Foolish Earth creature, you want to go to Mars. Oh goodie!

There's been a lot of news buzz lately, notably from a fellow named Elon Musk, that we should send people to explore and colonize the planet Mars. So in an effort to find some answers without boldly splitting infinitives like no man, including Bill Shatner, has done before, I consulted with an expert on the subject, known only by his first name of 'Marvin'.

He was a little hard to get ahold of as he was working on his latest iteration of the Illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator. In fact, when I told him who I was, and where I was calling from he said, "Earth. Why bother. I'm going to blow it up. It obstructs my view of Venus," before hanging up on me. Finally after several more calls, he calmed down, and we had a serious scientific discussion regarding the habitability prospects of Mars, and the challenges of space travel in general. Here are some of the bigger myths that I've read in the news, which Marvin dispelled.

 Myth #1: Space Travel is not that hard - you need to dream big.

We went to the Moon in 1969. No big deal right. Fire up a Saturn V rocket, courtesy of Dr. Wernher von Braun, and 'boom' you're at the moon. Hop out, plant a flag, take a few measurements and photos, drive a couple of golf balls, hop back in and return to Earth. Heck, NASA made the lunar landings look as simple as a Sunday drive in the country.

Well hold on one second. The Devil is in the details.

I remember hearing a talk at San Diego State back in the early 1980's (back when SDSU actually taught engineering), from a couple of former engineers who had worked on the Apollo program a decade earlier, explaining the complexities of lunar travel and how the orbital mechanics of a manned moon mission was one of the factors used to convince President Kennedy to attempt a manned space mission to our nearest neighbor.

You see, one of the key aspects of the Apollo missions was that they were all in a closed Earth orbit (i.e., all maneuvers were performed with respect to an Earth-centered, or geocentric, orbit). Since any closed orbit defines an ellipse in space, Apollo's geocentric orbit had Earth at one focus of the ellipse, and the moon at the other. A built-in safety mechanism courtesy of Newton mechanics. The command module could travel out three days to the moon, and absent any other astronaut controls to change the velocity, it would have to return back to Earth three days later. All the command module had to do after lift off was align with the lunar orbit, relight the third stage of the Saturn V to gain enough speed to leave Earth orbit (known as a translunar injection), jettison the third stage, and viola, they are on a free-return trajectory back to Earth after passing the moon. Any additional orbital burns of the service module engines were only to facilitate course corrections, slow down to enter the moon's orbit, effect Lunar Entry Module activity for going to the surface and back, and of course, for the final burn of the service module engine to get back into the Earth-moon orbit (the transearth injection).

Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy. In theory, yes. In application, hell no!

Putting aside all the technical problems that could occur in this simplest of orbital models, all this becomes somewhat academic if a rocket engine that has been cold soaking in outer space decides that it does not want to light. If this happens prior to a translunar injection, well then, you just jettison the service module, turn the command module around, reenter the atmosphere, and complain about a failed mission over drinks that night. If you are unable to do a course correction, lift-off from the lunar surface, or do the necessary transearth injection, you're stranded with no possibility of rescue. And this was only for a small trip down the street of a mere 239,000 miles.

NASA had in place contingency plans to cut video and audio feeds of the mission in the case of a failure, and President Nixon had a statement prewritten for such an event. While both astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin kept a happy face during their stroll on the moon, they knew that there was a distinct possibility that they might not leave the lunar surface alive.

The link to Nixon's undelivered 1969 statement, located in the National Archives, is shown below.

Nixon Apollo Statement - In Event of Moon Disaster (7/18/69)

My suspicion is that while Neil Armstrong was talking about taking one giant step for mankind, and Dr. Buzz Aldrin was performing scientific experiments, they were quietly reciting the Shepard's Prayer (and for the uninitiated, that's a reference to Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard - I'll let you look up his exact quotation).

Myth #2: It's not that far of a journey.

Marvin of course laughs at such stupid Earth creature nonsense. After all, he has advanced interplanetary spaceship technology (his space ship even has tennis shoes for landing gear), while Earthlings throw things into orbit using lamp oil and tanks of liquid oxygen (yup, the F-1 engines on the Saturn V were powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen). High tech visionary stuff, huh? Or as Marvin stated to me, "Isn't that delightful?"

Now, while humans are able to lob a heavy object with sufficient kinetic energy to leave the immediate confines of Earth, we are still stuck with the same orbital challenges encountered by the Apollo mission - except going to Mars, these become far, far, worse.

For starters, think about the magnitude of the distance traveled. While the distance to the moon is mere "peanuts" according to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, recall that the book also says, "Space is big - really big". The distance from Earth to the moon is equivalent to roughly 9.5 trips around the equator, one way. This is also about 68 trips across the continental United States. A radio signal has a delay of about one second traveling that distance.

Mars, on the other hand, is on average, 1.524 astronomical units away from Earth (i.e., 1.524 times the distance from Earth to the sun, or roughly 141,664,650 miles, give or take a block or two). That's about 5,666 trips around the equator, or 40,475 trips across the U.S. A radio signal takes anywhere from three to 21 minutes to travel that distance depending on the relative positions of the planets (the reason why Mars landers have to have some degree of autonomy while operating).

On the upside, every couple of years Mars gets to within about 34,175,400 miles of Earth; so if you time it right, and get your kerosene rocket ready, you can make the trip in about 300 days.

The Apollo 13 mission suffered multiple catastrophic system failures, which could have caused fatalities, a mere 56 hours into its mission. A lot can happen on a 300 day trip to Mars.

Myth #3: Travel to Mars is like going to the moon.

Marvin was ready to hang up on me again after asking this one (he's an irritable little twerp). Remember that whole geocentric coordinate system stuff, and how the Apollo missions had a sort-of safety net, in that the command module would return back to Earth after a couple of days. No such thing can exist for a Mars mission.

We all agree that the moon and Earth rotate about each other. But what about Earth and Mars. They certainly don't rotate about one another, nor does anything other than the moon rotate about Earth (sorry Claudius Ptolemy). What the third and fourth rocks from the sun have in common is that they travel in elliptical (closed) orbits about the sun itself. So, after careful collaborative discussion with both Marvin and Issac Newton, it was most decidedly agreed that in order to get from Earth to Mars (i.e., mimic the motion of both objects), one must work in a coordinate system having not Earth at the center, but rather the sun. A heliocentric coordinate system.

So, as Marvin correctly points out, mere humans not only have to perform the rigmarole shown in the previous figure for the Apollo mission, but we now have to perform the additional task of an out-of-plane orbital change to get into the correct (heliocentric) coordinate system. Once traveling in this coordinate system, we are no longer directly tracking Earth's motion (i.e., local motion relative to Earth, but the whole coordinate system moving with Earth). Thus, Mr. Musk's Mars mission is now just another celestial object orbiting the sun.

Now, because Mr. Musk and Marvin are not on cordial terms (what with that whole launching a Tesla automobile into space last month, causing yet another object to block his view of Venus), his tone became less cartoonish, and more ominous.

He postulated a hypothetical condition whereby an Apollo 13 accident occurs sometime within the 300 day flight path. Following what NASA did, Mr. Musk aborts the mission and lets Issac Newton free-return the spacecraft back to Earth (assuming, of course that there are enough provisions like food, oxygen, and water to accomplish such a trip). 

What then?

Well, a roughly 600 day round trip in a heliocentric orbit would mean that Earth has traveled around its orbital path roughly 1.64 times. But this would mean that unlike the Apollo mission, where mother Gaia was waiting with open arms after three days, Earth would be several hundred million miles further down the road. In such an event, one would think that it would be a good time to again pull out the Hitchhiker's Guide and take solace in the large friendly letters on the cover spelling the words - DON'T PANIC !

"Isn't that lovely?", Marvin said, concluding his thoughts.

Myth #4: Gravity just makes you heavy, and weightlessness is fun.

We are all creatures of gravity. In order for humans to function correctly we need a steady downward acceleration equal to about 32 ft/sec/sec. On Earth, blood tends to pool in the feet and lower legs. Your blood pressure can be startlingly high in your feet, over 150 mm Hg diastolic, but you don't drop dead. Why? Because your heart is pumping it back up towards your head (which is only about 60 to 80 mm Hg diastolic). Your body is designed for that gradient. It likes gravity.

Now in space on the other hand, blood pressure tends to equalize around 100 mm Hg diastolic and the head-to-toe gradient disappears. NASA noted that astronauts exposed to these conditions notice that their legs thin out due to the movement of fluids, and their face and arms become puffy. This signals an internal alarm telling the brain that the body has too much blood. Thus, within a mere two or three days of weightlessness, an astronaut loses as much as 22 percent of their blood volume. Less blood means less blood for your heart to pump, and your heart starts to atrophy.

Compounding this problem is the additional fact that in zero-G, muscles atrophy rapidly. Although an astronaut can do exercises to slow the process down, it cannot be completely arrested. NASA has documented muscle mass loss as high as 5% per week. Your skeleton would fare no better. Bones lose mass at a rate of about 1% per month up to a maximum of 40 to 60 percent.

While most physiological effects of weightlessness can be reversed by exposure to good-old gravity, recently, astronauts returning from the International Space Station have been experiencing vision degragation due to intracranial pressure, and changes in the structure of the eye. These effects do not appear to be self-correcting.

So, in all likelihood, Mr. Musk's astronauts will arrive on Mars in vegetative state, incapable of performing physical activity necessary for basic survival. Marvin, will of course, be waiting with his Acme disintegration pistol.

Myth #5: Cosmic and solar radiation are no big deal - just like on Earth.

Space is a pretty ugly place. It's not all Fresnel colored nebulae, Captain Kirk, and exotic green colored women from Orion. Outside the confines of our cozy and warm little planet is a large unseen danger, and I'm not talking about Vogon poetry - it's cosmic and solar radiation.

Under normal circumstances we are protected from these quantum nasties by two large magnetically aligned 'Van Allen belts' which capture high energy particles from space (the really bad stuff) and drag them towards the poles where they collide with the upper atmosphere producing the northern and southern lights (aurora borealis and aurora australis respectively). Mother Nature, converting danger into a pretty light show.

Outside the Van Allen zone, things are quite different. Every star suffering from cosmic indigestion burps out radiation of one kind or another. High energy particles are constantly whizzing about in space. High energy photons from the solar wind, gamma ray bursts from nearby stars, x-rays, and a veritable soup of muons, protons, alpha particles, pions, electrons, and neutrons all traveling at close to the speed of light. If you like tanning beds, then this is the place for you, otherwise make sure to bring a tube of SPF 100,000 on your next galactic trip.

The physiological effects on silly humans, as Marvin pointed out, can be anything from nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and loss of appetite, to radiation sickness and ultimately death. The same problems await any astronauts once on the surface of Mars. Since Mars has no protective magnetosphere, the surface radiation levels are much higher than on Earth (about 8 Rads per year). This is why all Martian cities have domes over them, and Marvin has turned on the 'no vacancy' light.

Myth #6: No atmosphere, no pressure - no problem.

Even Marvin complained that Mars is much colder than Earth, which makes him "so very very angry." Angry enough for your blood to boil Marvin? Sure, why not. You don't even have to be angry, your blood will boil anyway without all the necessary pressure suits and containment domes. Besides gravity, the other biggie we need as humans to function is pressure. Lots and lots of pressure. Something on the order of one ton per square foot. We get this on Earth by virtue of the fact that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. Human bodies don't particularly like a severe loss of either pressure or oxygen (or the resulting changes in blood saturation levels of O2). Bad things happen, as can be attested to by anyone strolling through the death zone on Mt. Everest.

While NASA believes that Mars may have once had an atmosphere, and a more temperate climate, data points towards a large geologic event roughly 4.2 billion years ago, which stopped convection currents in the planet's core, shutting down the magnetosphere. Without this protection, any early martian atmosphere, was stripped away over the course of millions of years by the relentless solar wind leaving the dead rock we see today.

Thus, a martian explorer would need to resign him or herself to a lifetime of living within a closed, artificial, Earth-like ecosystem. Unfortunately, this has never been done successfully, even on Earth, as the University of Arizona's Biosphere II was an expensive and miserable failure. Now try this science experiment 1.5 AU from Earth, on a planet with no air, no water, no surface pressure, and temperature extremes of a balmy 68 degrees Fahrenheit at the equator at noon, to a frigid -243 degrees Fahrenheit at the poles, all radiative heating, no convection.

Do we really want to make Marvin any angrier than he already is?

While I touched upon some of the bigger topics with Marvin during my short phone interview, there are of course countless scientific and logistical hurdles to be overcome prior to any conceivable manned mission. While we have a technologically advanced society, we do not currently possess the technology to pull off a manned mission to Mars - Mr. Musk's hyperbole notwithstanding.

While I believe that energy should be expended towards a viable lunar program, rather than martian folly, Marvin thinks we should stick to sending robots to far away planets for the time being. He has agreed to suspend work on the explosive space modulator, since he admitted that the thing never worked in the first place.

He also said that I could call him again if I want to expand my article - but I had better not make any more collect telephone calls.