Mars in three years

[kerbiloid]

Need moar gold.

They should build a Disneymars (Disneymoon ?) and gather money from kids, teens and nerds for living in a real Mars/Moon colony: digging pits, mounting trusses, farming plants in greenhouses. In spacesuits.
Ten years later they will have an excess of money to send these well trained colonists to wherever they want.

Edited July 14, 2017 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

I cannot judge how serious this is but to me it seems like a step towards reality:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/nasa-finally-admits-it-doesnt-have-the-funding-to-land-humans-on-mars/

tldr: NASA chief for manned spaceflight says that there is not enough money, technology and manpower for sending humans to Mars in a foreseeable future (30's/40's).

A single expendable SLS launch costs a billion funds, they say. Not even the moon is within reach at that price. That is as much as the TMT or 0.7*E-ELT cost, which are planned for 50-75 years of work (upgrades in between of course).

Yet at the same time they talk about a Moon base...

I'm afraid the SLS is to blame, not Mars, assuming this isn't a malicious maneuver to spread more pork.

[tater]

Pork spread? Is that deviled ham, or scrapple?

[Nothalogh]

8 hours ago, tater said:

Pork spread? Is that deviled ham, or scrapple?

It's not called the Senate Launch System for no reason

Edited July 15, 2017 by Nothalogh

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Nothalogh said:

It's not called the Senate Launch System for no reason

Think the B1 bomber was build with parts from 45 states or something, not economical but an way to get votes. 
Here in Norway we had an conspiracy too large to be an real conspiracy as in various Parliament members voted for each other road projects over an generation. 
Yes you got a lot of roads, bridges and tunnels out of it,however very low use and utility. 

[Kerbart]

7 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Think the B1 bomber was build with parts from 45 states or something, not economical but an way to get votes. 
Here in Norway we had an conspiracy too large to be an real conspiracy as in various Parliament members voted for each other road projects over an generation. 
Yes you got a lot of roads, bridges and tunnels out of it,however very low use and utility. 

You're conveniently leaving out the bigger scandal Norway was involved in; the Scandinavian countries always voting for each other in the Euro song festival!

[magnemoe]

1 minute ago, Kerbart said:

You're conveniently leaving out the bigger scandal Norway was involved in; the Scandinavian countries always voting for each other in the Euro song festival!

Hush, that is ultra secret. 

[alec33]

Mars may be an eight month ride but the fact remains that most destinations in the cosmos are too far for the human lifespan with the present technology.

So in addition to life support, and communication our vehicles need equipment for making required time to cover a given distance fit, say, the nine hours a jet needs to go from San Francisco to Osaka.

Boredom will join noise, vibration, and harshness as engineer's goals.

Maybe it's about surfing waves of interstellar energy or catching it like wind for propulsion at multiples of light speed using superconductors in the vacuum of space suspending physics in the cabin by preserving the exact molecular order of the human body (no aging, no burns or deformities) as the vehicle it rides in becomes pure energy.

Maybe there are numbers on the periodic table we don't know about that are up to the job?

Of course we'll have to figure out how to de energize the thing at arrival with all the molecules in the order they were at departure, or a reasonable surrogate. Avionics in a rig like this poses a few challenges. Plenty of power though.

[Regor]

This is what earth thinks by now

[artwhaley]

You are all so pessimistic.   

I have absolutely no doubt that NASA could put a man on Mars by 2024, if not 2020.

And if the stock prices hold out and enough people buy Teslas...  Elon can almost certainly bring back their desiccated remains by 2050 or 2060.

It's called faith people.  Have a little.

 

[NSEP]

5 hours ago, artwhaley said:

You are all so pessimistic.   

I have absolutely no doubt that NASA could put a man on Mars by 2024, if not 2020.

Are you really sure? NASA would have to do it in a hussle, and as we learned from the Soviet Luna program, being in a hussle for something very new does not always provide the best results. Not saying its impossible and could never be a succes, its just very very very very very very hard.

Im not pessimistic, im just trying to be realistic. I would be just as happy with a planned Mars mission in 20 years from now, as with a Mission 3 years from now.

 

[Bill Phil]

16 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Are you really sure? NASA would have to do it in a hussle, and as we learned from the Soviet Luna program, being in a hussle for something very new does not always provide the best results. Not saying its impossible and could never be a succes, its just very very very very very very hard.

Im not pessimistic, im just trying to be realistic. I would be just as happy with a planned Mars mission in 20 years from now, as with a Mission 3 years from now.

 

Well, I'd prefer a mission to Jupiter or Saturn...

It has been claimed many times that we are more prepared now to go to Mars than we were prepared to go to the Moon in the early 60s. I'm not so sure about how accurate that is, though...

[NSEP]

9 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Well, I'd prefer a mission to Jupiter or Saturn...

It has been claimed many times that we are more prepared now to go to Mars than we were prepared to go to the Moon in the early 60s. I'm not so sure about how accurate that is, though...

Well, i that might me true, but currently, there is nothing here to force NASA towards a Mars mission, and do keep in mind that NASA got alot more funding during the development of Apollo than we have now.

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Well, I'd prefer a mission to Jupiter or Saturn...

It has been claimed many times that we are more prepared now to go to Mars than we were prepared to go to the Moon in the early 60s. I'm not so sure about how accurate that is, though...

Kind of a tossup, I think. Getting to Mars requires most of what it takes to get to the Moon, but getting to the Moon doesn't really help you get to Mars. And Mars is a LOT harder.

[RCgothic]

I have no doubt we could manage it with current tech. The problem is budgets and timescales.

On current budget the timescale is not getting any closer to the present.

On budget max you'd still need to design build and test the interplanetary hardware before the next Mars window, as SLS is not nearly sufficient. That's not happening, as there's too much to do. Even the window for a first interplanetary unmanned test after that is only 2020, which is really pushing it. Finally even if that goes perfectly you need to wait again for the next window in 2022. That's April 2023 manned arrival at Mars at earliest.

Edited July 27, 2017 by RCgothic

[sevenperforce]

We haven't even really established a mission profile.

With the Moon, it was easy enough. There's no atmosphere, so that takes aerobraking out of the equation. The lander was either going to be direct ascent (NOVA/N1) or LOR, and LOR was rapidly shown to be the more readily achievable option. Earth orbit assembly was ruled out due to complexity. The transit time is short, so one vehicle (the CM) could work just fine for ascent, transfer hab, lunar orbit loiter, and EDL. A two-stage lander meant lower mass and excellent safety margin.

With Mars, everything is on the table. You can capture anything you want by aerobraking, but then you have to lug it back up to orbit if it's important. Do you use a two-stage lander? A pre-sent lander? A pre-sent ascent vehicle? Earth orbit assembly is now almost definitely a requirement. What about the transfer hab? If you give it a heat shield you can aerocapture and leave it in orbit, but then you need a secondary heat shield for the actual lander.

Vehicle requirements depend on mission profile, which depends on vehicle capability.

Edited July 27, 2017 by sevenperforce

[Bill Phil]

N1 was intended to be LOR.

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

N1 was intended to be LOR.

Ah, good point.

N1's lunar lander was single-stage but was going to use the Blok D transfer stage as a crasher stage; that was the difference. I knew there was something funky about that.

[DDE]

On ‎27‎.‎07‎.‎2017 at 8:44 PM, sevenperforce said:

Ah, good point.

N1's lunar lander was single-stage but was going to use the Blok D transfer stage as a crasher stage; that was the difference. I knew there was something funky about that.

You may be further confused by LK-700/UR-700, which indeed was a five (?) stage Direct Ascent system about four times heavier than a Saturn V.

[kerbiloid]

22 hours ago, DDE said:

You may be further confused by LK-700/UR-700

Spoiler

Offtop, but the same in photos. Mockup 1:10

http://frs-vetlana.livejournal.com/333518.html