preview

Space and Mars's Habitability

Best Essays

Synopsis: This research involves discovering how Martian astronauts might deal with their supplies during a long- term mission to Mars and on Mars. The goal is to show that people can develop technologies to help humans survive in space and on Mars in the future, such as producing food, recycling water and air, and storing energy. The important technology is the Controlled Ecological Life-Support System (CELSS) that can help in dealing with the supply issues as well as some possible methods to make energy on Mars. The overall approach of this mission is to create background knowledge about space habitability for humans in the manned mission to Mars. Upon researching this issue, I have found that with such powers of invention people should …show more content…

The weight of those supplies affects the efficiency of a launch. It is too heavy for the spacecraft to take off and overcome the gravitational pull of the Earth to get into space. We know that astronauts traveling to Mars would not be able to stay for a couple days or weeks like the Apollo space mission. Rather, the Martian astronauts will need to remain in space at least one to three years during the mission (NASA 2012). If we spend more than nine months in space, we have to build a shelter which can protect the astronauts from being exposure to radiation risk from the Sun (NASA N.d.a). Therefore, we need to have good shielding, such as water and cement, but they are very heavy. Additionally, the astronauts have to bring food, drinking water, air, clothes, medical supplies, and other things that they need for the mission. All of these things added up together will take about three million pounds. That is infeasible for them to make it all at once because a spacecraft just only lift fifty thousand pounds against the Earth’s gravity into space. So, they have to make sixty launches for their supplies to be on Mars. It takes a longer time and costs a lot of money (NASA N.d.a).
Therefore, astronauts can just bring with them some canned foods that are dehydrated and preserved to keep the foods for a long time and to save weight for the spacecraft (NASA 2012). Also, soybeans and wheat are suitable because they are light weight, very nutritious, and take a small amount of

Get Access