New Mars Forums

I'm sure many of you have heard of the Space Settlement Institute, and their Space Settlement Prize Act: http://www.space-settlement-institute.o … e-act.html. Essentially, what it would do is have the US recognize claims made by a corporation up to a given area of land, in the case of Mars 3.6 million square miles for the first corporation to reach Mars and decreasing by 15% for each subsequent corporation reaching Mars. I sometimes daydream about being a surveyor on one of those claims, being the first ever human exploring given parts of the outback.

There are obviously some differences between that idea and yours, although both are examples of corporate governance:
-One of your key points is that there'd be one single corporation governing all of Mars. Here there are several corporations laying claim on Mars, and in fact in the proposed Act is a provision saying that no corporation (nor collection of corporations effectively under the same control) can have more than one claim, explicitly banning the monopolization of Mars.
-Your primary source of revenue would be in the transport and pre-homestead maintenance of settlers, while here the primary source of revenue is simply selling the land to the homesteaders.

Overall, I think your plan is better, but that is another way to think about corporations and Mars.

One of my suggestions in another thread was sending two astronauts per DSH using two complete DSH's instead of one DSH.  It adds a measure of redundancy to the mission and a LOX/LH2 upper stage or stretch tank LOX/RP-1 could throw the DSH to TMI from LEO.  Each DSH is a single module that will fit inside the payload shroud of virtually any commodity heavy lift rocket.

Launch count is two Falcon Heavies to deliver two DSH's to LEO (and on to TMI after a Falcon 9 delivers the crews) and one Falcon 9 to deliver the crews.  Absolutely no orbital assembly is required for the DSH, no SEP-CTV is required to push the DSH to EML-1, you can obtain AG by tethering off to the upper stage, and your crewed vehicles are pushed through TMI from LEO using existing chemical propulsion technology.

We have to kill the structural mass of the DSH and upper stages using composite pressure vessels, but Boeing has proven that the things don't leak and weigh substantially less than aluminum.  If you want as near-term a solution as is practical, this is the solution.

The only SEP-CTV's absolutely required for the mission deliver the TEI kick stages and the MSH or MTVL's to Mars ahead of the crew.  The SEP-CTV's delivering the TEI kick stages would be responsible for mating the TEI kick stage to the DSH's for return to Earth and attitude control in LMO.

Edit: If an unpressurized two person capsule is used for the MDV and MAV, then the MDV can be mated to the DSH and delivered to Mars with the DSH, rather than requiring a Mars orbital rendezvous with the MDV.

An unpressurized two person MAV can be delivered to the surface of Mars of using Falcon Heavy and chemical propulsion.

So:

Window 1 ($500M in launch costs, about the same as 1 STS or 1 SLS flight):

* 2 Falcon Heavies deliver 2 MAV's to the surface of Mars using chemical propulsion and aerobraking

* 2 Falcon Heavies deliver 2 MSH's to the surface of Mars using chemical propulsion and aerobraking

Window 2 ($315M in launch costs, considerably less than 1 STS or 1 SLS flight):

* 2 Falcon Heavies deliver 2 DSH's with attached MDV's to LEO (integrated SEP still required to spiral in to LMO and to spiral in to L1)

* 1 Falcon 9 uses Dragon to transfer 4 crew to the 2 DSH's in LEO before TMI burn

No unaffordable super heavy lift rockets, unaffordable super heavy capsules, or SEP-CTV's are required for this mission architecture.  You can front load the mission with another two Falcon Heavies to add 2 more MSH's as second level surface backup or small pressurized rovers or throw heavier MSH's (by mating chemical kick stages to the MSH's in LEO).  However, we're well within the realm of science reality here and very comfortably within NASA's budget while still permitting us to maintain ISS and do other interesting things with NASA's budget.

End Edit

The MDV (Red Dragon), MAV (modified Red Dragon with larger LOX/LCH4 tanks), and even the MSH (if it's a reprise of Zubrin's combination MDV and MSH using a stowed inflatable) could be variations of the same piece of hardware.

That's the most affordable and practical human exploration of Mars mission structure that I can come up with.

International Participation Side Bar:

Each participating country would be required to purchase certified flight hardware (DSH, TMI/TEI kick stages, and SEP-CTV's; America would pick up the tab for the surface exploration hardware, MDV/MAV/MSH, and active radiation shielding hardware), provide their own launch services if desired, and staff a mission control facility.  We can afford to send 2 to 4 crew members per space-faring country.  Our maximum crew head count is 16 and I believe the scientific return would be far, far greater with 16 vs 4 crew members.  Mars Mission Control Center (MMCC) would rotate between Houston, Korolyov, Darmstadt, and Beijing in 6 hour shifts with a one-hour hand-off, so each facility only requires 8 hour staffing with an after-hours skeleton staff.

Thanks for this topic thou I can not offer much for it other than we need an over producing greenhouse  from the get go in order to not only sustain the crew in good health but also to prepare the way for husbandry.
Also inaddition to that we will need colonies of yeast, algea, bacteria for methane creation and maybe others to feast of the decaying unused garden trash and more.

The Red Dragon sample return mission did not return the capsule.  Once on the surface,  the Dragon stayed there.

The capsule had installed a small rocket ascent vehicle that carried a very tiny sample.  That small rocket comes back to some high orbit about the earth,  from which it is retrieved by another,  unspecified,  craft. 

I personally have never seen any illustrations of how all this gear was to be installed.  But some versions say there was a tiny rover.  I suspect some sort of robot arm must be involved. 

GW

It's a little odd seeing claims that Red Dragon was a NASA idea and initiative.  That's not right.

As best I can determine,  this was a Spacex proposal for a Discovery class mission,  that was never submitted,  because NASA said it wouldn't work,  and discouraged submittal.  At least,  that part of NASA to which such proposals would go.

Looking around the on-line document trail,  I found a different group within NASA that looked at Red Dragon,  and got enthusiastic,  saying it would work.  This group seems to have since won over most of the rest of NASA.

But,  damn it,  it was a Spacex idea,  not a NASA idea.  I get pissed off when those in positions of power appropriate other people's ideas and claim credit for them.  Managers and government bureaucrats are the worst offenders. 

I see no real substantive changes to the Red Dragon idea:  Dragon v2 re-rigged to carry cargo and some other mods to land one-way on Mars with its Super Draco thrusters.  The payload originally was 1 metric ton,  over and above a fully-fueled but otherwise unloaded Dragon,  which I think might be in the vicinity of 6 tons or so.  This thing can ride Falcon-Heavy as a direct shot straight to Mars.  It is based on a really shallow direct entry angle,  or this sort of propulsive entry won't work,  not with standard tankage for the Super Dracos.   

I've seen some articles claiming up to 2 metric tons might be carried this way,  but I tend to be conservative.  I'm sticking with 1 ton until Spacex says otherwise. 

GW

I have also heard of psychological research on subjects living in caves without clocks and no natural clues of the time of day and night. Apparently they tended to shift to a "day" of something like 30 hours.

I bet that would not be a problem, especially with a "Mediterranean" lifestyle where you eat lunch about 2, nap until 4 or 5, work a few more hours, eat supper at 9 or 10 p.m., and go to bed after midnight. When my wife and I lived in Seville, Spain, we never were able to adjust to it, but it was standard. Cities like that have 4 rush hours a day, by the way, because everyone goes home for lunch and a long nap.

New evidence suggests a ninth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system

Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced Wednesday that they have found new evidence of a giant icy planet lurking in the darkness of our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They are calling it "Planet Nine."

Their paper, published in the Astronomical Journal, describes the planet as about five to 10 times as massive as the Earth. But the authors, astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin, have not observed the planet directly.

Instead, they have inferred its existence from the motion of recently discovered dwarf planets and other small objects in the outer solar system. Those smaller bodies have orbits that appear to be influenced by the gravity of a hidden planet – a "massive perturber." The astronomers suggest it might have been flung into deep space long ago by the gravitational force of Jupiter or Saturn.

Telescopes on at least two continents are searching for the object, which on average is 20 times farther away than the eighth planet, Neptune. If "Planet Nine" exists, it's big. Its estimated mass would make it about two to four times the diameter of the Earth, distinguishing it as the fifth-largest planet after Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. But at such extreme distances, it would reflect so little sunlight that it could evade even the most powerful telescopes.

Confirmation of its existence would reconfigure the models of the solar system. Pluto, discovered in 1930, spent three-quarters of a century as the iconic ninth planet. Then, a decade ago, Pluto received a controversial demotion, in large part because of Brown.

His observations of the outer solar system identified many small worlds there – some close to the size of Pluto –and prompted the International Astronomical Union to reconsider the definition of a planet. The IAU voted to change Pluto's classification to "dwarf planet," a decision mocked repeatedly last summer when NASA's New Horizons probe flew past Pluto and revealed a world with an atmosphere, weather and a volatile and dynamically reworked surface.

A planet of that magnitude, I hope, would be a game changer, not only for exploration, but culturally. We need a frontier to remind us constantly of what really matters, what it really takes to live, and what we are really capable of.

Further, how do we get there? It seems that this would require quasi-interstellar propulsion technology. The possibilities are really exciting. It's not clear yet, and probably won't be until we get real pictures, whether its a super-earth, or a gas dwarf, and what we can do with it. But in either case, it probably has it's own harem of moons.