Oxygen on Mars

[Monty]

Getting people to Mars is going to be a lot easier than it was getting to the moon 50 years ago. I don't think most people understand the scale of the Apollo program and what they achieved with so little technology. And that's before you look at the materials available to them today. My pocket calculator has several thousand times the processing power of the Apollo guidance computer. It had something like 2k of memory and 32k of storage and ran at 1Mhz.

[Cav]

A single hard drive can now contain 100 Terabytes of data and it weighs a kilo or two. It's insane.

[D41]

I've no doubt that the computer technology exists, but what about the sheer physics involved in sending people??
A flight to the moon took a few days (I think???)....the current Mars Rover took over six months to get to it's destination - or something like that. I'm assuming it would take a similar length of time to send people, and then (hopefully) you're going to get them back.
What would you have??..six people or so...maybe more, on a spacecraft....with all the life support necessities needed.... you know, things like food, water, and don't forget oxygen....over a year's worth of that stuff!!??
It just doesn't seem very feasible, much as I'd like to see it happening. Not with where we are at the moment.

[Kwacky]

You ship everything up to the space station and store stuff there. Fly a ship with the crew up to the space station. Get the stuff you need from the space station store then fly to Mars. If we wanted to w we could leave supplies along the flight path to Mars for collection.

Just think of it like the Vulcan bombing run during the Falklands.

[Monty]

I think the plan is to send all the supplies they'll need when they get there and fuel to get back before they set off. If they want to stay they will need to get to the water ice for fuel (Hydrogen) and water for irrigation.

[Monty]

I've no doubt that the computer technology exists, but what about the sheer physics involved in sending people??
A flight to the moon took a few days (I think???)....the current Mars Rover took over six months to get to it's destination - or something like that. I'm assuming it would take a similar length of time to send people, and then (hopefully) you're going to get them back.
What would you have??..six people or so...maybe more, on a spacecraft....with all the life support necessities needed.... you know, things like food, water, and don't forget oxygen....over a year's worth of that stuff!!??
It just doesn't seem very feasible, much as I'd like to see it happening. Not with where we are at the moment.

Astronauts stay up on the ISS for months with very few supply missions, they recycle piss. Submarines stay under water for months with literally hundreds of people aboard all breathing air and consuming food. Admittedly they use electrolysis of water to produce oxygen.

It's all currently doable, the biggest problem is protecting them from radiation

[Perkles]

I can still breath under my quilt when I’ve farted so it’s all definitely possible

[D41]

Astronauts stay up on the ISS for months with very few supply missions, they recycle piss. Submarines stay under water for months with literally hundreds of people aboard all breathing air and consuming food. Admittedly they use electrolysis of water to produce oxygen.

It's all currently doable, the biggest problem is protecting them from radiation

The ISS gets a supply rocket every month or two.....maybe three?? Either way, it's fairly regular.
And if something goes badly out of whack with a submarine it can simply surface.... inconvenient, yes - but seldom life-threatening.

[Kwacky]

Tell that to the missing Indonesian submariners

[D41]

Typical. A submarine just HAD to sink today, didn't it??