【新政治家 20150215】别去火星 — 死路一条

满仓

【中文标题】别去火星 — 死路一条
【原文标题】People, please don’t go to Mars - you’ll die
【登载媒体】新政治家
【原文作者】TOSIN THOMPSON
【原文链接】http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2015/02/people-please-don-t-go-mars-you-ll-die


无论从哪个方面来看，“红色星球”都不适合人类。根本不存在所谓登陆第一人的喜悦，因为在到达火星表面之前你就会死掉。


不喜欢这样的景色？想办法习惯吧。

“火星一号”计划为前往火星的单程旅行筹备工作已经确定了100人大名单。这个任务的目的是在2025年在火星上建立人类永久居留地，具有竞争性的公开申请程序（谁愿意在另一个星球上表演自杀，同时让地球人在真人秀节目中观看？）吸引了来自至少140个国家的20多万名申请者。这100名火星烈士高高兴兴地接受了人类下一步飞跃的使命，或者说是他们一厢情愿的以命相抵。

申请者依据他们向火星一号计划“捐赠”的额度来获得积分和等级，名单中得分和等级最高的分别是Christian O Knudsen和Steve Schild。在100名候选人中，将有40名被选中接受任务的培训。对于我们剩下这些在地球上醉生梦死的凡人，包括那些恼怒的落选者，可以看看以下这些内容——为什么火星不是个好地方。

大气无法呼吸

在火星的大气中呼吸，你将在三分钟内死于窒息。火星的大气相当稀薄，大约比地球大气层稀100倍，所以你吸不到什么空气。那里的大气层压力低于人类生存的极限，你的唾液和肺叶内将会沸腾。如果你设法呼吸到一口空气，吸入的主要是二氧化碳，在气压极低的情况下，二氧化碳也造不成什么伤害。除非你有一个坚不可摧的太空服和无限供给的氧气（顺便说一句，火星上没有氧），否则你死定了。

很冷，非常非常冷

我们觉得火星并不冷，因为我们只在两极看到有冰层覆盖，但那是因为它非常干燥、空袭稀薄。与火星的温度相比，《南极探险》算是炎热的夏天。

火星稀薄的大气无法保持热量，而且，它与太阳的距离远于地球，因此它两极的气温低到零下153度，最高气温是夏季赤道附近的20度。一个星期内的气温会骤然变化，对于人类这种脆弱的生物来说，绝对是危险之地。气温变化经常会引起全球性的沙尘暴，持续若干星期，阻塞99％的阳光和电子信号，并且会干扰太阳能设备。如果这些设备被用来种植作物或者煮食，人类的结局必然是冻饿而死。

致命的紫外线辐射

几乎没有大气层，导致火星的紫外线辐射度极高，没有防护措施的情况下不可以长时间暴露在地表，否则有很大几率患皮肤癌。有人需要金色的太空服和SPF9000防晒霜吗？

低重力

火星的引力大大小于地球——差不多比地球低62％。所以，一个在地球上体重100公斤的人，在火星上会感到只有38公斤。

我们不知道人类在长时间的火星重力环境中是否会保持健康，但是从其它太空任务中我们看到，零重力的环境会导致每个月1％的骨质疏松，每个星期5％的肌肉萎缩，和几天内22％的血液流失（其主要原因是心脏肌肉萎缩）。在太空生活时间最长的纪录是Valeri Polyakov，他于1994年到1995年在俄罗斯米尔太空站生活了438天。长时间的零重力环境让他在返回地球之后饱受骨质和肌肉伤痛的困扰。

长期暴露在地重力的环境中还会导致严重的视力缺陷。除非你愿意整天待在一个密封的环境中——不去做任何有关火星探索的工作，否则必将出现永久性的物理损伤。可是这样，你恐怕会无聊死。

火星的景色没有人们想象的那样壮观。一些火星照片或许看起来不错，但都是经过白平衡处理，让地质学家可以分析岩石的类型。人类裸眼所看到的天空和地貌都是同质的暗红色、灰色和褐色。

怎么去到火星？

尽管人们自以为手头的技术已经足够先进，但人类目前还没有制造出可以成功登陆火星的设备。美国宇航局的国际太空站负责人Sam Scimemi在一次会议中说：“火星很远，差不多是目前太空站6倍数量级的距离。如果想把人类从地球送到那里，我们需要崭新的科技，目前我们手里一无所有。”

火星旅行存在着燃料短缺等问题，还需要设计出（在我们能力范围内的）宇宙飞船，以及确保宇航员在旅行过程中的生存问题。同时还要解决飞行器（而且是载人飞行器）在火星表面着陆的风险。这其中容不得丝毫差错。

2013年，麻省理工学院的研究人员开发了一个详细的分析工具，来评估火星一号任务的可行性。他们的研究结果在去年发表，其中包括火星任务开始后人类生存的极限时间——68天。

那么，这项计划在技术和资金层面是否的确可行？不大可行，至少目前尚不可行。人类旅行的最远距离是40万公里，而且是在意外情况下（阿波罗13号的事故）。火星与地球的平均距离是2.25亿公里，在目前的宇航技术条件下（即使投入足够的资金，可不大可能在一夜之间有大幅度提升），登陆者即使到达火星，也撑不过68秒，更不用提68天了。



原文：

Don’t like it? Well, get used to it.

A hundred people - “The Mars 100” - have been chosen by Mars One as the longlist in their selection process for a one-way trip to Mars. The mission aims to establish permanent human life on Mars by 2025, and the competitive open application process (asking “who wants to kill themselves on another planet and have Earthlings watch you do so in amusement on reality television”?) has had the interest of more than 200,000 applicants from at least 140 countries. All 100 Martian martyrs are happy to take the next leap for mankind, or die trying - or so they think.

Applicants have been awarded points and levels depending on how much money they "donated" to Mars One, and filtering the list reveals the highest pointer and leveller are Christian O Knudsen and Steve Schild respectively. Of all of the 100 candidates, a total of 40 finalists will be chosen to train for the mission. For the rest of us who are content with where we already live - or who are annoyed at missing out - here are just some of the reasons why Mars isn’t good for humans:

The atmosphere isn’t breathable

Breathe in Mars' air and you’ll suffocate and die in about three minutes. Mars doesn’t have much of an atmosphere; it’s about 100 times thinner than Earth’s in fact, so you’d struggle to breathe at all. Its atmospheric pressure is so below the limit for human survival that your saliva and the interior of your lungs would boil. If you do get a chance to breathe it’ll be predominately carbon dioxide, which, at such a low pressure, wouldn’t do the damage it could. Unless you have an indestructible spacesuit and an unlimited supply to oxygen (which, by the way, Mars has virtually none of) you’re as good as dead.

It’s cold - really, really cold

We assume Mars isn’t cold because we only see ice at the poles, but that’s because it’s dry and thin. Experiencing  Antarctica would be like a nice summer’s day out compared to Mars.

Mars’ thin atmosphere means it’s unable to retain heat energy. To add insult into injury, it’s farther from the sun than Earth, meaning its temperature can reach a low of -153oC near the poles and, at best, at high of 20oC during the summer near the equator. The temperature can change drastically within one week, making it a dangerous playground for fragile, delicate creatures such as humans. Its temperature variations can also often result in global dust storms lasting for weeks, which can block as much as 99 per cent of sunlight, clogging electronics and interfering with solar-powered equipment. If that equipment is used to grow or cook food, starving to death is highly likely.

Deadly UV radiation

Due to the virtually non-existent atmosphere, Mars has in high levels of UV radiation, limiting the time spent on the surface without protection – otherwise the chances of you getting skin cancer will rise. Gold spacesuits and SPF 9000 anyone?

Low gravity

Mars’ gravity is much lower than Earth’s – about 62 per cent lower. So, for a person whose mass is 100kg on Earth, they’ll feel as if they weigh a mere 38kg when on Mars.

Nobody knows whether humans could remain healthy long term in Martian gravity, but we know from other space missions that prolonged time in zero gravity can lead to bone loss at a rate of about 1 per cent per month, muscle atrophy at a rate of about 5 per cent per week and blood loss at a rate of 22 per cent in just a few days (a possible major contributing factor to heart atrophy). The record for the longest time spent in space goes to Valeri Polyakov, who spent almost 438 days on the Russian space station Mir in 1994 and '95. Living in zero gravity for so long meant he suffered from muscle and bone loss on his return to Earth.

Long-term exposure to low gravity can also lead to serious vision problems. Unless you want to spend all day in a tank harnessed to a treadmill - meaning no time for the main objective of Martian exploration - you’re likely to suffer physical damage beyond repair after a relatively short amount of time.

You’d get bored to death of the scenery

The landscape of Mars wouldn’t hold the attention of human eyes for too long. Some photos of Mars might seem amazing, but these have been digitally enhanced with white balance so geologists can analyse the rock types. The naked human eye will interpret the sky and land as dull homogenous reddish-grey or brown.

How would you even get there?

As advanced as we think we are, humans are not yet capable of producing the type of technology needed to successfully land humans on Mars. “Mars is pretty far away," Nasa's director of the International Space Station, Sam Scimemi, said during a conference. "It's six orders of magnitude further than the space station. We would need to develop new ways to live away from the Earth and that's never been done before. Ever."

Travelling to Mars poses issues such as fuel shortages, designing (within our current capabilities) the right spacecraft to operate such as mission and how on (or off) Earth we’re able to keep astronauts alive – and this is after overcoming the inherent risks involved in launching any spacecraft, let alone a human-carrying one, as we all well know. There's little room for error.

In 2013, MIT researchers developed a detailed settlement-analysis tool to assess the feasibility of the Mars One mission. Their study, published last year, contained an estimate for how long they thought this mission would go before the first fatality. The answer: 68 days.

So is this mission technically and financially feasible at all? Not very, or at least not yet - the farthest any human has travelled from Earth is 400,000km, and that was sort of by accident (the Apollo 13 accident). Mars’ average distance from Earth is about 225 million km away – and given the state of current space technology (which won’t magically improve overnight even if enough money is thrown at it), the candidates are unlikely to last 68 seconds on Mars, let alone 68 days, even if they even get there.

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