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A full-fledged manned mission to Mars probably won't be practical for decades,
but some much simpler and cheaper prep work could be done now.
For example:
1. Boosting tanks of oxygen, fuel, or water out to Mars orbit,
where they would await the arrival of some future mission.
Presence of these stores at the destination would simplify
design and execution of a manned venture, since the
outbound vehicle wouldn't have to carry as much in stores
and would mass less, use less fuel, require less structure,
etc. This "pre-stocking" could go on for 20 years, building
a "constellation" of tankage and supply around Mars.
A dumb tank with a few valves (both English and metric,
of course!) isn't a billion dollar design project.
2. Sending out a robust communication satellite (like TDRS)
to live around Mars and handle the long-range comm
from future missions. That would reduce the mass and
complexity and redundancy requirements for manned-
mission comm gear and reduce the chances of a comm
failure between Earth and Mars during the mission. It
would also provide a good relay from surface bases,
or for unmanned probes sent in the interim.
3. As previously discussed here, Phobos and Deimos
are already in orbit around Mars, so they are obvious
platforms for way-station construction and supply depots
and large comm relays. Easier to dig out a comfy bunch
of caves and radiation-proof tunnels than to carry in all
the components of a "tin can" station for laborious
construction in free space. Also having a little gravity
is ever so convenient, stuff drifts down to the floor
eventually.
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Fuel is heavy, so that could be horrendously expensive in its own right, so I doubt it could be done well. Don't forget that in time a lot of that fuel could boil off. I like the statellite idea a lot, it sounds good, and could def be done with a minuim of budget and have good repercussions.
As for phobos and diemos, why don't we sponser a mining company to do that work, so that someone has experience, and the gov will be paying for this (I assume). If mining does it, people will get crazy ideas and then rape the asteroid belts which would be a good thing for all of us concerned.
"I am the spritual son of Abraham, I fear no man and no man controls my destiny"
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Well everyone knows that Phobos and Deimos are just billion-year-old
derelict hulks of giant alien battlecruisers... so there's got to be some
fuel or power source in them somewhere!
(If you don't believe me check out some of the close-up
photos of Mars moons--the drive nozzles and exhaust
vents are obvious... also battle damage from the
climactic fight which destroyed Martian civilization
in the Cretaceous era... :;): )
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Easier to dig out a comfy bunch
of caves and radiation-proof tunnels than to carry in all
the components of a "tin can" station
I am not sure about that, maybe when you dig the martian moons, you just broke them apart because of their low gravity and poor solidity.
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By the time we get to Phobos or Deimos you will be
able to seal the tunnel walls with Astro-Tite ?
vacuum epoxy foam spray and won't have to worry
about the poor quality of asteroid material you
are digging in...
Every 20 meters or so you will install a Flexi-Bulk ?
light composite bulkhead with integrated hatchway...
shipped in by the dozens from Earth.
It will all be a piece of cake.
Now an intelligent farsighted business person would
be doing research now to develop Astro-Tite and
Flexi-Bulk and all the other convenient construction
products that will be needed for Mars moon base
projects, or even asteroid projects, in the future.
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By the time we get to Phobos or Deimos you will be
able to seal the tunnel walls with Astro-Tite ?
vacuum epoxy foam spray and won't have to worry
about the poor quality of asteroid material you
are digging in...
That's right, I forgot about that.
What do you think about the idea to relocate the ISS, which presently doesnt do much, to Mars orbit ?
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That sounds like a good idea...
Only how do you boost a cumbersome asymmetrical station
like that? Where do you apply the thrust? Wouldn't it
tumble and self-destruct?
You mean, send the ISS -- with a crew inside? to Mars?
It's certainly big enough to hold everything they would
need, and designed for long-term living. Cool idea.
It would have to be re-named into the Viking series.
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Send some robotic mining gear to the moonlets. Land some devices to make fuel from the martian atmosphere on the surface of Mars. Orbit some GPS satellites and comsats. As long as all this stuff lasts 20 years...or why don't we just send manned missions 5 years after all this junk?
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I was thinkinga bout this the other day. A company could make money by sending a comms satelite to mars capable of high-bandwidth data transfer with earth. That company could make a fortune selling its bandwidth to the various entities that will be sending a dirth of probes (and hopefully eventually manned missions :;): )to mars over the next 2 decades.
Most probable method would be via laser, i believ there is an experiment being conducted at the moment which is testing out this very concept.
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