Astronauts Want Better Food On Mars Flight

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 8

Astronauts Want Better Food On Mars Flight

(By a staff correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor") NEW ORLEANS. Astronauts are not particularly fussy. But the same menu of dried frozen foods day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year....

Yes, that is , what America’s space pioneers had to look forward to on a manned flight to Mars. Such a trip could take between one and two years. Until this meeting, it hast generally been assumed that the astronauts would be satisfied with the frozen dried foods they have been eating in the Mercury and Gemini flights—and will eat in their Apollo space travels. Some 300 aerospace experts, gathered here for talks on planetary flight techniques and hardware, found otherwise. “Concessions” It seems that the astronauts have spoken out on the matter. They have let it be known, however, kindly, that two years of such menus on a round trip to Mars were more than they could contemplate. Thus at this meeting, the man who heads the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's human research activities, Dr Walton Jones, said N.A.S.A. would try to break the monotony by letting the crew have some "conventional” food now and then on a Mars trip. Pressed to explain what he meant, Dr Jones said: “Well, we might let them have good old Southern fried chicken, or turkey, or roast beef—say for Sunday dinner: not frozen and dried, but the real thing —with mashed potatoes and gravy.” It would create problems carrying 50 or 100 such dinners on board a spacecraft—for a crew of up to 10—but it could be done, said Dr Jones. It would be well worth it, he added, as a morale booster. Pilot Role This little incident illustrates the new role that man as an astronaut is playing in the plans being made for exploring the planets. He is not going along just as a pilot, but as an integral part or what the engineers call a subsystem in the flight plan. This meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics devoted a

whole session to discussing man-machine relationships. Back in the days of the early Mercury and Gemini flights the pilot was hardly more than the rider of a ballistic missile. But in the later Gemini shots he became a true pilot, manoeuvring and operating the spacecraft as does the driver of a car. Crew’s Requests Now that there are plans for trips to various planets that could take from one to four years, the crew becomes as important a part of the whole operation as the actual machine—the spacecraft, the rockets or engines, the guidance and control systems, the life-support system, the communications system. In these discussions it came out that the astronauts have not only let it be known what they thought of a yearin year-out diet of frozen foods, but they have pressed for (some people used the word “demanded”) a role in monitoring the automatic equipment aboard. That is understandable. Their lives depend upon the perfect working of all the many systems and subsystems. It was suggested they may distrust the automatic guidance and control systems aboard. But a more logical explanation of their interest would stem from their desire to know all the time just how the machine they are in, millions of miles out into space, is working. Durability Uncertain One thing engineers are not sure of in regard to planetary flights is just how the materials in the spacecraft and all the subsystems will stand up under one to several years’ flight in space. Parts may wear out, materials change characteristics.

Crew members will have to be prepared to make repairs, install new fittings, or bolts. The spacecraft materials used to fly to the moon—will they stand up to a 900-day trip to Mars?

These engineers, scientists, representing the big aerospace companies of America as -well as many research centres, are not theoretically interested in the political and financial aspects of manned planetary flight. Their job is to develop the technology to make such trips possible. But

they are well aware that the cost and purpose of manned planetary flight is going to be carefully scrutinised by Congress.

Cost Estimates High

No-one at this conference was ready to put a dollar figure on the cost of a manned Mars landing. But some rough estimates were voiced ranging from $4O billion to $lOO billion over a 20-25-year-period—or $2 billion to $4 billion a year.

These discussions brought out some differences of opinion. Some in the gathering argued for only a manned flyby of Mars. It is much less costly, yet able to supply plenty of scientific information about the planet. Some suggested that it might be more revealing to try to fly by or two Mars’s two moons, Phoebus and Demos, as they could be better sources of information about the origin of the planets than Mars itself.

What these three days of talks have highlighted is that for all the advance made in manned space flight, culminating shortly in a manned landing on the moon, space engineers actually are only in the Model T stage of the business of building a spacecraft. The Lincoln Continental model will come—put not for many decades and maybe not in this century.