Mars Direct: How To Get To Mars With Existing Technology On A Budget We Can Afford!

[Nibb31]

Errr... first, you don't have to land everything in the same place. But if you do, it would be a hell of way to build the infrastucture to, say, support a dedicated rocket hopper to explore the whole panet in suborbital hops, refuelled from the central base.

That would be an amazingly inefficient and dangerous way of exploring the planet. I would go with unmanned quadcopter drones or even blimps. But then if they're unmanned, why build a base on the surface in the first place?

You see, people are going about this the wrong way. Instead of thinking "I want to build a base on Mars, now let's find a way to justify it", the rational way of doing it should be "Let's figure out what we want to accomplish, and then figure out how to do it". This is also why NASA hasn't gone anywhere in the last 40 years (and probably won't be going anywhere in the next 40 either), because they keep on concentrating on the next shiny vehicle that has no mission instead of focusing on a feasible mission and then on the equipment they need to do it.

So what is it that we want to accomplish here, and why?

Edited March 6, 2015 by Nibb31

[GoSlash27]

That would be an amazingly inefficient and dangerous way of exploring the planet. I would go with unmanned quadcopter drones or even blimps. But then if they're unmanned, why build a base on the surface in the first place?

You see, people are going about this the wrong way. Instead of thinking "I want to build a base on Mars, now let's find a way to justify it", the rational way of doing it should be "Let's figure out what we want to accomplish, and then figure out how to do it". This is also why NASA hasn't gone anywhere in the last 40 years (and probably won't be going anywhere in the next 40 either), because they keep on concentrating on the next shiny vehicle that has no mission instead of focusing on a feasible mission and then on the equipment they need to do it.

So what is it that we want to accomplish here, and why?

Someday down the road, we'll have a director at NASA who used to play KSP. He/ she will no doubt approach it the right way 'round; "I want to execute this mission within this budget. How do I make that happen?"

Best,

-Slashy

[Bill Phil]

That would be an amazingly inefficient and dangerous way of exploring the planet. I would go with unmanned quadcopter drones or even blimps. But then if they're unmanned, why build a base on the surface in the first place?

You see, people are going about this the wrong way. Instead of thinking "I want to build a base on Mars, now let's find a way to justify it", the rational way of doing it should be "Let's figure out what we want to accomplish, and then figure out how to do it". This is also why NASA hasn't gone anywhere in the last 40 years (and probably won't be going anywhere in the next 40 either), because they keep on concentrating on the next shiny vehicle that has no mission instead of focusing on a feasible mission and then on the equipment they need to do it.

So what is it that we want to accomplish here, and why?

Well, NASA has done that. It's just that it's somewhere on the shelf from a 1960s report about going beyond Apollo.

[FishInferno]

. SLS and Orion are just the first step, the pieces needed in their plan to get there (and back) are much bigger and AFAIK - no budget for them.

Besides from the low-budget standpoint, NASA's current timeline puts people on Mars in the 2030s. That is freaking pitiful[, considering they don't lan to return to the Moon in the meantime. We could do Mars by 2025 if we wanted.

The only thing SpaceX is colonizing is Twitter. Beyond the PR, SpaceX is only going to Mars if somebody (NASA) hires them to. BFR/Raptor "development" is only to demonstrate that they can cater to the HLV market when SLS is cancelled.

There is no market for regular Mars trips, nor will there ever be one any time soon. It will always be expensive, even with reusable MCTs. Colonization is a silly science-fiction induced pipe dream that SpaceX uses for PR purposes, and really wish people would put a little more thought into it before drinking the Kool Aid.

Have you heard Elon Musk recently? Also, it will undoubtedly be expensive, but still significantly cheaper than using disposable hardware.

[Bill Phil]

Besides from the low-budget standpoint, NASA's current timeline puts people on Mars in the 2030s. That is freaking pitiful[, considering they don't lan to return to the Moon in the meantime. We could do Mars by 2025 if we wanted.

Have you heard Elon Musk recently? Also, it will undoubtedly be expensive, but still significantly cheaper than using disposable hardware.

Putting humans on Mars by any time later than the 90s is pitiful considering how capable we are.

Let me ask you, what equipment is the re usability going to require? How much? How complicated? The track record of re-usability is not good, so I doubt it'll help that much at all.

[FishInferno]

Let me ask you, what equipment is the re usability going to require? How much? How complicated? The track record of re-usability is not good, so I doubt it'll help that much at all.

I admit that it will be more intensive to develop it, but also remember that we don't have that much of a track record of re-usability. The only big one is the STS, which failed because of (you guessed it!) politics. SpaceX is doing out there and trying something new, and they are doing a pretty god job so far.

[Nibb31]

Besides from the low-budget standpoint, NASA's current timeline puts people on Mars in the 2030s. That is freaking pitiful[, considering they don't lan to return to the Moon in the meantime. We could do Mars by 2025 if we wanted.

Sure, but why the rush? Mars isn't going anywhere.

And where is the political support to send people to Mars by 2025? And once again: WHY? What purpose does it serve?

Have you heard Elon Musk recently?

Yes and my point stands. I enjoy when he shares technical achievements and actual progress, but his starry-eyed tweets about colonies on Mars are nothing more than wishful thinking.

Also, it will undoubtedly be expensive, but still significantly cheaper than using disposable hardware.

You cannot make that claim when you have no idea about the economics of reusable HLVs compared to expendable HLVs. Reusability only makes sense when you have a high flight rate. Projected Mars missions with launch windows every 2 years, at this point, are nowhere near the flight rates where reusability makes any sense.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Nibb31

[Bill Phil]

I admit that it will be more intensive to develop it, but also remember that we don't have that much of a track record of re-usability. The only big one is the STS, which failed because of (you guessed it!) politics. SpaceX is doing out there and trying something new, and they are doing a pretty god job so far.

There is quite a difference between successfully recovering a used stage, and successfully integrating into a reusing infrastructure.

Basically, don't get your hopes up. SpaceX is, still, controlled by other forces. Such as business, and even a little politics.

STS failed in reusability because there was no reason to have fast turn-around times. If the full​ STS was implemented, then it would have been more successful.

[cpast]

I've always been sort of confused by the hype over SpaceX. They're a commercial launch provider. They develop technology out of their profit margins, and the focus is on stuff driving down their costs. I just see no actual evidence that they're going to spend their own money on a mission without high commercial prospects; that's just not what they do (they don't even spend their own money testing new things on flights; they test stuff on the same flight as a paying customer's payload if at all possible). They only run missions with no customer if there's actually no alternative, and if there's substantial commercial advantage to be gained by doing so (e.g. new hardware, you can't find a customer till you tested it). I'm not seeing them running a colonization mission -- I'm seeing a commercial launch provider that uses vertical integration and cheap but good enough components to drive down costs, but which is focused on making money through commercial launches. Where is the money coming from for a Mars launch?

[SargeRho]

From the colonists. The idea is to push the price per person down to half a million or less.

[PB666]

And again, if we wanted to, we could develop the technology. It would be an enormous expense, but then so were Apollo or the Manhattan Project. The question is "why?". "Because we can" is a not a good enough answer when you have to convince millions of taxpayers. Heck, many taxpayers don't even want to pay for schools or hospitals, why would they pay for flags and footprints on another planet? They will pay for entertainment, but Hollywood produces better entertainment for cheaper.

America had reasons for Apollo or the Manhattan Project. It was at war (hot or cold). There is no reason today to launch such a huge effort to go to Mars.

Despite last mission in mid 70s the lunar samples still produce science, not just for the US but for many countries. The primary limitations on our space program is that during the 1980s our government started taking a backward quasi-luditic view of science and medicine. They started a highly targeted view of science in attempt to undermine things that disaggreed with thier life-perspectives on religion, etc. So we get highly targeted stuff (Breast Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes) and alot of science gets mocked. Its all a justification so that the richest in our society can find ways of not paying the same proportion of income as their workers.

If the government came to me-space program director- a just gave me a ton of $s, in an instant I would do the following

1. Massive full spectrum space observatory, 100 times larger than the largest known.

2. Lunar colony test colony platform. It would have a secondary science goals including a 'dark side' observatory, subterranean objectives etc.

3. Phobos mission. (because you can leave, any mission you can do with as a suicide mission can be done with robots)

Every single mission would be comprised of objects that create paybacks over decades in terms of samples and science.

4. I really don't care if there was life on mars, the only real question is will colonizing mars as an ends and not a means have a payback or is it vanity.

5. Our 'robots' have done a considerable amount of science, and they have overextended there mission times so . . . .. . .

6. If we get to phobos, we could assist the private sector on a mars mission, but I think a mission focus should be on deep space, really deep space.

[Rune]

I wasn't saying to use a monster launcher, I would prefer building the craft in orbit. But that takes a huge investment.

Wait, is that 50 mega tons? Isn't 50 gigagrams or something? Man that is huge...

There are a lot of ways to go about doing a lot of things. Do you mean using a bunch of smaller transfer stages strapped together to act as a big one?

And here's another thing: Why is payload per launch so important? I mean, for the cost of one SLS launch you could launch almost the same payload with other launch vehicles, all in one year. So, maybe payload per year is better? In that case, SLS would be about 70 tonnes/yr, (the average person eats about that much mass of food in his/her whole lifetime, woah!). If we used the average estimates for SLS launch costs, or about 2.75 billion US dollars per launch (wikipedia data), and assuming one launch per year at 70 tonnes per launch... Then you could launch about 7 DIVHs for that cost. That's 201 tonnes/yr! Of course, this is dependent on future data, which we don't have. And I doubt the DIVH facilities are able to handle that much use. But what if the money used for developing SLS was used instead to allow the much more economical option of revamping the logistics to allow for almost 7 DIVH launches per year? We would be on Mars in a decade, by my estimate.

Oh, a mean metric Tons, mT for short. With so many people from all around the world, it's nice to point out you mean 1,000kg when you say "ton". Other than that, yeah, we concur, only I would measure the output in &/kg, not kg/year. Mostly because the more kg you launch in a year, the less they will cost.

By "using many transfer stages" I meant that to move a 50mT payload, if you need a mass ratio of four and each of your stages is 50mT, you slap three of those to the payload. As to the launcher comments... yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying, pick the existing launcher with the best $/Kg rating (within a minimum payload weight, otherwise you burn a big percentage of the mass in docking systems), and mass-poroduce the hell out of it. Seeing that kind of market working for a few years, you can be sure the money to develop cheaper future alternatives will appear by itself.

That would be an amazingly inefficient and dangerous way of exploring the planet. I would go with unmanned quadcopter drones or even blimps. But then if they're unmanned, why build a base on the surface in the first place?

You see, people are going about this the wrong way. Instead of thinking "I want to build a base on Mars, now let's find a way to justify it", the rational way of doing it should be "Let's figure out what we want to accomplish, and then figure out how to do it". This is also why NASA hasn't gone anywhere in the last 40 years (and probably won't be going anywhere in the next 40 either), because they keep on concentrating on the next shiny vehicle that has no mission instead of focusing on a feasible mission and then on the equipment they need to do it.

So what is it that we want to accomplish here, and why?

Considering the realities of the Martian... ok, let's call it "atmosphere", although in Earth it would be more like a low-grade industrial vacuum... yeah, rockets probably are much more efficient than airplanes. And considering ISRU for fuel and the size of a lifting surface designed for Mars, yeah, probably MUCH less mass to be taken to Mars. And also, considering you are already using sophisticated autopilots to precisely land propulsively on Mars, airplanes would actually require more development anyway.

See, a 1/100 Earth's atmospheric pressure means you need 100 times the lifting area, or 10 times the speed (giving terrific landing speeds, especially for unprepared terrain), or a combination of both. In any case, planes on Mars are scary hypersonic things, and the engines are also a big issue (no handy oxygen atmosphere present to use as oxidizer). And just forget about blimps, they need about 50 times more envelope volume... if envelope mass didn't go up with it's size.

As to objectives, I though we were discussing exploration of the red planet for scientific purposes (NASA's goal since like, forever), as is the assumption in mission plans like Mars Direct. But yeah, I agree, the world's space agencies could benefit a lot from a focus and leadership infusion of clear-cut objectives. But no one dares utter the word "colonization" in a serious political discussion, of course. And it's been very clear for a long time, that that is the only objective that really makes sense, everything else is better done with robots.

Rune. Yeah, the "what is the objective" discussion... that deserves a whole thread in itself!

Edited March 6, 2015 by Rune

[cpast]

From the colonists. The idea is to push the price per person down to half a million or less.

How many colonists do you expect to have, exactly? You need 120 people paying that much to launch a single Falcon 9. So for the price of one current rocket that cannot take *anything* to Mars, you'd need to take 120 people. How many people would be able to spend that much *and* would be willing to go to Mars for the rest of their life *and* are suitable for the trip? (while you'd not need money afterwards, if you have a family that's not going you'd presumably want to leave something for them).

[SargeRho]

100 per flight, with a rocket that is to be almost completely reusable - possibly to the point where the last stage of the rocket is used to land on Mars, refueled and sent back. But we're going to have to wait and see for that, Musk said he's going to reveal the plans for Mars later this year.

[cpast]

Sorry, but I'm just not buying a 100 person flight to Mars for $50 million. Not without a detailed breakdown of exactly how you will launch 100 people and sufficient life support for months to another planet for less than it currently costs to put 13 tons in LEO.

[Frozen_Heart]

I think SpaceXs approach is best. I agree with the use of tried and tested, current technology, rather than cutting edge stuff that will just ramp up the cost.

However I still don't believe SpaceX will get round to setting up a Mars colony. I believe Elon Musk is motivated by that, not just money, but I can't picture SpaceX having the money to do it.

I'll start believing after the first MCT launch.

As for the idea of a colony, that is totally premature. Take the ISS. It's Humanity's effort to keep 7 humans alive in space. It took a huge effort and decades of international cooperation to build, yet it needs regular maintenance and logistics flight just to keep those 7 people alive. To make a self-sufficient colony, you would need thousands of people, something on the scale of 150 times the effort that was needed to build the ISS. And you need the resources to fling all that infrastructure not just to 400km above us, but to another freaking planet.

Space and the surface of Mars are very different environments (though both instantly deadly to all Earth life)

On the ISS it is impossible to use in situ resource utilisation. The surface of Mars has most of the things necessary to be self sufficient with a good enough technology base and enough people. The only problem I can think of is nitrogen. Pretty sure there isn't much of that on Mars.

[Nibb31]

From the colonists. The idea is to push the price per person down to half a million or less.

I don't think that is an achievable price even for a couple of days in LEO. If we're lucky, SpaceX might bring down the ticket of a Dragon orbital flight down to $5 million. That would be 20 times cheaper than today's prices, which is already super-optimistic. It's hard to imagine a ticket to Mars ever costing less than several million dollars.

Besides, a colony means a one-way trip for most people. The type of people who are desperate enough to leave everything behind seek a better life on another world doesn't intersect much with the type of people who have a million dollars to spare. Would you give up your life's savings to go and condemn yourself to spend the rest of your life in a tin can, breathing A/C air, drinking recycled urine, and eating hydroponic salad, and looking at the scenery through a tiny window? Would you be willing to give up going to the beach, outdoor sports, travelling, seeing friends and family, and feeling the breeze in your hair and the warm sun on your skin for the rest of your life? How could living on Mars ever be an improvement compared to spending your money on Earth?

Edited March 6, 2015 by Nibb31

[Rune]

You cannot make that claim when you have no idea about the economics of reusable HLVs compared to expendable HLVs. Reusability only makes sense when you have a high flight rate. Projected Mars missions with launch windows every 2 years, at this point, are nowhere near the flight rates where reusability makes any sense.

That depends entirely on how much mass you are launching on each window, and how big is your reusable launcher. For example, refuelling a EDS-size transfer stage could take literally hundreds of flights if you used a 1mT reusable launcher with a reusable tanker tug.

STS failed in reusability because there was no reason to have fast turn-around times. If the full​ STS was could have been implemented, then it would have been more successful.

Fixed that for you. Everybody that knew the facts could have told you by about 1972 (if they were honest) that a single shuttle would never be able to fly once every month. Long before they actually got into the whole thermal tile mess with the gazillion man-hours behind, even.

I've always been sort of confused by the hype over SpaceX. They're a commercial launch provider. They develop technology out of their profit margins, and the focus is on stuff driving down their costs. I just see no actual evidence that they're going to spend their own money on a mission without high commercial prospects; that's just not what they do (they don't even spend their own money testing new things on flights; they test stuff on the same flight as a paying customer's payload if at all possible). They only run missions with no customer if there's actually no alternative, and if there's substantial commercial advantage to be gained by doing so (e.g. new hardware, you can't find a customer till you tested it). I'm not seeing them running a colonization mission -- I'm seeing a commercial launch provider that uses vertical integration and cheap but good enough components to drive down costs, but which is focused on making money through commercial launches. Where is the money coming from for a Mars launch?

In an industry where nothing of importance has happened over the last two decades (at least), they are shaking the ground so much companies like Boeing are getting freaked out. If only for that, they have my respect. But they have also halved the cost on an EELV-class launch, and not happy with that they are testing the first reusable liquid stage in history, on their own dime. And you don't really have to listen to Musk, you just have to know the kind of profits aerospace makes: you don't do this kind of stuff to earn money, there are a gazillion easier ways. You do these kind of things because you are a "space cadet" at heart. And I like my "space cadets" in positions of influence, they come up with awesome stuff, even if it is of dubious practicality.

So maybe he won't launch colonization missions on his own dime just for the sake of it, big surprise. But you can be certain he will grow markets that would have taken decades (if ever) to grow by themselves, all geared towards making Mars colonization a profitable enterprise. And mind you, I, personally, would colonize much sooner other places, my thing are free-floating colonies and I am against-planetary-chauvinism to the core. So no Martian fanboy here.

Rune. "The best way to make a small fortune in the aerospace sector is to start off with a large fortune".

[Nibb31]

Space and the surface of Mars are very different environments (though both instantly deadly to all Earth life)

Which makes them more similar than different. In both cases, you can't go outside. You need life support to breath and a thick spacesuit. You are dealing with (near)vacuum, similar thermal conditions, and radiation. In addition, on Mars, you have the complication of dust and abrasion, which is going to wreak havoc with any kind of machinery.

On the ISS it is impossible to use in situ resource utilisation. The surface of Mars has most of the things necessary to be self sufficient with a good enough technology base and enough people. The only problem I can think of is nitrogen. Pretty sure there isn't much of that on Mars.

It still takes a much bigger effort to send the ISRU production and closed-loop life support equipment to support hundreds of people than it takes to send supplies and spare parts for 7 people. And once again, what for? Why would you want to put hundreds of people on the surface of Mars? It's a gargantuan effort that simply makes no sense.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Nibb31

[cpast]

I don't think that is an achievable price even for a couple of days in LEO. If we're lucky, SpaceX might bring down the ticket of a Dragon orbital flight down to $5 million. That would be 20 times cheaper than today's prices, which is already super-optimistic. It's hard to imagine a ticket to Mars ever costing less than several million dollars.

Besides, a colony means a one-way trip for most people. The type of people who are desperate enough to leave everything behind seek a better life on another world doesn't intersect much with the type of people who have a million dollars to spare. Would you give up your life's savings to go and condemn yourself to spend the rest of your life in a tin can, breathing A/C air, drinking recycled urine, and eating hydroponic salad, and looking at the scenery through a tiny window? Would you be willing to give up going to the beach, outdoor sports, travelling, seeing friends and family, and feeling the breeze in your hair and the warm sun on your skin for the rest of your life? How could living on Mars ever be an improvement compared to spending your money on Earth?

To be fair: It's not necessarily having to have money "to spare." If you don't have people you want to leave money to, you'd be indifferent as to how much it costs and can spend up to your net worth.

[Nibb31]

Yeah, nevertheless, most millionaires find better ways to spend their money than to permanently emigrate to foreign countries on Earth. What makes you think they would want to permanently emigrate to a trailer park on Mars?

[Kibble]

On the ISS it is impossible to use in situ resource utilisation. The surface of Mars has most of the things necessary to be self sufficient with a good enough technology base and enough people. The only problem I can think of is nitrogen. Pretty sure there isn't much of that on Mars.

It's possible to ISRU on Space Station or any other orbital spacecraft, with integrated infrastructure importing supplies. Unlike Mars, Minor Planets don't have deep gravity wells, and their entire mass is potentially accessible. Mars doesn't have anything carbonaceous asteroids won't, volatiles like water, ammonia, and carbon dioxide. It also is becoming clear that most asteroids have a layer of regolith, probably made of aluminium oxide, like Moon and Mars.

The main benefit the Planets have in general, is the atmosphere, which means all the carbon dioxide you could ever want, and a nice thick aerocapture device. Also Mars has a lot of argon.

Space and the surface of Mars are very different environments (though both instantly deadly to all Earth life)

Not all Earth life. Homo Sapiens though.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Kibble

[Ten Key]

And who is going to pay for a self-sufficient colony on Mars ?

- Governments ? Why would they fund a colony that is bound to either become economically independant and turn its back on them if it succeeds, or become a liability that is going to cost billions just to keep the people alive if it fails. There is no winning scenario.

I'm not really able to contribute much here that others haven't already touched on, but I think this one small point is worth looking at.

If a self-sufficient colony could be founded on the Moon or Mars, logically that colony would eventually become independent of the government that funded it. It would make no sense for a nation or a city-state or whatever to look to a capital on another planet for leadership. But that doesn't mean there is no long term benefit to the nation that originally founded the colony. I would think that such a colony, one that speaks your language and shares your cultural roots, would likely evolve into a valuable ally and trade partner.

[Albert VDS]

There are some things I agree with and some that i disagree with about the Mars Direct plan. Like I said before, the whole goal seems to just be to get there, plant a flag, and say "We did it!". While I do like the attitude of it: "We have the technology, so lets stop trying to muck with politics and make this thinkg happen!"

However, it does only seem to be a short-term plan. One example of this is the rockets. Directs uses a Big Dumb Booster, while SpaceX focuses on reusability to make spaceflight cheaper in the long run. It will be much cheaper to send hundreds of people a year to Mars if everything is reusable from the get-go.

Mars Direct is designed to be more than a "plant a flag" mission, after all it would be a 555 day mission on Mars.

It's also designed to create momentum for colonization missions, because it would be using the same hardware as the early missions.

Another benefit of Mars Direct is that you can use it's hardware for the Moon.

[FishInferno]

Remember that internet web that SpaceX said they would build? And remember how they said they would use if for funding their Mars effort?