billion to $500 zillion per missionary post. I imagine information technology is going to be closer to the $500 billion or more given that the ISS unique cost more round $150 billion.

If we assume $500 one million million per mission – a frame that would hopefully diminution with multiple missions – then a manned mission would yield a major return on the investment. From the ballpark estimates supra, we can state a crew of four would be at the least 500 times more productive in performing science than a rover, although the be would be just about 200 multiplication greater.

Space exploration needs both

Forthwith I admit there is a great margin of erroneousness in these quick calculations. However, I'm trying to underscore the benefits from human involvement. Consequently, I think the virtually cost-effective solution is to use humans and rovers together. This is how we boosted science output on the ISS.

For Mars we could have teams at mission controls around the populace running the experiments victimisation rovers as they do now – but the teams could do the science much more promptly. That's because in that location would always be a hominal nearby to help out if the rover got stuck or malfunctioned.

Yes, IT is more expensive to send humans to blank space than probes and rovers, but we can't disregard that humans can speedily adapt to unanticipated situations and mending and modify equipment, which in the end boosts the likelihood of success.

NASA astronaut Steve Swanson during a spacewalk to replace a unsuccessful backup computer relay box on the International Space platform on April 22, 2022. NASA

A human perspective

There is also so much we tail learn about a other world that sensors just can't tell us. What does information technology flavor like? Look like? Smell equivalent? This is how most citizenry on Earth will relate to space exploration. So having this human perspective is vital for generating ebullience.

For object lesson, one of the archetypical questions I contract from people when we talk about quad is simply, "What was it like?" And they longed-for to know whol the inside information, from brushing your teeth to doing a spacewalk. I would always add that we never knew how our day was going, because most of our tasks, be it science Beaver State maintenance, ran into problems that needed a human fix.

I agree the rovers on Mars deliver finished wonders and helped get people excited about terrestrial planet geographic expedition, but I'm sure the excitement of humans going to Mars would be much greater.