Holiday essay of your Grandchild: My Trip to Mars (Not a clickbait!!!)
Imagine this scenario!!
Your Grandson (if you want Granddaughter, feel free to imagine)is going to school after vacation. His teacher asks him to submit his holiday essay.
The topic of your Grandson’s Holiday essay is “My Trip to Mars”.
Now, Do you think it is impossible?
Before you make your decision,
Take this article into consideration!!
Don’t worry!! There are no crazy rocket engine equations in this article.
Introduction:
If you have watched the news recently, you could have heard one of these three following news.
“United Arab Emirates launched its first Mars mission”.
“China launched its first lander to Mars”.
“NASA(which is USA’s space agency) launched its first powered flight to Mars”.
you may have some questions when you are watching the news.
Let’s try to answer that.
Let’s start with a basic question everyone has
1. Why are we even doing this??
A lot of you may even consider all these expenditures on space is a huge waste of money.
“With a lot of problems in the earth that needs financial assistance, why are they wasting millions and millions of dollars on this area”.
Answer:
If you take history as a reference,
There are two options for us.
First,
We can live on this earth forever and there will be an eventual extinction (Judging by our activities, we are approaching that deadline rapidly) of all the species including human beings.
Second,
We become a multi-planetary species so that we can prevent human beings from extinction.
(I hope, you will prefer the second option.)
2.Why now??
Most of you will have this question.
“Millions of people are dying due to this pandemic and we need financial assistance more than ever. Is this the time to spend this much amount of money in this area”
Answer:
This is not a project which was developed four to five months ago. Each country should decide their upcoming missions three years ago in order to get the funding for the project and the entire construction should be completed within six months of its launch date to account for transportation(you know, the entire rocket will not be built in a single area, right!!)
And also for Mars mission timing is crucial, because the distance between the earth and the mars can vary from 54.6 million kilometers to 401 million kilometers. Launching at a correct time can make the time to reach Mars to seven months(It is the shortest duration, that can be achieved by our rockets)
It saves a huge amount of fuel and we can increase the payload(Meaning-Useful stuff!!)
But this crucial window comes only every two years, and if we miss this opportunity we can launch only in 2022. If we decided to launch it in 2022 it will add an additional half a billion-dollar on expenditure for storage of this vehicle)
(So, its better to launch it now, right!!!)
3.Why Mars, Why not Moon?
Some of you might think,
“If we want to save human beings from extinction, why not we try to colonize the moon which is just 384,400 km from the earth instead of trying to colonize Mars which is 401,000,000 km from the earth.
Well, the problem with the Moon is
It does not have any atmosphere(No CO2, No Oxygen, Nothing….!!). If we have to survive on the moon we should generate Oxygen from the ice which is in the subsurface level on the moon and the ice is available only in the poles of the moon(so it's limited…!)
But in mars, we have an atmosphere and the gravity is 38 percent of the earth’s gravity(Higher than the moon’s, which is only 17 percent of earth’s gravity).
What do we know about Mars so far?
(Don’t skip this part, it is very important to know the history of your grandchild’s home planet)
Formation:
Mars was expected to be formed about 4.5 billion years ago(about the same time, as the earth was formed). Mars is about half the size of Earth(But don’t worry, there is some good news in the next topic). Like earth, it has a central core, a rocky mantle, and a solid crust.
Surface:
Mars is also called the Red planet due to its color. The reason for its color is due to the rusting of iron in the rocks and dust of mars. The dust gets kicked up into the atmosphere and makes the planet appear red.
Even though Mars is about half the diameter of Earth, its surface has nearly the same area as Earth’s dry land(so, there is enough space). There is water on Mars today, but it is in the form of water-ice just under the surface of Mars.
But, we have one serious problem!!!
If we decided to live on Mars, We need to change our Geology book extensively!! (I know, sounds hard to memorize everything new)
For example,
The tallest active Volcano will not be Mauna Loa anymore it will be Olympus Mons which is three times taller than Mt.Everest and the base will be the size of the entire state of Maharastra(yeah, its pretty big….). It is the biggest volcano in the entire solar system.
Atmosphere and Temperature:
well, here comes the bad news!!!
Mars has a thin atmosphere (which is only 1% of the total earth’s atmosphere) and it mostly comprises carbon dioxide(97%)(seems like Global warming will never leave us!!!) and the remaining will be argon and nitrogen gases. So if we want oxygen, we have to generate it (Luckily there is a way, details about this will be in the next heading). Since its atmosphere is so thin it doesn’t offer much protection from asteroids and comets (So, this time wearing a helmet will not be an option!!!)
The temperature on Mars can be as high as 20 degrees Celsius or as low as -153 degree Celsius(so, especially Indians are going to have a hard time on Mars)
Orbit and Rotation:
On Mars, one day consists of 24.6 hours (Which is slightly longer than Earth’s 23.9 hours) and one year will be 687 earth days!!!.
How to make Mars a habitable planet??
Right now, we have the potential to launch Rovers and drones to Mars and in four to five years we can send our first human to Mars. But in order to make the planet habitable, we need more than that.
Making a planet habitable means we need to create a civilization on Mars, for which we need to relocate thousands and thousands of people to Mars and we need to develop all the resources in Mars itself to make it self-sustaining.
And the most important thing will be to develop an economical transport system between Earth and Mars. Because right now it takes 6 billion dollars to transport just four people to Mars!!! (So, apart from Jeff Besos and Bill Gates no one can afford that…)
So, in order to make the travel affordable,
We need to satisfy these four mission objectives
- Full Reusability
- Refilling in Orbit
- Propellant Production on Mars
- Right Propellant
(I hope you enjoyed up to this part, next comes some technical stuff!! so try your best to not close the article!!!!)
Full Reusability:
If you have closely looked at the rocket launches, there will be two parts in the rocket
*Payload(Meaning-Stuff we want to put it in space)
*Boosters(Helps the payload to reach certain orbit in outer space overcoming all the friction in the atmosphere)
Once the required height is reached the Booster will get separated from the Payload and it is of no use. It circulates in the orbit as debris.
Considering the fact that each Booster will range from 25 to 50 million dollars we can’t afford to use new boosters for every single launch.
So, Reusing the boosters with little or no refurbishment(cleaning) costs will be the only way to make the space travel affordable.
Developments:
Right now we have the technology to guide the used booster from space to the required site where we can refurbish it for its next flight.
So, the first objective is successful!!!.
(Three more to go, Please Don’t skip)
Refilling in Orbit:
This is an important objective to increase the number of people in the spaceship to Mars.
If we tried to take the entire fuel required to travel to Mars from Earth itself it needs a huge spaceship in order to accommodate all the people and their cargo and the fuel needed to go to Mars.
So, what we can do is
WE CAN MAKE TWO TRIPS TO THE OUTER SPACE OF EARTH!!
On the first trip, we can carry all the people and their cargo and we can carry only the amount of fuel required to reach outer space.
On the second trip, we can carry the propellant needed to reach Mars and we can dock this propellant ship with our People ship to refuel it enough to reach Mars and we can start our journey.
This will reduce the huge amount of fuel and the size of the spaceship.
Developments:
This technology has yet to be created and tested.
(Two more to go, Almost there….)
Propellant production in Mars:
Instead of taking fuel to reach and to return, we can develop a plant on Mars to develop the fuel so that we can reduce the load taken during the journey(so more people, more cargo….)
But, to create propellant on Mars we need to generate the fuel based on the ingredients available on Mars.
So, What does Mars have??
It contains a huge amount of carbon dioxide and water. So by using the Sabatier process(some boring reaction..!!) we can create Methane and Oxygen which can be used as fuel for the rocket.
Developments:
We are yet to send our first human to Mars. So Let’s see…..
Right Propellant:
If we can generate Methane and oxygen on Mars we need to develop an engine that runs on Methane and Oxygen as fuel.
Developments:
A company called SpaceX successfully developed the engine(Name of the Engine- Raptor engine) which can run on Methane and Oxygen. It is currently in the testing stage.
So, Good luck and congrats to the team!!.
(The fact that you are reading this line means you have successfully crossed the technical stuff, so congrats to you as well!!)
The success of this mission depends on you!!.
Even though there has been a lot of progress in this mission, we are still lagging in technology to make this dream a reality. So, we want more curious students like you to bridge the gap between our dream and reality.
OOTSUK is an educational platform, which is a pioneer in triggering the curiosity of the students in various areas. If you want to learn more about this stuff you can visit www.ootsuk.com/explore.
Conclusion:
Even though the Mars mission seems far fetched now,
Our continuous efforts can make this achievable one day.
“Exploration is the only way we can prevent our extinction”
So try to explore new things and prevent us from extinction!!.
If you want to learn more,
Visit www.ootsuk.com/contests where we trigger your knowledge based on your interest and on your curiosity. You can also download the android app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details? id=com.ootsuk
