Subject: Russians: No Women Allowed on Mars Expedition
Date: 30 May 2001 17:46:48 GMT
From: jamesoberg@aol.com (JamesOberg)
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy

Russian Aerospace Agency works on manned flight to Mars

Tuesday, May 29, 2001 4:04 PM EST

MOSCOW, May 29, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- The Russian
Aerospace Agency has announced a tender for design bureaus and
space companies to define details of the first manned flight to
Mars.

Experts think that the program will be presented in 2005, and the
flight may take place in 2015-2020, Director of the Institute of
Medical and Biological Problems Academician Anatoly Grigoryev has
told Itar-Tass.

Current information about Mars is incomplete, experts say.
Fragments of the planet are being studied, but it is so far
impossible to have a full picture or confirm the versions of life
there. The data gaps can be filled only in the manned space
flight.

Technical considerations of the program have been done for more
than 10 years in various Russian organizations. The task of the
manned space flight to Mars was not set, but much was done in
that sphere. "The manned flight to Mar is a super-task, but it is
quite workable technically. Certainly, there are still details to
be worked on for the next few years," Grigoryev said.

A super-heavy rocket, a spaceship and a landing module with
living quarters have to be developed and built for the flight to
Mars. The easiest formula of the flight is such: the booster will
bring the spacecraft to a circumterrestrial orbit, from where the
spacecraft will reach an orbit around Mars within nine months.
The landing module will come down to the planet, and people will
work and live there for three to four months. Then the landing
module will take off, dock with the spacecraft and return to the
Earth within nine months more. Experts think that it will be a
completely new machinery with the most advanced automatic
equipment. Cosmonauts must be able to do everything themselves
without any commands from the Earth. It will take 20 minutes to
send a signal from the Earth to Mars, and some decisions have to
be taken immediately.

The flight duration makes scientists to think about fully
autonomous life-sustaining systems for cosmonauts. The production
of water and oxygen in space is already a solved problem.
Russia's Mir orbiting station and the ISS have equipment, which
purifies the air and produces oxygen. Water is made of any
liquids possible, including the human waste products.

The food question is more serious. A food reserve for two years
will take too much space, so it cannot be carried from the Earth.
Thus cosmonauts will have to make their own food during the space
flight. The Institute of Medical and Biological Problems had
repeatedly made such experiments on the Mir board. Yet the
cosmonauts succeeded only in raising quails and growing wheat. A
diverse and complete food ration is still to be developed.

The first expedition to Mars may be made of four or five people -
- the commander, the pilot, scientists and the doctor. "There
must be a doctor in the crew, and he must be a surgeon and a
psychologist. Everything may happen within two years of the
flight: from appendix problems to a brawl."

Women are likely to be barred from the expeditions on
psychological reasons. "A homogeneous collective is more serried [JO:
â?~sereneâ?~?],
while the presence of women increases the probability of
conflicts," Grigoryev said.

The very selection of candidates to the manned flight to Mars
will be different from current practices. Up till now cosmonauts
have been tested for diseases incompatible with space conditions.
The candidates to the Mars flight will have to undergo a deeper
examination, a gene test, so that medics bar people predisposed
to diseases and the influence of negative factors.

The works will cost several billions of dollars. Naturally,
Russia can't do the project on its own. It has become a common
practice to launch large space programs together. Everyone wishes
to cooperate. Russian scientists intend to offer the Mars project
to everyone in the next few years. First and foremost, it will be
offered to the ISS partners -- the United States, Europe, Canada
and Japan.

Scientists were attracted to Mars since the beginning of the 20th
century when Konstantin Tsiolkovsky drew a Mars spaceship. It
appeared that it was more difficult to conquer the planet than
they thought. Superstitious specialists say that Mars is
protected by the "Great Galactic Vampire", because only one third
of spacecraft sent to the planet completed their missions to a
certain degree. The rest either vanished on their way to Mars or
burnt down in its atmosphere.

The first probe to Mars was sent by the Soviet Union on October
10, 1960. The probe did not even reach the circumterrestrial
orbit. Only six of the 20 Soviet and Russian expeditions to Mars
before 1996 were successful. The largest success was achieved in
1971 when the Soviet spacecraft landed on the planet and
transmitted a video signal to the Earth.

The United States also had bad luck with Mars, but the failures
were not that fatal. Mariner-4 flew 10,000 kilometers away from
Mars in 1965 and took several pictures of the planet. Nine years
later the American Viking-1 and Viking-2 landed on Mars and
transmitted a television signal to the Earth. Twenty-one years
later, in 1997, the Mars Pathfinder interplanetary automatic
station of the United States landed on Mars and brought a Mars
vehicle there.

The mysterious disappearance of Mars Observer in 1993 hit the
strongest blow on the American exploration of the planet. The
expedition, which cost a billion of dollars, unexpectedly ended
three days before the spacecraft reached the Mars orbit. Nobody
knows what has happened to it. Mere negligence ruined Mars
Climate Orbiter in 1999. The spacecraft burnt down in the
atmosphere because digital information of the on-board computer
was not turned to the metric system.

America's 2001 Mars Odyssey is on its way to Mars. It is expected
to reach the destination point in October. Russian scientists
have their HAND device on Odyssey board, which may try to find
water on the planet.

By Itar-Tass writer Veronika Voskoboinikova