Destination Mars (2015–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Surviving on Mars - full transcript
(dramatic instrumental music)
(alarm)
(light instrumental music)
The whole idea is behind Mars One
is to create a new world for humanity
and basically to open up the solar system.
(flowing instrumental music)
Living on Mars is one of the
biggest survival challenges
mankind could ever face.
You have no water, no food.
The pressure is extremely low,
about the same as
100,000 feet above the Earth.
The temperatures get extremely cold,
as cold as the South Pole
in the winter every night.
Anyone of those would kill you.
How are you gonna deal with that?
The astronauts are going to live
in these modules which will be put
on the surface of Mars one-by-one.
Like you've seen in the
'60s, '70s, the Apollo modules.
They will be quite similar,
although much more modern of course.
And some of these modules
contain life-support systems.
Others contain power systems.
And attached to those modules,
we will have inflatable living areas
which will be basically the living areas
for people on Mars.
If you're gonna send colonists to Mars,
you better do more than just say,
"Hey, we're gonna set up a little colony.
"Here's a little housing development
"for ya on the Red Planet."
It's a terribly tough environment.
You have to build a
lot of the infrastructure
you're gonna need there yourself.
And there's, you're not
that you can just say,
"Well, let's set up a farm over here."
That's hard to do.
All these things are hard to do.
(dramatic instrumental music)
The first humans are going to land in 2027.
But when they land, they will find
a habitable outpost waiting for them.
The unprotected human-being on Mars,
no suit, no special environment.
You would not last probably
more than five minutes.
You know you're in for a tough life.
You know that for fact.
This is no vacation in Hawaii.
(explosion)
(dramatic instrumental music)
Living on Mars from a health perspective
is very complicated.
Mars does not have much of an atmosphere.
The radiation protection on
the surface of Mars is very low.
Cosmic rays, solar flares,
solar storms that come out.
UV radiation and there's no ozone belt
to protect you from that.
This is a harsh, harsh environment.
So there will be a constant exposure
to radiation on the surface.
They're gonna get a
risk, have a risk of cancer
and may get cancer and die on Mars.
The inflatable modules are basically
the living area for the four settlers.
To ensure that the people
are safe from radiation,
all those inflatable
modules will be covered
by regolith which is
basically Martian dirt.
Burying your habitat would
be very technically challenging
and would require a lot of
development and testing.
Now remember, we don't have a crane.
We don't have a bulldozer.
We don't have the big construction devices
that we have to move things around on Mars
like we do on Earth.
So if you were to go to
Mars and try to do that
from the get-go and it didn't work,
you would be in serious trouble.
(dramatic instrumental music)
For one thing, it's extremely cold.
You would freeze.
Second, the low pressure means
your blood would be boiling.
And even if you could stand the pressure,
there's no oxygen in the atmosphere.
If a life-support system goes down,
they have a very limited
amount of time to recover.
You're not gonna last long without oxygen.
(dramatic instrumental music)
So the oxygen that the humans will breath
on Mars inside the
habitat will come actually
from water that is derived
from the local sub-surface ice.
There's two life-support systems planned
for the Mars Outpost that will produce
water and oxygen for the crew.
There's a physiochemical
process called electrolysis
that could be used to break water apart,
and water H2O gets broken
into hydrogen and oxygen.
Those gases then can then be compressed
and utilized to either supply oxygen
to the crew for breathing
or to other systems
on the spacecraft that can use them.
The water will be coming
from the Martian soils,
and the rovers will gather
soil that contains water-ice.
They will deposit it inside
the life-support systems.
In order to put people on
Mars in a permanent fashion,
ethically Mars One has to be able
to build a system that's safe enough
and create this permanent infrastructure.
This is no mean feat.
Keeping a crew, even a crew of four
or six people, safe for multiple years
is a serious engineering challenge.
Astronauts need to breath on Mars,
so they've got to produce oxygen somehow.
Getting that right is essential to making
this all successful.
(blast)
(dramatic instrumental music)
Where the Mars One
group, where they're going
with no hope of return, they really need
to find the right place.
They have to find water right away.
If you don't find the right location,
you could be in serious trouble.
(dramatic instrumental music)
(orchestral music)
HiRISE is an instrument on
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
that has been orbiting Mars since 2006.
We can image anything, any spot
on the surface of Mars.
It's the most powerful camera ever sent
to another planet, so we can get images
on the surface of Mars at the scale
of 25 to 30 centimeters, about a foot.
You know, very small scale features
like the spy camera around Mars.
It's just like with real estate,
location, location, location.
It's very important to be
within the northern hemisphere
because it has a milder
winter and a milder summer.
On the northern hemisphere, we need
to be far enough south in order to have
enough sunlight for our solar panels.
At the same time, we
need to be far enough north
to have excess to enough water in the soil.
You're more likely to find water close
to the surface if you go further north.
Here, so this must be 25 or so.
No, this is about 40.
(dramatic instrumental music)
Think about it, if you land on Mars,
you have to find water very quickly.
It can't be a long exploration.
You have to know you've got it.
You have to have a plan
to go out and get it quickly
because thirst is a terrible thing.
And it happens very fast.
Recycling water works for a while,
but you have a ticking clock once you land.
You have to find a source of water.
There are many big problems
with the Mars One plan,
but one of them certainly is that
we don't know where to
land on Mars right now,
where the best place is.
Would you go to a place
where there might be water?
(laughs) Or would you
really wanna know for sure?
I think you'd wanna know for sure
before you go to this investment
and risk your lives for God's sake.
A human colony on
Mars is certainly feasible
if you learn more about Mars
with much more focused robotic exploration
to answer key questions.
Where is the water?
We know it's there, but we don't
know completely yet if it's water crystals
that are mixed with sands.
Or if there's a layer of sand,
and then there's a layer of water-ice,
and then there's more sand.
That's not fully understood yet.
So, there's definitely
some things to prove there.
You have to be ready.
You have to know what you're doing,
otherwise it's a suicide mission.
(dramatic instrumental music)
I don't believe we'll ever have a problem
finding astronauts willing to go to Mars.
The question is, how
can we raise the probability
of survival to the point where they have
a really good chance of lasting long enough
to really create a colony that is thriving,
and not just barely surviving.
If astronauts were to try to go to Mars
at this very moment, I don't believe they
would be successful.
We do not have the
technology or the knowledge
that we need to keep them healthy
and keep them safe.
There's no such thing
as a safe mission to Mars.
It doesn't matter if the
Russians or the Americans
or the Chinese or Mars One is doing it.
There is no such thing
as a safe mission to Mars.
The number of challenges that we face
in the aerospace medicine community
to keep humans alive and healthy
on the surface of Mars are substantial,
and we have a lot of work
that still needs to be done.
It's not possible right now.
Obviously, there's risks
once they're living on Mars.
And it's important for Mars One to find out
where the risks are,
to share that with the
people that are actually going.
And then the people need to decide,
is the risk that I'm running,
is it worth my personal benefit?
Do I feel that it's worth
the risk that I'm taking?
(alarm)
(light instrumental music)
The whole idea is behind Mars One
is to create a new world for humanity
and basically to open up the solar system.
(flowing instrumental music)
Living on Mars is one of the
biggest survival challenges
mankind could ever face.
You have no water, no food.
The pressure is extremely low,
about the same as
100,000 feet above the Earth.
The temperatures get extremely cold,
as cold as the South Pole
in the winter every night.
Anyone of those would kill you.
How are you gonna deal with that?
The astronauts are going to live
in these modules which will be put
on the surface of Mars one-by-one.
Like you've seen in the
'60s, '70s, the Apollo modules.
They will be quite similar,
although much more modern of course.
And some of these modules
contain life-support systems.
Others contain power systems.
And attached to those modules,
we will have inflatable living areas
which will be basically the living areas
for people on Mars.
If you're gonna send colonists to Mars,
you better do more than just say,
"Hey, we're gonna set up a little colony.
"Here's a little housing development
"for ya on the Red Planet."
It's a terribly tough environment.
You have to build a
lot of the infrastructure
you're gonna need there yourself.
And there's, you're not
that you can just say,
"Well, let's set up a farm over here."
That's hard to do.
All these things are hard to do.
(dramatic instrumental music)
The first humans are going to land in 2027.
But when they land, they will find
a habitable outpost waiting for them.
The unprotected human-being on Mars,
no suit, no special environment.
You would not last probably
more than five minutes.
You know you're in for a tough life.
You know that for fact.
This is no vacation in Hawaii.
(explosion)
(dramatic instrumental music)
Living on Mars from a health perspective
is very complicated.
Mars does not have much of an atmosphere.
The radiation protection on
the surface of Mars is very low.
Cosmic rays, solar flares,
solar storms that come out.
UV radiation and there's no ozone belt
to protect you from that.
This is a harsh, harsh environment.
So there will be a constant exposure
to radiation on the surface.
They're gonna get a
risk, have a risk of cancer
and may get cancer and die on Mars.
The inflatable modules are basically
the living area for the four settlers.
To ensure that the people
are safe from radiation,
all those inflatable
modules will be covered
by regolith which is
basically Martian dirt.
Burying your habitat would
be very technically challenging
and would require a lot of
development and testing.
Now remember, we don't have a crane.
We don't have a bulldozer.
We don't have the big construction devices
that we have to move things around on Mars
like we do on Earth.
So if you were to go to
Mars and try to do that
from the get-go and it didn't work,
you would be in serious trouble.
(dramatic instrumental music)
For one thing, it's extremely cold.
You would freeze.
Second, the low pressure means
your blood would be boiling.
And even if you could stand the pressure,
there's no oxygen in the atmosphere.
If a life-support system goes down,
they have a very limited
amount of time to recover.
You're not gonna last long without oxygen.
(dramatic instrumental music)
So the oxygen that the humans will breath
on Mars inside the
habitat will come actually
from water that is derived
from the local sub-surface ice.
There's two life-support systems planned
for the Mars Outpost that will produce
water and oxygen for the crew.
There's a physiochemical
process called electrolysis
that could be used to break water apart,
and water H2O gets broken
into hydrogen and oxygen.
Those gases then can then be compressed
and utilized to either supply oxygen
to the crew for breathing
or to other systems
on the spacecraft that can use them.
The water will be coming
from the Martian soils,
and the rovers will gather
soil that contains water-ice.
They will deposit it inside
the life-support systems.
In order to put people on
Mars in a permanent fashion,
ethically Mars One has to be able
to build a system that's safe enough
and create this permanent infrastructure.
This is no mean feat.
Keeping a crew, even a crew of four
or six people, safe for multiple years
is a serious engineering challenge.
Astronauts need to breath on Mars,
so they've got to produce oxygen somehow.
Getting that right is essential to making
this all successful.
(blast)
(dramatic instrumental music)
Where the Mars One
group, where they're going
with no hope of return, they really need
to find the right place.
They have to find water right away.
If you don't find the right location,
you could be in serious trouble.
(dramatic instrumental music)
(orchestral music)
HiRISE is an instrument on
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
that has been orbiting Mars since 2006.
We can image anything, any spot
on the surface of Mars.
It's the most powerful camera ever sent
to another planet, so we can get images
on the surface of Mars at the scale
of 25 to 30 centimeters, about a foot.
You know, very small scale features
like the spy camera around Mars.
It's just like with real estate,
location, location, location.
It's very important to be
within the northern hemisphere
because it has a milder
winter and a milder summer.
On the northern hemisphere, we need
to be far enough south in order to have
enough sunlight for our solar panels.
At the same time, we
need to be far enough north
to have excess to enough water in the soil.
You're more likely to find water close
to the surface if you go further north.
Here, so this must be 25 or so.
No, this is about 40.
(dramatic instrumental music)
Think about it, if you land on Mars,
you have to find water very quickly.
It can't be a long exploration.
You have to know you've got it.
You have to have a plan
to go out and get it quickly
because thirst is a terrible thing.
And it happens very fast.
Recycling water works for a while,
but you have a ticking clock once you land.
You have to find a source of water.
There are many big problems
with the Mars One plan,
but one of them certainly is that
we don't know where to
land on Mars right now,
where the best place is.
Would you go to a place
where there might be water?
(laughs) Or would you
really wanna know for sure?
I think you'd wanna know for sure
before you go to this investment
and risk your lives for God's sake.
A human colony on
Mars is certainly feasible
if you learn more about Mars
with much more focused robotic exploration
to answer key questions.
Where is the water?
We know it's there, but we don't
know completely yet if it's water crystals
that are mixed with sands.
Or if there's a layer of sand,
and then there's a layer of water-ice,
and then there's more sand.
That's not fully understood yet.
So, there's definitely
some things to prove there.
You have to be ready.
You have to know what you're doing,
otherwise it's a suicide mission.
(dramatic instrumental music)
I don't believe we'll ever have a problem
finding astronauts willing to go to Mars.
The question is, how
can we raise the probability
of survival to the point where they have
a really good chance of lasting long enough
to really create a colony that is thriving,
and not just barely surviving.
If astronauts were to try to go to Mars
at this very moment, I don't believe they
would be successful.
We do not have the
technology or the knowledge
that we need to keep them healthy
and keep them safe.
There's no such thing
as a safe mission to Mars.
It doesn't matter if the
Russians or the Americans
or the Chinese or Mars One is doing it.
There is no such thing
as a safe mission to Mars.
The number of challenges that we face
in the aerospace medicine community
to keep humans alive and healthy
on the surface of Mars are substantial,
and we have a lot of work
that still needs to be done.
It's not possible right now.
Obviously, there's risks
once they're living on Mars.
And it's important for Mars One to find out
where the risks are,
to share that with the
people that are actually going.
And then the people need to decide,
is the risk that I'm running,
is it worth my personal benefit?
Do I feel that it's worth
the risk that I'm taking?