New Mars Forums

Before anyone says sustaining the crew isn't cheap: What I mean is, there is no big development costs required. Just an extra launch required every now and then to sustain the crew.

It's a strategy that would make everyone happy really. I imagine it could be a natural continuation of the Apollo Redux. Then, as now and before, NASA will want to find ways to justify keeping their workforce employed. Congress won't want to give out any extra cash. Its a sustainable solution that fits better with the new NASA philosophy.

Here's my suggestion (I thought of it while in the shower an hour ago in response to your post):

Radical Manned Mars Mission Architecture:

- Utilizing the Ares V SDLV and Orion derived Hab architecture. It is a direct continuation of Project Constellation.

- Under the plan, an ERV, together with the required in-situ technology and large nuclear power source, is not initially required, if at all. This enables the mission to be executed immediately after the new Lunar goals have been fulfilled.

- Initially, a Hab module is all that is required. This will be smaller than the Mars Direct hab, with a crew of 3, but will contain vastly more consumables.

- After the crew safely lands on the surface, the goal becomes increasing the crews tenure and ability to perform useful science.

- To meet these goals, succesive deliveries are of cargo vehicles, which contain more consumables, spare parts, scientific equipment, etc.

- These cargo vehicles are based directly on the Hab architecture, and may even provide a substitute living space in case of primary hab failure; thus further improving crew survivability.

- One particularly important piece of cargo may be a wheeled truss assembly, together with a small RTG power source, both of which can be easily bolted to the frame of the Hab to make it mobile.

- Having a mobile hab greatly increases science return, and at the same time improves crew morale. I beleive it is also a much safer alternative to long-range rover sorties.

- The 'initially one-way' mission architecture is politically unkillable, and also much more sustainable under NASA's new fixed budget.

- This means surface operations can be gradually expanded as more crews are sent, along with the successive cargo vehicles required to sustain them.

- Over time, the technology required to bring the crews back home may eventually develop. In fact, the uniquely flexible 'initially one-way' architecture will not only ensure continuous funding over many years (in order to sustain the crews on the surface), but may also practically guarantee that the funding is made available in order to develop the technology required to bring them home safely.

- Perhaps the beauty of this plan then, is not in its cost savings, but in the way in which it practically guarantees funding. However, the plan would require vastly less initial development costs, and would therefore be very easy to implement.

- The other issue is that of asset building and science return. Previous mission architectures have simply discarded previous assets (science equipment, life support, energy supplies, etc.) on the surface. With this new architecture, assets are kept with crew for a much longer period.

- The number one asset is the crew themselves, and this is why the architecture should have way more bang-for-buck than previous architectures. By keeping the crew on the surface for longer, much more science can be accomplished, and there is the benefit of building on previous knowledge.

- The crew will have the best science equipment available to them in succesive cargo missions. This means that samples are not needed to be returned to Earth for analysis. All the necessary data will simply be beamed back to Earth.

Summing it up:

* Sending the crew is relatively cheap and easy.

* Sustaining the crew is relatively cheap and easy.

* Getting them back safely is the difficult and expensive bit.

* But once they're there, no politician would dare condemn them to the surface. Funding would be guaranteed.

Hang on... Has there been an official policy change to reflect this?

Why is there an Orion on the Ares V?

Yeah, why not?

With current technology, how big can we go?

Is there a limit?

Well, you could have two or more mirrors. One on Mercury to beam the concentrated light, and one in orbit, or held stationary by light pressure, around the planet itself. Maybe another one in orbit above mercury, or held by light pressure above the sun.

Here's another thought: Has anyone considered using the extreme temperature variation across the surface of Mercury to generate electricity?

Here's something on the russian RLA-150, the design predecessor to the Energia, from Astronautix:

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rla150.htm

I hate the shuttle.

Moreover, it doesn't really require these aforementioned apocalyptic scenarios to actually take place. I'm hoping international concern will be enough by itself. But there are other advantages too, which I shall cover further. I'll keep you posted.

I'm not sure how much emphasis I put in that particular text, but the number one rule of this clean-slate city-state should be that it is not idealistic. I think the dystopian painting at the top is throwing readers off...

But yeah, I think too much wishful thinking during planning has ruined clean-slate city projects of the past. To avoid that, this city should be designed in a way that it gives the illusion of development history and organic growth. Portions of it may attempt to replicate great historic meditierranean cities. Other parts may be like London or New York. Variety should be the number one mantra.

The other difference is that this city will be its own sovereign state; isolated from the rest of the country. I can imagine the initial demographic of immigrants will be something like that of Dubai, where at least initially, people will pay a premium to live and work in the city. People will come here because they want to, not because of need. It will not be a 'dumping ground for the poor'.

Okay, I really want to develop the PARIS concept further. Can anyone help me? Any suggestions? Reference material? Rocket performance calculators, etc?

Could you go into more detail about the base-building / colonization part of the game?

I was readng the "Terraforming Jupiter's Moons" thread when I came across noosfractals suggestion of using a smaller fresnel lens close to the sun to beam concentrated light to the moons of jupiter (to aid their habitability), instead of using a larger concentrator closer to the moon itself.

This made me think of using a mirror array (made up of many individually movable mirrors) on the surface of Mercury to achieve the same job. Of course, they will have to withstand those high surface temperatures, but this idea has the advantage that the mirror array can be constructed and supported on the surface and built from local materials. Perhaps each segment can be built on the cold side and transported around to the hot side when completed.

Has this idea been proposed before?

Here's another idea I just thought of. Remember when I suggested that accelerating a terrestrial mercury mirror telescope horizontally would allow the telescope to be tilted briefly? That idea probably wouldn't work very well on earth, because the gravity is very high. For example, if I wanted to tilt my mercury telescope 45-degrees, it would require a horizontal acceleration of 1g to be sustained for as long as the required exposure time. Its obvious that that wouldn't work if the exposure time is anything more than a few tenths of second.

However, for a mercury mirror telescope situated on the moon, the horizontal acceleration required to tilt the telescope at 45-degrees is the same as the moons gravity (1.62 m/s2 instead of 9.81 m/s^2). This might be reduced enough to allow this method to be useful. Perhaps the telescope can be situated on an even lighter body, such as an asteroid.

Another thought is that a hybrid thrust-induced and rotation-induced acceleration system may be possible (i.e. using rocket thrust to allow a tether-based mercury mirror space telescope to point at an angle in a similar way to the system described above). Because a tethered mercury mirror telescope only induces a tiny centripetal force, only an equivalently tiny horizontal acceleration would be needed for it to tilt at an angle. The ability to tilt could also be used to reduce the effects of motion blur.

Sloshing effects might be a problem though...