US Manned and Unmanned Mission to Mars: How Space Travel Can Kill You

DARPA, during late summer 2011, exerted a flurry of effort to

1. Develop future space travel and
2. Apply social networking to warfare strategies.

The latter is ironic, since WWII military divisions in America developed the first foundation of the Internet. In the 2010s to the end of the century, they seek expertise from Internet technologies in the private sector, just as they seek aerospace technologies from the private sector.

I enjoyed reading during mid-1990s about DARPA, including timelines and descriptions of early Internet precursors from 1944-45 that were available on the web. Today, they seem to have disappeared. What are left are the related developments beginning in the 1970s. The US military is back in the Internet business and may not want their history of it broadcast widely - like to potential military enemies. Understandable. The first Internet-like communications in 1944-45 were designed to go offline frequently, much in the manner of pre-56K modem capability. This design interfered with enemy interception and was effective. DARPA sees the potential effectiveness and turning to expertise in the private sector in the 2010s for social network applications and space flight innovations.

US military R & D reportedly plans to spend $500,000 of grant funding on plans to reach interstellar space. First, we say that that is not much money for a wide ranging project and second, we must query why we should do this with our tax dollars - whether they be IRS funds, Flat Tax, or Fair Tax, all of which some core group hates.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is DARPA of old. They are applying the brain power and experience of a number of astrophysicists, engineers, and science fiction writers (grade A+ for that!) to build an interstellar ship. William Shatner and his people have put together a large amount of material on this already and should be consulted.

DARPA discusses the possibility of new products for the future, just as the US manned space program has already developed new products. Products we may see from 2010 - 2100 may include new types of computers (I have thought about a hanging-in-air plasma or hologram PC for a long time and so have others), algorithms, new (to humans) concepts in physics, continuations of experimental mathematics into larger fields of wonder, new methods of food production, even new philosophy-religions (already described in the Mars Trilogy of the 1990s), they say.

A lot of work already has been done toward interstellar travel by the Mars Society and unrelated author of the Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson. Bring them to the proverbial table. Bring our former astronauts in. Arthur C. Clarke was a scientist that conceptualized our comsats, was laughed at, and now we have them and because of that, we have cell phones and iPads (Star Trek®). Sci-Fi is the dream and R & D gives the dream life and breath.

A number of books and papers have been written about the dangers of space travel. Kids in the 1950s - 1960s enjoyed watching some of these ideas in animated simulations on the World of Disney weekly television show. Having seen a few, I recall experiments with total isolation, the blocking of all sense stimuli, and sleep deprivation. These conditions all led to hallucinations and further mental collapse if not interrupted. They can result in death.

Further, we have problems of the loss of bone and muscle mass, no matter how many daily hours of exercise are maintained without gravity. We need gravity. A little less gravity is good for cardiac patents, but once fully adjusted, they cannot return to earth without stroking. I wonder at their capacity to survive G-forces of takeoff as it is today. New trajectories may be needed.

Other evidence suggests that once acclimatized to outer space long-term, it becomes impossible for a spacefarer to sleep on Earth, and difficult to sleep in space - this can also lead to death. Dozens of other conditions are related to long-term space travel and are studied in such fields as bioscience and aerospace medicine. I expect Aerospace Public Health to come along very soon as a new field, given the gusto of US determination in a Mission to Mars and beyond. This is not even to mention social and interpersonal problems. Interstellar travel is a big, big deal.

Unmanned missions to Mars and the asteroid belt outlying it will help determine the hospitality of the planet to humans, what accomodations are necessary, and the extent of resources present that may be mined and brought to Earth. For instance, the book Red Mars speaks of literal mountains of salt leftover after excavating for dwellings and office spaces - what to do with the mountains of salt? Unmanned missions will be interesting and give us information about human survival potential before we send live astronauts into the void.

Whenever the first human team arrives on Mars, the first step will likely be even more awesome then the last scene in America's version of Life on Mars . I look forward to viewing that landing on my hologram device or other advanced gadgetry.