New Mars Forums

If we can build a robot like that we would have done it already for starters, second...you're one of those Apollo conspiracy theorists aren't you?

No BUT the budding partnership with China might lead in suprising directions...

I blatantly agree.  The reverred VaunBraun of early NASA was far far FAR too elaborate in his plans; just look at the Disney movie of his designs.  Clearly he didn't anticipate Vietnam or that Congress would insist on a budget cap!

3 tops should be all that's required, and that's complex enough.

Obviously alot of opinions being floated around currently.  I think I'll check back in this forum after NASA releases more info on its Mars plans.

Crazy Bob as you dub him is about the only professional who came up with a solution that wasn't over the 400 Billion Dollar range.

There is still something to salvage indeed: ISRU and the lander vehicles ought to be utilized along with aerobraking.

Now this is what I'm talking about!  No colonies, no interplanetary migration, but a slow but steady progress out of Earth orbit.  THIS is the most likely real-life senerio we can expect from a robust space program, national or global.

A 300-personel-base would be a good sized outpost, and perhaps the direct precursor to an actual lunar colony.  It would probably be at the government's limit of support and commercial industry would be making headway in supportng it.  If the logisitics of supporting this site prove feasible and local resources are utilized it would awaken the public to the possibility of making a living on the Moon.  If this would be the end result of 50 years of a Lunar Program, then within the next 40 years we'd see the first Lunar Cities take shape and all making a space-based industry on the Moon.  Then the dreams of space enthusiasts would start happening...

60 people on Mars would be a pretty big number - certainly with that many on Mars there'd be expeditions happening planet-wide with the immediate region (say to a radius of 500km) thouroughly studied with the confirmed resources being utilized.

Both outposts would be large by current plans but within a 50-year period they could both happen without relying on titanic leaps of technology.

I noticed that too.  I think that might be an improvement over the accordian-style arrays used on the ISS...and the flaws they have during deployment due to their fabric-like-nature: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16224153/  That also explains why the Hubble's (relatively) new arrays are compact and solid; during its legendary repair I remember how one of them failed to work properly and had to be dumped.

If you haven't noticed...we don't live in the colonial era anymore.  People don't move for religion or politics, they do it for financial reasons.  If anyone sponsors colonists it'll be a corporation pouring money into a Lunar (or Martian) inustry, much like the MetaNational Corps in the Red, Green, and Blue Mars trilogy.  If there's risk involved the majority won't buy into it...but still since there ARE people that have an interest in space travel a few will try if they can, but it won't be easy.

The difference is we're talking about establishing life on a whole new world, and one where not even the air itself is for free.  Tell the public that and you guarantee a no-go in NASA terminology.

Technologically the means to get to Mars will be in government-only-hands for a long while yet - commercial means won't exist for a long while and won't be accessible to the common person either.  And if the corporation sponsering the colony goes bankrupt, what becomes of the colonists en route?  No spare parts, no food unless chairty steps in (which is unlikely since it'll cost a million to loft a single pound of beans to Mars).

We'll have to see what the human spirit can do, but I see it not nessicarily as a weak thing but extremely finicky.  Don't expect miracles to come readily although they will come occassionally.

That's what I assumed regarding cyclers.  You still have to waste so much propellant and then there's how you handle maintaining something that big.

Personally I'd just make something more like a reuseamble Mars transit vehicle; a craft that waits in high orbit over each planet and then leaves when everything's loaded up.  Far easier rendevousing with something in local space than interplanetary space.

To quote Grandpa Simpson consider this:

"...a little from collumn A and a little from collumn B." 

Whatever we send that stays on the surface permenantly out to be canabalized.  A reuseable lander would pretty much be out of the loop so no worries.  The bottom stage of those cargo landers and even the framework should be taken apart on other hand.  You spend several million lofting up a pound of metal you OUGHT to make sure the taxpayers get their money's worth.

Agreed on reusing fuel tanks and making a strong effort when we do go to Mars.

So large landers both manned and unmanned, establishing ISRU asap, aerobraking, and canabalizing spent surface stages are all solid ideas.

They ought to design the landers to be modular, and by that I mean the indivual lander components; so we can pull off a tank and then just wheel it over to wherever its needed - i.e. we drive our manned rover up to it, unscrew a few bolts, plop it on the trunk of the rover, and drive back to the base.  This'd be handy for either Luna or Mars if we really wanna utilize existing equiptment.  Screw reuseable landers if we can fully canabalize the old stuff! 

I don't suppose there's any thoughts to aerobraking?  With or without ISRU that would reduce propellant needs, and off-hand I see two ways we can utilize it at Mars.

1) Aerocapture - Full Blown MOI dive into the atmosphere.  This is the riskier of the two options but I think the bigger part of the risk is that it hasn't been done before, not even with probes unless you count landers.  If safety boards shoot this option to hell then there's still...

2) Aerobraking - to reduce risk the craft could brake with propellants into a high orbit.  After that, the transit vehicle (whether an Orion or otherwise) and lander seperate with the lander using its heat shield to skim day by day into the atmosphere.  Considering we have a heat shield on the shuttle orbiter that is reuseable this isn't inconceivable - naturally update the concept a bit and with something less brittle but, unlike the orbiter, once the entry into the Martian stratosphere is done it'd be ejected.

I think they need to consider this, and if no one wants ISRU or mega-mass spacecraft (the later killing off both nuclear and solar electric drives) this is about only option.