New Mars Forums

Hi.

I'm not a technical type, and I'm new, so I can't really comment directly on all of the engineer talk going on here.

But whenever I read or hear discussions of the technical problems -including perhaps alleged showstoppers- for a Human Mission to Mars, I ask myself this question:

"What was the technical capability of the U.S.A in 1961, and what did they never-the-less accomplish in 1969 (and earlier)?"

I don't think the gizmos are the problem in going to Mars.

The problems are rather social and organizational.

Once we have those in line, it really is just an issue of money and time, money and time -and genius techies like some of y'all here (but those are all over the place nowadays).

And lastly if anyone is curious, I am a recent reader of Zubrin's Case for Mars (etc.), a recent joiner of the Mars Society, and I am all for Mars Direct straight-up, or Semi-, or any further modification of these. I am okay with Dragon Direct, but I would really like to see a return to a true heavy booster and the big missions it would allow. I would say that these are -or will be when they find out about any of this- the typical opinions of the average person who will really make a MarsShot fly -the folks that pay for it.

"Back to where we turned wrong, then upwards!" is always a bigger seller than "Beyond the cutting edge technology" and "We can get by with less".

The only thing I would really change about Mars Direct or the Design Reference Mission is that (at latest by Mission 2 or 3) I would "double down"  on the whole thing and send a "Construction Crew" back to one of the previous landing sites, along with the "Exploration Crew" of the standard Zubrin/NASA missions.

I would say 1.5 - 3 years of surface time with decent capability is enough time to find Base-Building necessities near enough to the exploration landing sites to get on to building a more permanent and flexible set-up than the "habs" -especially since the initial landing sites should have been very well-selected using orbiter and robot lander data.

Anyway, hope to have many interesting talks in the future here (but also hope that the Society gets a forum going itself).