Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station Image: Mars Society, used with permission.
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Motherboard TV: Mars on Earth
So a sense of danger is always nice and the practical concerns of what this kind of isolation—where the only communication is emails that can be replied to only after a requisite 10-minute interval, simulating the distance between the planets—are all well and good, and give the mission an edge over something like the Mars 500 isolation experiment, where the mission to Mars was simulated in a room in Moscow. Zubrin reiterated that people will be doing field research in this more-dangerous environment, not just “playing chess.”He also described at least one big engineering question that he hopes will be addressed: how much water will people need on Mars?“The second heaviest thing used on the mission to Mars is the water they’ll bring—after return propellant,” he said. “And this is actually a very important piece of engineering data, because the amount of water we have to take to Mars determines the size of the booster we need to launch the mission, which is the most costly and formidable technology requirement we need: the heavyweight booster.“Do we need a 100-ton booster or a 150-ton booster? The most important step of any engineering problem is the first one: figuring out the requirements,” he said. “It’s important to get the design right but it’s even more important to design the right thing.”It’s important to get the design right but it’s even more important to design the right thing.
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