Why The Aurora One Station ("Space Hotel" ) Is More A Pipedream Than Practical Plan

Artist's conception of the Aurora Space Station ("Hotel") billed as "the first luxury hotel in space."

I used to think that "Mars One" was the dumbest space concept to ever emerge. For reference, this was the brainchild of commercial space fantasist  and Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp,  who imagined sending ten billionaires to the Red Planet at a price of $10b each. No thought of the 563 million km, 250-odd day trip exacting a radiation exposure of 0.60- 0.80 Sievert (Sv). This compared to the NASA lifetime limits of 0.6- 1.2 Sv.

NO special training, or at least not too tasking, just enough to teach  the 10 super rich guys how to use the special on board meal packets - so they don't end up eating each other before getting radiation sickness.

Then there was the “Inspiration Mars” nonsense  which would dispatch a couple (husband and wife)  150 million miles and take 501 days overall to do a brief Mars "flyby".   In other words,  enduring 500 -plus days of being cooped up in a large closet-sized space for a reward of only about an hour of actually seeing the Red Planet, and that from a spacecraft a hundred miles up.   This was the vision of  multi-millionaire investment consultant Dennis Tito (The first ever space tourist, i.e. aboard a Russian Soyuz craft). 

Now, we behold the next loopy iteration in the Aurora One Station or "Space Hotel" as it's been called, to be engineered by Houston-based Orion Span. They plan to launch this "modular" station in 2021 and welcome its first guests the following year. (Well, they have to make sure it's orbit worthy first, and doesn't suddenly crash or go into a rapidly decaying orbit.)

The hotel platform will - if all goes right - orbit 200 miles above the Earth and offer its six guests (at $9.5 million per person)  a grand total of "384 sunrises and sunsets" as the craft orbits the planet for 12 days.  Oh yeah, two specially trained crew members will accompany the space tourists, to hopefully bail the modular station out of any difficulties - say a shortage of space rations or a misfiring toilet.

According to Orion Span's founder, Frank Bunger,  a former software engineer, quoted in Bloomberg News:

"We want to get people into space because it's the final frontier for our civilization. We're not selling a 'hey let's go to the beach' equivalent in space. We're selling the experience of being an astronaut. You reckon that there are people who are willing to pay to have that experience."

And the $64 question then becomes: Are these presumed space touristas prepared for space sickness?  Will they take Gravol with them - in liquid mush form?   Are they going to be able to psychologically handle being cooped up with 5 strangers in a 35'  by  14' cabin - about the size of a large living room in a regular home?  We don't know. All we do know is that the likely space tourists are enamored of the idea of being in space and seeing a bunch of sunrises, sunsets.

Then there is the matter of money, funding to support the first Aurora One space hotel expedition.  Given a 12-day sojourn and the need for enough supplies, as well as redundancy built into the craft (for safety) let's be clear that a price of $9.5 million per person will barely pay for the raw materials for module construction.    Based on past space ventures, a decent estimate when all is said and done, is roughly $200 b for the first tourist expedition. 

Furthermore (ibid.) "Orion Span has yet to contact a launch provider, either for its initial flights, i..e. to build the actual station, or for customer flights."    You may be sure that when Orion Span does finally contact a launch provider, that outfit will want a hefty cut for supplying the rockets, etc. 

Indeed, in the words of Phil Larson, who worked with Elon Musk's Space X, quoted in the WSJ piece:

"The startup's aggressive four year time frame may be a ploy to assess what kind of market may be out there for this."

But let's be clear that a ploy isn't a real plan. It is basically a PR gimmick to try to test the waters to find out how much support there is - among launch "providers" especially - to cooperate in such an "entertainment"  venture.   My bet is there aren't very many who will sign on unless Orion Span can show the demand (from very rich millionaires or billionaires)  is there on  continuing basis.   When one thinks about it, as opposed to guzzling PR, it is basically a dumb idea to send 4 wealthy tourists into orbit for 12 days just to take perspective views of sunrises, sunsets. (I suspect any of these wealthy space travelers to be will also check with an actuary as to the odds of surviving such a space junket. It may also get them to rethink their estate plans!)

Van Espahbodi,  managing director of Starburst Accelerator LLC, also referenced in the piece, suggests "the public relations push behind Orion Span may be an effective way to help the company attract funding."

Maybe, and that also will indicate how many launch providers really believe in an inherently dumb idea,  to the point of adequately funding it, providing launch vehicles.

One Way Death Trip To Mars Compliments of Elon Musk? No Thanks!

Mars' surface as it might appear to passengers on Elon Musk's space ship - if they last that long.

It seems too many want to get to Mars in a hurry, and safety systems be damned. I noted three years ago the “Inspiration Mars” nonsense  which would cover 150 million miles and take 501 days overall to do a brief Mars "flyby".  Then there was "Mars One" through which nearly 200,000 volunteers from around the world signed up to "land on Mars and colonize it."  That has since been whittled to four, and meanwhile a robot prelim space craft is slated for launch in 2018, and that  mission aims to pave the way for the final volunteer crew by testing technology they will need should they reach the red planet in good enough shape to start the first human space colony. But the odds are they won't They will likely arrive DOA - if they get there in one piece at all - by virtue of receiving nearly the same amount of radiation as those 5 km from the Hiroshima atomic blast.

Now, we have wannabe commercial space pioneer Elon Musk, who recently declared in a speech ( at the International Astronautical Congress) entitled “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species”,  that his goal was to “make Mars seem possible. To make it seem like it’s something we can do in our lifetimes. That you can go.” Musk, not meek about his ambitions, showed a video of his imagined Mars  rocket taking off from the Kennedy Space Center with 100 people on board, refueling in orbit and then landing on the surface of Mars. The audience fairly gasped at such a wondrous sight when NASA wasn't making similar plans until the 2030s.

By contrast, Musk's vision featured an ambitious timeline, starting with the first launch of an unmanned craft as soon as 2018, then the first paid passengers making their way to the Red Planet by 2024-25.  When asked if he himself would make the trip, he said "I'd have to get all my plans for succession in order first."  Just as well, because it's doubtful anyone would survive that trip any more than the Mars One journey.

Musk's design imagines a Mars rocket a towering 400-feet tall, with lots more thrust  than the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. He acknowledged the immense, if quixotic, challenge he was undertaking would begin not just with creating a spacecraft that could keep dozens of humans alive for extended periods but with producing rocket fuel from the resources on Mars. And he acknowledged the difficulties of lowering the cost of the flights from $10 billion a person to $200,000 or less, in part by reusing rockets to fly repeat missions ferrying lots of people.

Now, try to imagine this, paying $10b each for a one way death trip. As one late night comic put it: "What better way than this to get rid of the billionaires!"

Let's also bear in mind that currently Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket is grounded, after blowing up for a second time. The maiden flight of its more powerful Falcon Heavy has been delayed again and again. I ask in all seriousness, would you really trust this guy to get you to Mars in one piece?

Musk, like Bas Lansdorp, CEO of MARS One, is also vastly understating the costs,, which he estimates at maybe $100b - say for 10 billionaires to take the first trip at $10b each. But as I've previously noted the more likely price of a first manned trip is $1 trillion - in today's dollars, and probably at least $1.4 trillion by the time the first ship is ready to launch in 8 years. That math would require at least 140 billionaires ready to launch to the Red Planet. I don't think there are that many who'd pay for a death ticket no matter how exciting Musk makes it. They want to remain here on good old planet Earth to see how many more hedge funds they can control, and how many resources they can consume for themselves.

Less clear is how SpaceX would pay to get to even that point. Musk did say he would “make the biggest contribution I can” of his own wealth, and at one point he joked that the company might have to use Kickstarter, the online fundraising platform, to raise money. Somehow, I don't think that would work for a project of this kind. Apart from that and outside of a few ambiguous technical details of the spacecraft he offered few specifics on how this monster ship would get built, where and what propulsion system might be used.

Nor did he address the hazards of radiation exposure for such a voyage- which might be just as well. To be clear, the radiation issue isn't necessarily a "show stopper" - but it means the proposed craft would need adequate shielding, and that means more money. Is $1 trillion too low then? Probably! That low figure gets you the basic "no frills"  craft to get there, but the highest probability of arriving as a corpse.

Reference can be made to a paper entitled  'Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory" .  It revealed that the spacecraft containing the Curiosity Rover for its 253-day, 350-million-mile (563 million km) trip to Mars, indicated a radiation dose equivalent for even the shortest round-trip with current propulsion systems and comparable shielding at 0.66 Sievert (Sv) in a range of plus or minus 0.12 Sv.  NASA lifetime astronaut limits are between 0.6 and 1.2Sv, depending on sex and age. So that's at best more than half a career of radiation exposure, even disregarding time spent on the surface, or indeed on any preparatory missions.


The takeway? Without radical progress in reducing the duration of the Mars journey and breakthroughs in increasing the radiation shielding of craft, suits and other habitats, human trips to Mars will likely be ruled out by NASA for exposing astronauts to more than a three per cent increase - such as stipulated in "Risk of Exposure-Induced Death for Fatal Cancer", a threshold set by a working group panel of radiation specialists in the aftermath of Hiroshima

Make no mistake that getting to Mars is exceedingly difficult. On average, it’s 140 million miles from Earth, though the planets do come to within about 35 million miles of each other every 26 months.  But that doesn't mean you can make a 35 m mile direct trip from Earth to Mars. From the laws of celestial mechanics and Newtonian dynamics you still need to plot a long, curving arc or trajectory. Even under the best circumstances it would take months to get there, being exposed to radiation levels unheard of on Earth.

Musk claims SpaceX could do it in 80 days and eventually in 30, but I doubt it, and I'd have to see the rocket design and trajectory - as well as source of propulsion first.

As I also previously noted, referencing radiation levels,  the deep space environment can also be tremendously harsh on ordinary space faring. Of the 43 robotic missions to Mars, including flybys, attempted by four different countries, only 18 have been total successes. You can be sure with any humans aboard that percentage would be lower, maybe even zero.

Musk - conveniently -  didn’t address the explosion that blew up one of his rockets earlier this month. He has previously said the incident, which occurred while the rocket was being fueled ahead of an engine test firing, was the most “difficult and complex” the company has ever faced. This follows another Falcon 9 failure last year, when it blew up a couple minutes into flight.

It would be tremendous if a bunch billionaires - starting with Donald Trump after he loses this election  took Musk up on his offer to get them to Mars. But I somehow doubt even Trump is dumb enough to do it.

Why Would Nearly 200,000 Sign Up For a Mars Suicide Trip?

Back in March, I questioned why any married couple would want to go on a 16-month jaunt to Mars and back. Never landing, only making a pass then returning (hopefully!) in one piece to Earth. The private, non-profit project is being called “Inspiration Mars” with the initial front money coming from multi-millionaire investment consultant Dennis Tito (The first ever space tourist, i.e. aboard a Russian Soyuz craft). The cost estimate? About $1 billion. NASA will not be involved.

The planned Mars mission would cover 150 million miles and take 501 days overall. While the Apollo 8 crew actually orbited the Moon for 20 hours before returning, the Mars couple will only do a brief Mars "flyby" (since their trajectory is based on the 'sling shot' effect'), lasting maybe an hour if that, before proceeding on their long voyage home. In other words,  enduring 500 -plus days of being cooped up in a large closet-sized space for a reward of only about an hour of actually seeing the Red Planet, and that from a spacecraft a hundred miles up. (A married couple that passes all appropriate tests has been deemed ideal because two strangers might not tolerate each other in a confined space  - with no Wifi, no cell or smart phones, but maybe lots of regular books via Nook.)

Now, as if to out-do that, we learn the next phase of a Mars One trip is being readied: to sift through nearly 200,000 volunteers from around the world who've signed up to be (ostensibly) the first to "land on Mars and colonize it."  A robot prelim space craft is slated for launch in 2018, and that  mission aims to pave the way for the final volunteer crew of 4 by testing technology they will need should they reach the red planet in good enough shape to start the first human space colony. (Translation: They haven't yet croaked from receiving nearly the same amount of radiation as those 5 km from the Hiroshima atomic blast.)


The US aerospace company, Lockheed Martin, which has worked on scores of NASA missions, has agreed to draw up plans for a lander based on the US space agency's Phoenix probe that touched down on Mars in 2008. The lander will launch with a communications satellite that will go into orbit over Mars and provide video and data links from the surface of the planet back to Earth. A UK company, Surrey Satellites (SSTL), has signed a contract to work on the communications probe.

Bas Lansdorp, CEO of MARS One told reporters at a press briefing in Washington D.C. on Tuesday that the robotic mission was "the first step in Mars One's overall plan of establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars". Lansdorp believes the mission to Mars would cost as little as $6bn, but Michael Listner, an expert on space law has put the total bill at closer to $1TRILLION. Most of the cost must be paid for by philanthropists, sponsorship, and broadcast rights.

In respect of the latter, since the Mars One business model incorporates a real risk of death in this space venture – a reality TV show will follow the 4 final astronauts through their mission. You will be able to see just about all their meltdowns when micro-meteoroids strike the hull, as well as the frantic prayers when a large solar flare goes off (we're talking about an X class monster) and high intensity radiation is hurtling towards them. The total time to get there, by the way, will be 200 days.

When I first learned that so many around the world had signed up for the mission, the first thing that occurred to me is how much they really knew about the risks. The second thought is that perhaps - in the words of author Barbara Ehrenreich- they truly were "bright-sided" by too much optimism from the CEO (Lansdorp) and the investors.  Make no mistake that a one-way trip to Mars would face an enormous number of technical and practical hurdles that aren’t close to being figured out. NASA’s intrepid rover Curiosity has started addressing one of the questions: radiation exposure on the journey.

During the Rover’s nearly 9-month journey through space Curiosity’s radiation assessment detector  found a serious amount of radiation bombarding the spacecraft. How would humans fare in that scenario? According to a paper published in the journal Science in May:


"It is clear that the exposure from the cruise phases alone is a large fraction of (and in some cases greater than) currently accepted astronaut career limits."


This means that by the time the crew lands, assuming they make it and we don't see a "units error"  like we did some years ago (where English units were confused with metric - sending the robot craft off into space - missing Mars entirely) they will already be suffering from radiation over-exposure.   Now, to be clear, the radiation issue isn't necessarily a "show stopper" - but it means the proposed craft would need adequate shielding, and that means more money- cost. Is $6b too low then? Probably! That low figure gets you the basic "no frills"  craft to get there, but the highest probability of arriving as a corpse.


Let's process this in more detail, as published in the earlier mentioned Science paper: 'Measurements of Energetic Particle Radiation in Transit to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory"

That paper revealed that the spacecraft containing the Curiosity Rover for its 253-day, 350-million-mile (563 million km) trip to Mars, indicated a radiation dose equivalent for even the shortest round-trip with current propulsion systems and comparable shielding at 0.66 Sievert (Sv) in a range of plus or minus 0.12 Sv.  NASA lifetime astronaut limits are between 0.6 and 1.2Sv, depending on sex and age. So that's at best more than half a career of radiation exposure, even disregarding time spent on the surface, or indeed on any preparatory missions.

Without radical progress in reducing the duration of the Mars journey and breakthroughs in increasing the radiation shielding of craft, suits and other habitats, human trips to Mars will likely be ruled out by NASA for exposing astronauts to more than a three per cent increase - such as stipulated in "Risk of Exposure-Induced Death" for fatal cancer, a threshold set in the aftermath of Hiroshima.

But let's assume the Mars One crew makes it. Of course, their real work now begins. They will have to set to work setting up the portable living quarters using the materials already dropped off by earlier robot craft. Think this will be a walk in the park? Think again! Mars' gravity is about 38 per cent that of Earth, and temperatures average around -60°C (-76°F). Low thermal inertia contributes to freezing winds estimated to be upwards of 90kmph (60mph).  THINK of trying to do housing or energy unit assembly in those conditions!

As if that's not enough, abrasive dust storms lasting months on end were witnessed by Mariner 9 in 1971. And although there is some water vapor in the atmosphere and perhaps two per cent by weight in surface soil, the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.   So now, what if during your construction labors you face a storm of meteoroids which puncture the portable living quarters or the hydroponics facility on which your food depends? Will enough life support-shelter redundancy have been provided by the system designers......at $6n?  Will you and your team be able to survive even one meteoroid storm? Bear in mind here that with Mars' tenuous atmosphere you won't have the benefit of these rocky missiles burning up as they do(mostly) while passing through Earth's thicker atmosphere.

 

 If it was me, I'd be more inclined to sign up if I knew $1 trillion was being spent because it is more likely all the necessary bases were being covered- with far fewer aspects left to chance.

The oddest thing of all, however, may be that so many people are willing to leave all their loved ones behind on Earth.....forever.... With no chance of ever seeing planet Earth again, they'd truly be on their own and there won't be any "ET  Earthman call home" either.

For those who want to get a rough idea of what our intrepid would-be Mars One explorers are in for, there's a somewhat schmaltzy scifi film entitled 'Escape from Mars' (1999).  If you can ignore some of the bad acting, there are enough realistic elements of the dangers faced on a Mars trip to make anyone think twice.

A 16-month Flyby Trip to Mars? NO Thanks!

Mars as it might appear during flyby on August 20, 2018 for the 'Inspiration Mars' couple, before heading back to Earth. (From European Space Agency)

According to a story in yesterday’s Denver Post (‘16-Month Trek to Mars and Back would Test Couple’s Marital Arts’, p. 2B) a consortium of private space specialists- backed by a tycoon- plans to send a ‘bare bones’ mission to Mars in five years. It will be a “no frills” 16 month flyby journey that will feature a husband and wife team, given such would more likely be able to handle being cooped up for well over a year in a cabin half the size of an RV.


The private, non-profit project is being called “Inspiration Mars” with the initial front money coming from multi-millionaire investment consultant Dennis Tito (The first ever space tourist, i.e. aboard a Russian Soyuz craft). The cost estimate? About $1 billion. NASA will not be involved. Instead the private backers plan to use a private rocket (they don’t elaborate, but it would have to have at least the power of a Saturn V). They insist they can get the couple to Mars at less than half the cost that NASA could.

Pardon me if I don’t buy it. Even given such a bare bones project (e.g. they will recycle urine as drinking water) the cost to construct a survivable craft for a 16 -month mission will be at least double the cost of the  first Apollo Moon mission (11) in today's dollars, or about $3.5b. It is simply impossible to do it for less and not make it a suicide mission. You are after all, traveling through regions of interplanetary space likely to be filled with meteoroids, and even micro-meteroids. The latter could easily put a hole into the craft and if there aren’t redundant systems available or a ‘skin’ built to survive puncture, the occupants will perish in their first such encounter. What will $1b get you? Well, a very cheap robot mission!


Would I want to make such a trip? Hell no! At least not from any private, untested craft. (Obviously, doing all the appropriate testing first will bring the costs up majorly!)


Which is why the privateers admit it is a “huge risk” and much more than a government agency like NASA would be prepared to take. (Imagine the PR problem if a Class X solar flare erupts while the craft is en route and the occupants are killed by the high intensity radiation, especially because shielding wasn't given priority in a "bare bones" project.)


Some have compared it to the Apollo 8 flyby of the Moon in December, 2008, but that was a three day trip there and  three days back, covering a quarter million miles each way. Meanwhile, the planned Mars mission will cover 150 million miles and take 501 days overall. While the Apollo 8 crew actually orbited the Moon for 20 hours before returning, the Mars couple will only do a brief Mars "flyby" (since their trajectory is based on the 'sling shot' effect'), lasting maybe an hour if that, before proceeding on their long voyage home. In other words enduring 500 -plus days of cooped up journey time for a reward of only about an hour of actually seeing the Red Planet, and that from a spacecraft a hundred miles up! Pardon me, but that's too little payoff or return for too much time investment!


The project timeline calls for a launch on January 5, 2018, and a Mars flyby on August 20 the same year. The passengers are to return to Earth by May 21, 2019.


NASA spokesman David Seitzman meanwhile has acclaimed the venture as “validating President Obama’s decision to rely more on the private sector.”

Maybe. But I will wait to see whether the proposed Mars mission is actually a success! And by success I mean both occupants landing safe and sound, along with the craft intact.