Issue 12.12 - December 2004
Subscribe to WIRED magazine and receive a FREE gift!

Mission to Mars: Staying Alive 

Q&A: Don Pettit
By Josh McHughPage 1 of 1 

International Space Station expedition 6 flight engineer and science officer
•Walked in space for 13 hours
•Lived in space for 161 days
•Extracted gas samples from active volcanoes, cracked detonation physics problems for weapons systems, and helped design the space station during his 13-year tenure as a Los Alamos staff scientist
•Interviewed with NASA four times before finally being accepted into the astronaut training program

* Story Tools

* Story Images

Click thumbnails for full-size image:

* Rants + raves

* Start

* Play

* View

  • Why nerds are so unpopular
  • Hot Seat: Google News' Krishna Bharat
  • More »

When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its reentry into Earth's atmosphere on February 1, 2003, it meant more to Don Pettit than losing seven friends and colleagues. He was 240 miles above Earth at the time, three months into a stint as the science officer of expedition 6 aboard the International Space Station. When NASA suspended all shuttle flights, Pettit lost his ride home.

It would be another two months before Pettit and his crewmates, Ken Bowersox and Nikolai Budarin, would finally strap themselves into the space station's life raft, a Soyuz capsule, and make a fiery, bruising descent into Russia. The musculoskeletal degeneration from his extended time in space left Pettit unable to walk when the capsule touched down in the wilderness. He had to crawl out of the hatch to help Bowersox and Budarin set up camp.

Turns out his adventure was a neat analogy for what an astronaut would have to endure on a mission to Mars. Here's Pettit's preview of a trip to the Red Planet.

WIRED: You've lived through every astronaut's nightmare - being stranded in space.
PETTIT: We weren't stranded. We didn't feel isolated or lonely in orbit. We had good communication with the ground. We missed our families a bit, but that was it. You don't launch without being ready to stay up there for a year.

Your mission wasn't crippled by the loss of the Columbia?
Not at all. Expedition 6 was serendipitous - the way it unfolded was very similar to what a Mars mission would be like: After six months in orbit, our state of physical deconditioning was very much like what you'd see in a crew showing up on Mars. Getting to Mars will take about six months. We did our reentry in the Soyuz capsule. It used a combination of parachutes and rockets, and we did a high-g aerobrake, just like you would for a Mars landing. We landed off course in a remote part of Russia, and we were on our own for five hours.

No welcoming party.
There was no help from the ground. We climbed out and set up two radio beacons. It was about the same level of difficulty you'd experience working outside on Mars. We were not happy campers out there, but we did what we needed to do. It shows that you're not going to be a quivering plate of jello when you end up on Mars. Of course, on a Mars mission, you're not going to be four hours away from home. Earth is going to be a small blue dot in the sky.

If something terrible were to happen en route, is there some kind of retro rocket you can fire to get the vessel turned around?
No. Earth and Mars are in the right spots only a couple of times a year. Even if that weren't a problem, the propulsion systems we're working with are fairly limited - the abort capabilities are pretty dismal. The earliest you could abort would be a year after launch.

That's hairy.
It ups the ante.

What could go wrong on board?
Anything. For example, the toilet is an integral part of the system. It recycles most of the crew's urine for drinking water. If the toilet breaks, the crew could die.

So a minor inconvenience on Earth becomes life-threatening when you get to space.
That's why we need to go to the moon before going to Mars. The moon's three days away from Earth. When your toilet breaks, you can come back to Earth before everybody dies, tail between your legs, then fix it and go back up.

What kind of thought goes into crew dynamics?
It's a long time to be cooped up together. Everyone is well screened ahead of time, but there's nothing magic about being in space. The pearls of wisdom that apply on Earth apply in space. You have to have patience with people. You have to respect them. The key is to remember that there's only one leader on a mission. It can be tough if you see yourself as a leader, but you're not the mission's designated leader. There's a real skill involved in followership. And you have to remember that you're living in a technical world. Machines are keeping you alive, and you need to keep them running. There are very few sound technical decisions for any problem. If you don't find the logical way, the machines quit and everybody dies.

What about people who just get on your nerves or invade your personal space? Have you ever been in a zero-g slap fight?
Nothing like that has ever happened. The biggest problem is that people get too busy taking care of other people. You need to take care of yourself - find a way to have some quiet time, write poetry if that's what you do to maintain your mind, watch a DVD, whatever you need to do.

If there's a manned Mars mission anytime soon, you're the favorite to go. After what you went through on expedition 6, would you still go?
In a nanosecond.

What 6 months in space does to your body

Spine: Straightens, adding 2 inches of height.

Cells: Heavy bombardment from cosmic rays puts DNA at greater risk of mutation, especially in the Van Allen belts and during solar flares.

Kidneys: Filtration rate increases; calcium run-off from bones can form kidney stones.

Head: Swells with fluid that migrates from the lower body; face becomes puffy.

Inner ear: Saccules and utricles (motion- and position-monitoring mechanisms) send conflicting signals, causing space sickness.

Heart: Enlarges; heartbeat slows.

Stomach: Free-falling sensation causes space sickness.

Reproductive organs: Sperm motility increases.

Legs: A lack of gravitational stress causes muscles to atrophy; legs become thinner.

Blood: Plasma volume decreases along with the production of red and white blood cells; immune system becomes less active; extra calcium in blood serum can cause hypercalcemia. Symptoms: nausea, delirium, coma.
