Astronaut Chris Hadfield: We could have gone to Mars decades ago

Chris Hadfield is best known for recording David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in weightlessness. But its true accomplishment is an incredible amount of space travel.

Between 1995 and 2013, Hadfield flew inside two space shuttles from NASA and a Russian spacecraft Soyuz, lived aboard the International Space Station and spent a total of 166 days in orbit.

Hadfield has since retired as an astronaut, but he has recently shared some of his knowledge of spaceflight as part of a new online course on the training platform. MasterClass line.

We followed Hadfield's lessons by asking if he hoped that NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin or other players in the new space race could send people to Mars (and start colonizing it ) in the next decade.

"We could send people to Mars decades ago," Hadfield told Business Insider. "The technology that led us to the moon and to the time I was a kid – this technology can take us to Mars."

Indeed, scientists like Wernher von Braun, who was the chief architect of the famous lunar rocket Saturn V from NASA, have planned a mission on Mars. early 1952. It was more than 15 years before the first mission of Apollo.

But Hadfield noted that having the ability to leave does not mean it would be easy, safe, or that it was worth the risk of human life – even when considering new spaceships.

"The majority of astronauts we send to these missions would not do it, they would die," Hadfield said.

Here is why Hadfield is wary of our immediate prospects of landing on Mars, and of what gives him hope about the future of space exploration.

A long and risky interplanetary journey

The risks of visiting Mars are not very different from those encountered by NASA in the 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, astronauts were setting dead at every turn.

In addition to the Apollo 1 fire, which killed three astronauts on the ground during a training exercise, NASA nearly lost the crew of ########################################################################################### Apollo 13 at mid-flight. Even Apollo 11 had a close call: he nearly ran out of fuel before landing on the lunar surface (in a spaceship with aluminum walls as thin as a few sheets of paper).

Longer-term problems also appeared later, such as health risks due to radiation exposure in the deep space. According to a study published in 2016 in Nature, the flight to and from the Moon exposed 24 astronauts who made the trip to a much higher risk of fatal heart disease.

All that happened when NASA was just trying to send people to 239,000 miles of Earth for about a week.

"Mars is farther than most people think," Hadfield said. The red planet is about 660 times farther than the moon, with a round trip that could take 500 days or even three years in a tiny tube.

This is where lies the problem of Hadfield: A Long slog to Mars increases the risk of explosions, radiation, starvation and other problems. Technologies that could alleviate these problems – such as a light but effective shielding, hibernation capsules and bioregenerative life support systems – do not exist yet.

He compared the current exploration plans of Mars with the first oceanic voyages by boat.

"Magellan, when he launched in 1519, they launched with five ships and 250 people to try to go around the world once, and almost everyone died," he said. "They only came back with 15 or 18 people and one out of the five ships."

A big problem is that all rockets still burn chemical fuels (plus oxygen) today to take off from the Earth and travel in space.

"Chemical rocket combustion is the equivalent of using a sailboat or paddleboat to try to travel around the world," Hadfield said.

Chemical propellants are not as efficient as one would like. When designing a spaceship, engineers must sacrifice radiation protection, supplies, tools and living space to ensure that there is enough fuel to make the trip. That's why Hadfield thinks that NASA's Space Launch System, SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket or the new Blue Origin Glenn rocket will not disrupt space travel as their creators often suggest: they all plan to burn fuel for propulsion.

"I think we will never go to Mars with the engines that exist on any of these three rockets unless we really need to," he said. "I do not think it's a convenient way to send people to Mars because they're dangerous and it takes too much time, and that puts us at risk for a long time."

"Someone must invent something we have not thought of yet".

Hadfield still wants people to try to land on Mars and even colonize it. It's just that he thinks we should be clear about the serious risks involved in any push to get to the red planet by using today's technologies.

"You can look at American history, with Jamestown and all the settlements that have failed – how difficult it was for the first people to try to go through with a simple coup de. look at real life in a new and, by definition, hostile place, "Hadfield said." But if you do not give yourself a grandiose purpose, then that will never happen, so I'm quite d & # 39; "

Hadfield says that he believes that someone can possibly find a way to get to Mars safely, given the spatial advances he has witnessed and which he has makes a career

"Spaceflight was impossible when I was born and I'm still alive, it's not so long ago," he said. Impossible to Peggy Whitson – 665 days in space – and to six people living on a spaceship for 17 and a half years without interruption. we left the Earth. the century, so we have made extremely rapid progress. "

But if NASA or private companies seriously want to visit and eventually colonize Mars, as SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes Hadfield says it would require more investment in basic research.

Hadfield said that he does not know what future technologies might look like, but he noted recent advances in ionic propulsion and the growing interest of NASA for nuclear reactors. There may even be some breakthroughs in dark matter and dark energy research that could help this effort.

"Someone has to invent something we have not thought of yet," Hadfield said. "Maybe the work that's going on with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the space station and in the particle accelerator at CERN and elsewhere … will show us how we can exploit gravity."

He added, "It sounds weird, but we figured out how to harness the electricity and what the electrons do, and it seemed crazy, and it revolutionized life and travel.

Dana Varinsky contributed to this report.