Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-22 08:29:53

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

If there was no water, there would not be clouds covering the entire planet. You really can't have sulfuric acid without water! Sulfuric acid without water can't form raindrops. The fact remains it rains on Venus, it doesn't rain on Mars, not any more. The only other solid world where it rains is Titan and Earth.

Point is, I think we should have a manned space program, not just a manned Mars program. I think the targets of it should be the Moon, Mars, and Venus in that order. I don't think the first manned mission to Mars should be just an orbiter that doesn't land, if we are only sending people to Mars orbit to see if we can send people there, we might want to try Venus Orbit first to test out the equipment, and while humans are their, we might want to fly drones in Venus' atmosphere to take advantage of their presence.

Honestly, if we send people to Mars, we should land them on Mars. I don't know what Lockheed is thinking of, maybe it thinks a Mars program is just a technological development program. Getting to Mars is expensive, and I don't want to waste money on a mission there that does not land people. We do not need to go into Mars orbit just to test out equipment, I also think the Apollo 8 mission was a waste of valuable equipment, a giant rocket to send 3 astronauts to the Moon, just so they can take pictures from orbit and read passages from the book of Genesis, that was a waste of a valuable Saturn V rocket, and I would rather they used it for an actual Moon mission rather than just test equipment.

There is not much difference between Moon orbit and Earth orbit. What works in low Earth orbit should also work in orbit around the Moon. What Lockheed is proposing is an "Apollo 8" for Mars, astronauts can hang out in Mars orbit and read passages from the Bible while they take pictures of a sunrise over Mars. I think if we are to spend the money, we should get down to the surface. Getting down to the surface is not really and option for a manned Venus program, if Lockheed was to do this, they should go to Venus, a manned presence that does not land would be more valuable in Venus orbit than in Mars orbit, the mission would also be shorter, we can test out that equipment, which can also be used for a later Mars mission, without putting the astronauts in as much danger. I think we need a flexible interplanetary vehicle that can go to either planet, not just to Mars. Mars is not the only planet in the Solar System.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-05-22 08:31:23)

GW Johnson · 2016-05-22 10:57:47

"Point is, I think we should have a manned space program, not just a manned Mars program." --- I quite agree

"I don't think the first manned mission to Mars should be just an orbiter that doesn't land" --- I quite agree, because going anywhere beyond the moon is so much more difficult to do than was going to the moon. What is the point of going to all the trouble and expense of going, if you don't land and explore? Columbus not landing in the New World, just looking at it from the ship and then sailing home, is the kind of stupidity that a Mars orbit-only mission represents to us at this time in history.

"maybe it [Lockheed-Martin] thinks a Mars program is just a technological development program" --- you can bet that's exactly what L-M thinks a Mars mission is. Boeing is no different, either. Government programs have become nothing but corporate welfare for the giants, with the government relegated to the role of picking everybody else's pockets to keep those giants fat and happy. Amazing what buying nearly all the politicians and most of the appointed agency heads can do, ain't it? My hopes are on somebody like Musk who has more than just $ on his mind.

"I also think the Apollo 8 mission was a waste of valuable equipment" -- you oversimplify what really happened. Yes, it was a waste, that Saturn really was intended for a landing later. The problem in December 1968 was that the LEM was not yet ready to fly, and spy photos showed the Russians preparing another attempt to launch their N-1 moon rocket. The manned mission to lunar orbit was to beat the Russians to the moon with men, pure and simple. No one on this side knew whether that N-1 would carry men, or go to the moon. So they opted for the 12-foot-tall-Russian threat, and took the risk to send Apollo 8 to lunar orbit, even though the hardware wasn't yet tested enough to support that mission.

"I think we need a flexible interplanetary vehicle that can go to either planet, not just to Mars." --- I quite agree. I would point out that even today most designs do not recover the vehicle for another mission. In my opinion, that is stupidity incarnate. It is far easier to design reusability and long life into a space vehicle that never lands than it is to design reusability into something that must survive reentry. I would include among the destinations you listed (moon, Mars, Venus), Mercury and the asteroid belt. Given a bit hotter propulsion and some serious radiation shielding, the same basic deep space vehicle could go to Jupiter and the rest. We routinely refit earthly vehicles with better engines to get more life and utility out of them. Why not spaceships? Few listen to me, though. They keep coming up with throwaway stuff, as in Mars Direct and its variations. Columbus did not deliberately abandon the Santa Maria, he lost it to accident. Why should we deliberately lose our spaceships? Spent propellant tanks, maybe. Not the habitable part, though.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-23 13:35:14

I think a no landing manned mission to orbit another planet should be directed to orbit Venus, not Mars. A typical interplanetary mission is usually dependent on Earth and the target planet lining up in a certain way, the period of time between these alignments is called the Synodic period, this period between Earth and Mars is 779.94 days for Venus its 583.92 days. In a given decade (3652 days) there are 4.68 launch windows for Mars and 6.25 launch windows for Venus. So for every 4 opportunities to send a ship to Mars there are 6 opportunities to send such a ship to Venus.

As you can see, there is less time in space for the astronauts undertaking a minimal energy conjunction mission to Venus than to Mars, that means less zero gravity, less exposure to cosmic rays, of course being closer to the Sun makes the solar flares more intense if they occur, you may need extra shielding for that. You trade off less chance of being in space during a solar flare for more intense solar flares if their are any. About 66% of a chance of getting caught in a solar flare during a 2 year Venus Mission as you would get during a 3 year Mars Mission! But if your not going to land on the planet in question, the astronauts don't benefit from a surface stay, so they spend the entire length of each mission in weightlessness and all the negative health effects that result from that. For Venus it is only 682 days versus 910 days for Mars, and the astronauts will be home with their families one year sooner if they go to Venus instead of to Mars!
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-nasa-possi … venus.html

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-05-23 13:52:18)

GW Johnson · 2016-05-24 10:11:37

In a sense, I agree with you, Tom. Venus is a bit closer, and we cannot land men there with the technologies forseeable for some time to come. Using a Venus orbit mission as a proof-of-vehicle flight test for a Mars orbit-to-orbit transport might make some sense, but only if the mission design includes recovery and reuse of the manned habitat portion. Most of the designs I have seen don't do that, which I find fairly shortsighted and very wasteful.

Venus is rather like Mars, it is too far away for a crew to survive using the Apollo approach. It's too long a trip for the microgravity risk, it's too far for riding in a cramped capsule, and it's too long a trip too close to the sun to bet you won't be hit by a solar flare and killed. That's why I say SLS/Orion is nothing but a moonrocket as-is. You can take those risks for a 2-3 week trip to cis-lunar space, but everywhere else is years away.

Because it's a long trip to Venus, or Mars, or anywhere beyond the moon, you'll need a spacious-for-sanity deep-space habitat with an advanced life support design. You'll need a solar flare radiation shelter (GCR is just not the threat that so many make it out to be, at least not inside the asteroid belt). Your vehicle will be of significant dimension because of these requirements, with two consequences: (1) it only makes sense as an orbit-to-orbit transport, and (2) you might as well arrange the geometry for spin gravity, which mitigates the zero gee risks entirely, and greatly simplifies food selection, modes of cooking, means of processing wastewater, etc.

Basically, the very same habitation vehicle would serve for all of these trips. You just fit to it the propulsion means and propellant tanks appropriate for whichever mission is at hand. Thus it makes sense to make this habitat vehicle as something built-to-last, and use it for all these missions, including repeat flights.

If you go to Venus, you need a whole fleet of surface and orbit robot probes. If you go to Mars, you need to take landers with you. If you go to Mercury, you need much larger landers, as the rocket braking requirements are far higher there. If you visit an asteroid in situ, take whatever probes, exploration gear, and deflection experiments you need with you.

All these landers and probes and other equipment can be sent separately: they do not have to ride the same vehicle as the men, nor use the same propulsion method (unmanned stuff can go by "slowboat" electric propulsion, for example). Just send that stuff ahead, and rendezvous with it when you get there. Same goes for return propellants, if you are confident enough to take that risk.

You do need to take a free-return-capable crew capsule with you, in case of disaster upon return to Earth. You're not going to spend much time in it, except as a go home taxi from LEO, or as that emergency bailout lifeboat. So it does not need to be big and heavy. It just needs to hold your crew, and it needs a 50,000+ fps rated heat shield.

Dragon v2 qualifies for free return entry and is much lighter. Orion is far heavier and is not rated for free return reentries. Both hold 7 people. Boeing CST-100 hold 7 and is light enough, but does not rate for free return entry. So I choose Dragon v2.

A variant of the Bigelow B330 looks to me like a module we could use to form the habitation. Two to four of these docked end-to-end with some sort of center module that has docking gear and spin-up flywheels looks like a good choice to me. You can put engines and tanks off the two ends, and cluster more tanks around the inflatables. This does not look like a major "new concept" development to me, the way that the space shuttle was. It looks like a much smarter variation on the docked-module idea that ISS was.

The missing pieces not being worked on are landers, experimenting with spin gravity, and using water/wastewater as radiation shielding. Anybody really serious about going to other planets should be working on these things, which are the true long poles in the tent. We do not need an SLS-class rocket to launch any of this stuff, although a big one might be cheaper to use, if anybody but NASA developed it.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-24 11:09:16

Venus is however the lower rung on the lander for orbit to orbit missions, also a Venus mission will test the radiation shielding quite well, any shielding that can handle flares at Venus should be more than adequate for a Mars trip. And zero gravity or no zero gravity, a shorter mission means less chance for things to go wrong! It will be easier to supply food and life support for the shorter Venus Mission, the fuel requirements will be less as well. Lockheed is too afraid to send landers on the first mission, so I'm saying the easiest "no landers" mission would be one to Venus. Now by landers I mean manned landers. That is landers that also need to take off and return astronauts to the mothership. Venus is an easy enough planet to land on, its atmosphere does most of the braking, getting off the planet is another story because of it gravity, but if we don't send humans to the surface, we don't really need to worry about that. It might even be possible to retrieve 450 kg of rock samples from the Surface to Orbit. You ever hear of the Pegasus Rocket?

The Pegasus is an air-launched rocket developed by Orbital ATK, formerly Orbital Sciences Corporation. Capable of carrying small payloads of up to 443 kilograms (977 lb) into low Earth orbit, Pegasus first flew in 1990 and remains active as of 2015. The vehicle consists of three solid propellant stages and an optional monopropellant fourth stage. Pegasus is released from its carrier aircraft at approximately 40,000 ft (12,000 m), and its first stage has wings and a tail to provide lift and attitude control while in the atmosphere.

Mass: 18,500 kg (Pegasus), 23,130 kg (Pegasus XL)
Length: 16.9 m (Pegasus), 17.6 m (Pegasus XL)
Diameter: 1.27 m
Wing span: 6.7 m
Payload: 443 kg (1.18 m diameter, 2.13 m length)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)

You know you don't really need to bring the carrier aircraft to Venus. The carrier aircraft was to get the Pegasus off the ground and up to 40,000 feet, but on Venus, you don't need to do that. What you need is a lander that can quickly collect rock samples before it gets too hot, and then can ascend to around 50 km in altitude, perhaps with a balloon, then you release the Pegasus from orbit, it has an ablative shield so it can survive deorbit, it ejects the shield, the lander craft then intercepts it, transfers its payload to it teleoperated by the crew in the mothercraft in orbit, then the Pegasus rocket air launches and heads to orbit with its payload of Venus rocks, the crew intercepts the Pegasus, collects the rocks, and then it can deploy other landers, such as a seismology lander, this lands on the planet's surface, and the crew drops a bomb in some other location, this generates seismic waves which would allow us to map Venus' interior.

RobertDyck · 2016-05-24 11:20:56

The problem is NASA is still, still, *STILL* trying to do the 90-Day Report. They built ISS, are currently working on SLS and Orion, intend to build a permanent base on the Moon before even thinking about Mars. When Robert Zubrin and the rest of Martin-Marietta pitched Mars Direct in 1990, Congress claimed they would try to expand it to the 90-Day Report and the full $450 Billion price tag. So they said "No!" That's ironic considering NASA is currently implementing the 90-Day report in pieces. Congress wants to support something that will keep the Shuttle work-force employed, but aren't willing to pay the price tag for the full 90-Day Report. So we waste money and go nowhere.

Now you want to add yet another distraction? Venus will not get us to Mars. And Venus is not a destination, you can't build a permanent human settlement on a surface with +462°C mean surface temperature, 92 bar pressure, and an atmosphere of carbonyl sulphide. That isn't sulphuric acid, it's stronger.

Robert Zubrin and his partner first pitched Mars Direct at a NASA symposium in June 1990. That included a proof-of-concept test on the Moon. That would make far more sense than Venus.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-24 13:10:22

The thing is, if we make space travel cheap enough, we won't need to focus on just one planet, we can do both planets at once, and the asteroids as well. Mars won't be the equivalent of a 21st century Apollo Program. We need to develop the technology to make it cheaper to go, then we send the missions, and if low cost enough the colonies will take on a life of their own.

GW Johnson · 2016-05-24 13:54:22

The deep space hab might be as simple as 2 modified B330 modules from Bigelow, plus a hardbody center module with an airlock, some docking gear, and a couple of electric-driven flywheels for spin-up. Around one of the two B-330's you arrange your water and wasterwater tanks on the outside like air mattresses, and you store some of your frozen food around on the inside: there's your solar flare shield. In the other B-330, you put some of your heavier gear and supplies to balance the weight. Dock your free-return capsule to the center module.

Hang your Mars arrival tanks alongside this baton-shaped cluster. Put your Earth departure tanks and their engines at one end, and your other engines on the other end. You can use LH2-LOX for Earth departure, but I recommend years-capable storables for all the rest (likely MMH-NTO).

After departure burn and stage-off of departure tanks, you spin up the balanced baton, for artificial gravity until you reach Mars. Rendezvous with your Earth return propellant and dock it up the same way: Earth arrival tanks fatten the baton, Mars departure tanks on one end. Artificial gravity makes possible real cooking with real food, easier water/wastewater life support designs, and (get this) real laundry!!!!! And real bathing!!!

You also send ahead by nuke or solar electric propulsion your landers and your other equipment, and you send ahead your Earth return propellants that same way. Its all just rendezvous in LMO, just like Apollo did at the moon, just more stuff. The more landers and lander propellant you send ahead, the more landings at more different sites you can make while you are there. It's only how much you think you can afford. Talk about bang for the buck!

Two modified B-330's at 25, not 20, tons each, plus a ton of engines and 15 tons of center module, plus 50 tons of supplies and a crew of 6 totals about 125 tons deadhead, to which I attach all the propulsion items. It's also about 700 cubic meters of interior volume available. That's over 100 cubic meters for each of 6 crew, which is better than even Skylab, and certainly way better than anything since.

I'm showing 1050 tons at departure from LEO, including the departure and arrival propulsion, but not including the sent-ahead stuff, among which is 1614 tons of return propellant tankage. I haven't done the landers yet. I'm showing 1739 tons at departure from LMO, even including the full 50 tons of supplies, which is far too conservative. The craft decelerates into LEO for refit and reuse, many times.

I know Bigelow signed a deal to start launching B330's on Atlas-5's by about 2020. If Musk is as smart as we all think, Spacex should be getting with Bigelow to start on this Mars ship. Every bit of this is launchable by Falcon-Heavy. But even at Atlas-5 prices, it's well under $100B to launch this thing. And launch costs are the biggest estimates I have right now.

The hardest thing about the whole deal is developing a lander. Putting ordinary tankage into the shapes you need is no big development program. Nor would be modifying the B330 with fold-out internal decks and enough strength to take the spin loads.

There's no need for the 90-Day Report concepts, nor its half-a-trillion dollar price tag. What you're seeing is giant corporate welfare. Give this mission to ULA, and that's all you will EVER see.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-05-24 13:58:36)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-24 16:32:12

I kind of agree with you there, a lot of the technology for going to Mars could also be used for going to Venus, and on some asteroid missions, and if these programs are done right, NASA or Congress can't pull the plug, like they did with Apollo. Simply the ability to go to Mars isn't enough, we need to do it through technology development, to make the trip cheap enough to be self-sustaining, that is it doesn't depend on governments with big wallets and a electorate willing to part with its taxpayer dollars to fund this until they don't. I think what Lockheed is afraid of is "Mission Accomplished", that is they do one expedition expensively, and they land six people on the surface of Mars, and people say, "that's it, we're done. Now instead of spending $500 billion per mission, what else can we do with this money? We got to Mars, so now lets concentrate on feeding the hungry, educating the poor, Mars is just a dusty old rock way out their in space."

GW Johnson · 2016-05-25 10:45:18

The model of half a millennium ago was a government-private partnership. The two best examples were the Dutch and British East India companies. The comparisons are not perfect, but basically the "exploration" (go and find out what is there and exactly where it is) was mostly a government-funded thing. The private concerns were the ones who planted the colonies, mostly by private funding, based on what the government explorations found.

There was a sort of transition period between these phases, where one learns to live off the land using the identified resources. That transition was improperly managed in a lot of cases, which is why as many colonies ailed as happened, and why so many others survived only "by the skin of their teeth" (Jamestown, for example).

Nothing I have seen, not in all these decades, takes that model into account. And yet it was usually successful, if done right. We've been hung up on government programs that morph into giant-corporate welfare for about 60 years now, as far as space is concerned. 70+ years if you include defense spending.

GW

SpaceNut · 2016-05-25 19:47:36

What other than the mass of push stages and comsumables would there be different for a venus versus a mars mission that only orbits or does a flyby. I know that this is not a mission that can be done multiple times and that we would need to design it for the least cost possible....

Radiational shielding mass...

Is there anything else?

kbd512 · 2016-05-25 22:36:09

GW Johnson wrote:

The sulfuric acid would destroy just about all known materials that we have, on time scales from hours to a couple of weeks, even up high where it is not hot. On the surface, it is so hostile that equipment lifetimes are minutes to hours, almost no matter what you build. There is nothing available from which to fashion solid state electronics which could survive above 95 C.

This may be true when using silicon-based semi-conductors, but diamond-based semi-conductors can survive far higher operating temperatures and diamond-based semi-conductors are by no means science fiction technology.

The sulfuric acid is a real problem, but I think the extreme surface pressures are a far greater problem than heat or corrosive substances in the atmosphere. Jet engines manage to survive more extreme operating environments than Venus for many thousands of hours, although not without maintenance.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-26 06:54:57

GW Johnson wrote:

The model of half a millennium ago was a government-private partnership. The two best examples were the Dutch and British East India companies. The comparisons are not perfect, but basically the "exploration" (go and find out what is there and exactly where it is) was mostly a government-funded thing. The private concerns were the ones who planted the colonies, mostly by private funding, based on what the government explorations found.
There was a sort of transition period between these phases, where one learns to live off the land using the identified resources. That transition was improperly managed in a lot of cases, which is why as many colonies ailed as happened, and why so many others survived only "by the skin of their teeth" (Jamestown, for example).
Nothing I have seen, not in all these decades, takes that model into account. And yet it was usually successful, if done right. We've been hung up on government programs that morph into giant-corporate welfare for about 60 years now, as far as space is concerned. 70+ years if you include defense spending.
GW

Government-Private ownership is what sparked the American Revolution. The Tea tax was a marketing mechanism to guarantee a monopoly of the in favor companies at the expense of other companies. What we need are rules that allow companies to compete and exploit space with no favoritism shown towards certain companies at the expense of others. We want the companies with the best ideas and procedures to be the most successful in capturing profits, not the ones that have cozy deals with the government. The government should be a referee, not a player. As for defense spending, if we do not defend our colonies, we will lose them, as the Dutch had discovered when they lost New Amsterdam to the British.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-05-26 06:55:42)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-26 07:08:17

SpaceNut wrote:

What other than the mass of push stages and comsumables would there be different for a venus versus a mars mission that only orbits or does a flyby. I know that this is not a mission that can be done multiple times and that we would need to design it for the least cost possible....
Radiational shielding mass...
Is there anything else?

I think Solar flares are easy to shield against, they are charged particles after all, its the cosmic rays that are the problem, and those are no more intense around Venus than they are around Mars. I think the benefit of a Venus mission is it would last 2/3rds as long as a Mars Mission, thereby astronauts would accumulate only 2/3rds as much unavoidable radiation as those on a Mars mission would. A Venus Mission would require only 2/3rds as much food for the same number of people, this could mean that we might send nine people to Venus with the same supply of food that we'd need for six people going to Mars. This would mean operating more drones simultaneously. Now if we want to collect rocks from the surface of Venus, using forseeable technology. we would have to collect those rocks fast, put them in a basket, and then send another drone down to the surface to quickly retrieve that basket of rocks, ascend to a more hospitable layer of atmosphere, and transfer that basket of rocks to an launcher that we drop down from orbit, that can deliver those rocks the rest of the way to orbit, to be picked up by the orbiting spacecraft. Problem is, the crew might want something to do for the rest of their 412 day stay. Maybe we can make the Venus stay shorter with a Mars flyby. You have to remember than Venus over takes Mars in its orbit much more quickly than it does Earth. So we can have an outbound trip to Mars from Venus, and then have the Martian gravity bend the path towards Earth, or we could use a Mars flyby to bend the path towards Venus. One might try a Mercury flyby as well, though I understand it is harder to get to Mercury than to Jupiter.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-26 07:11:38

kbd512 wrote:

GW Johnson wrote:
The sulfuric acid would destroy just about all known materials that we have, on time scales from hours to a couple of weeks, even up high where it is not hot. On the surface, it is so hostile that equipment lifetimes are minutes to hours, almost no matter what you build. There is nothing available from which to fashion solid state electronics which could survive above 95 C.
This may be true when using silicon-based semi-conductors, but diamond-based semi-conductors can survive far higher operating temperatures and diamond-based semi-conductors are by no means science fiction technology.
The sulfuric acid is a real problem, but I think the extreme surface pressures are a far greater problem than heat or corrosive substances in the atmosphere. Jet engines manage to survive more extreme operating environments than Venus for many thousands of hours, although not without maintenance.

A conventional jet engine would work on Venus, you just need to bring the oxygen. The oxygen burns the jet fuel, to heat the carbon-dioxide that comes through the jet intake, this will still be more efficient than a pure rocket engine, as the Venus atmosphere serves as reaction mass to push against.

RobertDyck · 2016-05-26 09:44:11

GW Johnson wrote:

The model of half a millennium ago was a government-private partnership. The two best examples were the Dutch and British East India companies.

I have raised an historical example before. After Columbus came back with news of the "New World", an English explorer named John Cabot set out. In 1494 he hired two Icelandic guides, sailed a route across the north Atlantic. He discovered Newfoundland. He found a bay that formed a natural harbour, discovered on 24 June 1494 "feast day of Saint John the Baptist", so named the harbour Saint John's Harbour. He also discovered the richest fishery in the world: Grand Banks. He was a government funded explorer, documented all this in detail, that knowledge was made public as soon as he got back. The summer of 1495, English fishermen set out to fish the Grand Banks. They set up a camp on the beach of Saint John's Harbour. Government paid for the explorer, and at that time navigation was a military technology that was recently developed by the navy to allow combat ships to operate in deep ocean. Large multi-sail ships were also military technology. So fishermen (commercial business) used military technology to cross an ocean to reach newly discovered resources, used detailed data from their government funded exploration agency, but commercial business paid their own expense to utilize this resource. They sailed their own ships to the Grand Banks and set up a fishing camp to process the fish for storage. The first permanent European house was built in the summer of 1496 for a caretaker to over-winter at Saint John's, stayed the winter of 1496-1497. That fishing camp was not built by any government program, and didn't receive any government funding, it was strictly private enterprise. That fishing camp grew to become the city of Saint John's, today the capital of the Canadian province of Newfoundland.

In fact, the first street ever built in the Americas was Waterfront Street, built by town of Saint John's at a time before any government had any control. Because the street was built by businessmen, we don't know exactly when it was built, who built it, or how much it cost. All we know is one visitor wrote a letter describing the town, the street was not there. Another visitor wrote a letter describing the street. So the street must have been built between the dates of those two letters. This shows private enterprise is extremely good at building profitable business, but really sucks at documentation. Roanoke Colony, Cuttyhunk Island, and Popham Colony were government funded colonies, abject failures. Jamestown was another government funded colony, initially a failure, but government threw more money at it and re-colonized the same site. Meanwhile the colony established by private enterprise (Saint John's) merrily continued and earned gobs of profit. The economy of England had lots of cod fish from that colony. Actually, there were fishermen from England, France, Spain, Normandy, and Basque, as well as Basque whalers.

GW Johnson · 2016-05-27 14:33:53

Hi RobertDyck:

I like your example even better. I guess I should have said "best widely known", not best, for my two.

GW

GW Johnson · 2016-05-28 10:11:41

I've taken that brief description of an orbit-based mission in post 33 above further, and added landers sent separately to it.

I took advantage of imperfect life support technology by reducing hab mass during the mission as some waste is jettisoned. That reduced the tonnages significantly.

Send the unmanned portions by SEP slowboat saved an enormous amount of launched mass to be assembled in orbit. I sent 4 such packages, one the Earth return propellant, the other three were large reusable landers and some propellant for repeat trips with them. It is but a size scale-up of the solar power and electric thruster stuff we are already doing. Nothing new to develop, just re-size/re-shape/prove-in-test.

The habitat / orbit transport vehicle has nothing "new" in it, just more re-shape/re-size/prove-in-test work. That portion is dominated by launch costs, which I assumed to be today's $6M/ton, without reducing them for Falcon-Heavy's lower unit price. I use an LH2-LOX stage to depart Earth orbit, all the rest is NTO-hydrazine blend.

The lander is real vehicle development and prove-out work, so hardware costs dominate that portion, even though I send 3 of these, and have to launch their large masses, and assemble them in orbit. There is no new technology in them to develop, though. It's just the same storable propellant, a heat shield robust enough to fly through Mars orbit entry multiple times, the same supersonic retropropulsion that Spacex and Blue Origin are currently demonstrating in flight, and a willingness to scale up what we have done before to larger sizes.

Think 6 people to Mars, time spent 3 at a time on the surface in alternating crews, at up to 8 different sites, for up to 30 days at each site, with an option to install some sort of automated permanent facility at the "best" of those sites. Think spin gravity at 1 full gee or Mars gravity nearly the entire mission, just weightless during burn maneuvers. Think recovering the manned transport in Earth orbit for refit and re-use for other missions. Think crew return capsule capable of a free-return "bailout", if disaster happens, just a normal orbit entry if things go well.

I took my shot at costs, and got a number just under $50 billion. Timeline is paced by the intense test prove-out of the lander. If it proceeds like the Apollo LM did (just bigger), think 6-8 years.

Think men on Mars by about 2025.

Now compare that to the 90 day report and design reference mission stuff, and that half-a-trillion dollar price tag, to put 2-4 men on Mars closer to 2040, and get nothing but the Earth return capsule back. And nobody yet agrees on how to land all that stuff on Mars.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-05-28 10:17:24)

SpaceNut · 2016-05-31 20:09:56

I am sort of playing catchup to the converstation...
Any non landing mission to venus or mars is just a proof of survivability within the size of the structural mission content.
Mar does have the moons as something not just a short time orbital or flyby mission archetecture to have as a possibility that venus does not have.....
Everthing else for a mission we have built before but since we are not duplicating it we need to start as if we are modifing what we have.
Based on commercial parts and there prices we can do such mission for less than 10 billion and even do more than just 1 of them.....
So lets say that mission 1 is a venus flyby or short time orbital study by man.. Mission 2 is as GW say reuse of habitat and other parts with modification for a mars mission flyby, orbital or for a mars moon mission... so what is next is the issue as we are not going to stay and we have layed down minimal reuse for continuing without an build of stuff....

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-01 06:09:01

I can see a use for a Lunar Orbital Space Station, basically as a refueling depot and maintenance shack for reusable lunar landers. A reusable lunar lander is a one-stage orbit-to-surface-to-orbit vehicle. This hypothetical vehicle is generally larger than the moon lander used for Apollo, its descent engines are also its ascent engines, and it has to haul its landing gear and partially emptied fuel tanks back up to orbit for docking with the Lunar Orbital Space Station. This vehicle has less room for astronauts and equipment, because it needs the extra fuel to carry what would otherwise be its lower stage back into orbit with itself. The only thing it needs after performing such a mission is refueling, and perhaps some maintenance to its engines so they can be reused. Extra parts and extra fuel are delivered to the space station from Earth and perhaps eventually from elsewhere in the Solar System. The Moon lacks certain elements, and perhaps those elements would be best obtained from off-moon.

As for Mars, a single stage to orbit vehicle would be harder to build, but the advantage here is refueling can be done on Mars instead of in space, the need for a Mars orbiting space station is less obvious. A Venus orbiting space station would be the easiest place to send humans in the Venus system, it would be harder to send humans down into the atmosphere and bring them up again.

GW Johnson · 2016-06-01 09:53:19

This thread started as a conversation about a Lockheed-Martin proposal for a manned trip to Mars that does not land. Looking back at post #1 with the picture in it, I see a rather large vehicle, that if reconfigured, could be spun for artificial gravity. I do question why it needs two Orion CSM's. It looks to me like somebody just threw them in for symmetry and balance. That's no way to design a spacecraft.

I really do have to question why anyone would propose a manned mission to Mars without landing, as difficult as it is to send people all that way and return them home, at this time in history. To me, that notion seems as ridiculous as Columbus sailing to the new world, looking over the rail at it, and then sailing back to Spain without ever setting foot on a single beach.

I don't think I'd view the L-M vehicle proposal as anything but a device to spark a conversation.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-01 10:02:56

GW Johnson wrote:

This thread started as a conversation about a Lockheed-Martin proposal for a manned trip to Mars that does not land. Looking back at post #1 with the picture in it, I see a rather large vehicle, that if reconfigured, could be spun for artificial gravity. I do question why it needs two Orion CSM's. It looks to me like somebody just threw them in for symmetry and balance. That's no way to design a spacecraft.
I really do have to question why anyone would propose a manned mission to Mars without landing, as difficult as it is to send people all that way and return them home, at this time in history. To me, that notion seems as ridiculous as Columbus sailing to the new world, looking over the rail at it, and then sailing back to Spain without ever setting foot on a single beach.
I don't think I'd view the L-M vehicle proposal as anything but a device to spark a conversation.
GW

One possibility is they need the full crew complement of two Orion capsule to fully staff this mobile Mars station. I seem to recall that each Orion can carry 4 people to interplanetary space, so maybe the crew complement is 8 and they need two Orion capsules to return them all to Earth/ You think that is the reason?

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#26 2016-05-22 08:29:53

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#27 2016-05-22 10:57:47

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#28 2016-05-23 13:35:14

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#29 2016-05-24 10:11:37

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#30 2016-05-24 11:09:16

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#31 2016-05-24 11:20:56

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#32 2016-05-24 13:10:22

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#33 2016-05-24 13:54:22

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#34 2016-05-24 16:32:12

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#35 2016-05-25 10:45:18

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#36 2016-05-25 19:47:36

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#37 2016-05-25 22:36:09

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#38 2016-05-26 06:54:57

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#39 2016-05-26 07:08:17

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#40 2016-05-26 07:11:38

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#41 2016-05-26 09:44:11

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#42 2016-05-27 14:33:53

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#43 2016-05-28 10:11:41

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#44 2016-05-31 20:09:56

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#45 2016-06-01 06:09:01

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#46 2016-06-01 09:53:19

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

#47 2016-06-01 10:02:56

Re: Lockheed Martin mission to Mars orbit

Board footer