Space Power

Image credit: Frassanito & Associates, Inc. It's not the Las Vegas strip, but the first Mars Colony will need plenty of power anyway.

Scaling up from the Mars Lander to a human mission on Mars requires more power - about 30 kW to heat and cool a human habitat, run computers and lights, make oxygen, recycle water and recharge the rovers, says Jeff George. For a long mission "we don't have the kind of energetics where you can dash back home [in case of trouble]," adds Gary Martin, assistant associate administrator for Advanced Systems in NASA's Office of Space Flight. "You're building things that have to be ultra reliable, self-healing, and autonomously sense when they're hurt." Broken parts will have to be made or repaired on site: you can't bring spare parts. Power-intensive processes like making parts or producing propellant for leaving Mars would be another 60 kW, according to George.

In the end, one power source does not fit all needs. Looking at the big picture, John Mankins says "we need very high-efficiency, high-power electric propulsion for interplanetary travel; we need reliable and affordable high-energy chemical propulsion systems for going up and down from planetary surfaces; and we need to be able to store chemical or solar power in order to live and work on the surface. Robots could use radioisotope power; and there's reactor power and wireless beaming to consider as well."

The choices are many, yet one thing is clear: Wherever we go in space and whatever we do there, we'll need more power.

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