Mars Manned Mission Designs

[darthgently]

I'll just put this here instead of picking an existing topic because crewed Mars is its own topic really 

 

[tater]

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230013972/downloads/CrewLogistics Lander for Common Hab Architecture.pdf

 

[Spaceception]

Okay, so this probably doesn't count, since it's coming from someone doing a high school project (and it hasn't coalesced into a single paper, updates are sporadic), but I find it interesting enough to mention. The idea is sending weekly missions to Mars, with 24 people, or 10 (they've also mentioned 12) people per ship. This is on average. At certain parts of their orbits, smaller crews or only cargo would be sent on longer trajectories, all leveraging in-orbit refueling.

It's not an official proposal from anyone else afaik, but it does raise an interesting question, if Mars missions, particularly crewed ones, have to wait for transfer windows.  Most proposals take it as a given since they rely on Hohmann transfers, as a minimum energy approach, but if you didn't have to, why stick to the limitation? Especially for SpaceX, so they don't have to wait 2 years to cram as many Starships in a window as possible, they can spread it out instead.

A continuously inhabited base, being replenished constantly, and never cut off from Earth completely.

Spoiler

 

[Terwin]

Mars can be as little as 34 million miles or as much as 250 million miles. When on the other side of the sun, mars is more than 7x the distance from Earth as when it is close, and when it is close, there is no need to detour around the sun, making it even further.

No matter what sort of transfer you make, multiplying the distance by more than 7 has a major impact on if the transfer is even possible, not to mention the time increase.(There are many parts of the orbit where waiting to launch will make you arrive earlier)

[StrandedonEarth]

From what I saw from pork chop plots, there are some times where the dV cost doubles or triples or more…

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, tater said:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20230013972/downloads/CrewLogistics Lander for Common Hab Architecture.pdf

 

I assume this require an second Starship who is going to and from Mars but stays in orbit but  is the crew quarters during trip to and from Mars. 
I like the design, You could use more cargo Starships for stuff like an large rover,  more living space and beginning building the infrastructure for ISRU for later missions. This would be hard to pull off with robots. 

[tater]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

I assume this require an second Starship who is going to and from Mars but stays in orbit but  is the crew quarters during trip to and from Mars. 
I like the design, You could use more cargo Starships for stuff like an large rover,  more living space and beginning building the infrastructure for ISRU for later missions. This would be hard to pull off with robots. 

I would assume so, clearly they're not going home in a capsule. Course anything in orbit has to get their at least in part propulsively.

I'm a little unclear on moving the hab things around, or why the habs are so tiny vs just using a SS deck or two.

Edited April 18 by tater

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, tater said:

I would assume so, clearly they're not going home in a capsule. Course anything in orbit has to get their at least in part propulsively.

I'm a little unclear on moving the hab things arouns, or why the habs are so tiny ve just using a SS deck or two.

I agree, that was a bit weird, rather have an elevator and couple of cranes to get people up as an backup. Use the ball suits as an backup if the backup suits failed. And with an deck or two you will have workshops who likely fix failed suits or equipment. 
Primary purpose of space is damage control we divided it up into living quarters until we need damage control.