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This topic is offered for NewMars members who would like to contribute to a store of knowledge about how NASA and other space agencies are designing (or thinking about designing) missions that would put human explorers on various bodies in the Solar System.
This topic might include mission architecture designs created by NewMars members.
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This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members over time.
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From another review of available documentation on the radiation environment posed by Earth's Van Allen Belts and random but potentially quite powerful Solar Particle Events, it would appear as though the non-rotating lander attached to the front of the Interplanetary Transport Vehicle (ITV) must serve as the radiation shelter. This implies the colonists' lander / lifeboat is the ITV's primary food and water storage container. There's no great issue with doing this, because any remaining food and water will be offloaded with the colonists when they separate from the ITV to make their descent to the surface of Mars, while the ITV continues to loop around on its free-return trajectory towards Earth.
I'm specifying the lander design from NASA's Manned Mars Mission Design Reference Architecture (DRA) 5.0:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … A-5-A2.pngThe "triconic" reentry aeroshell depicted above is roughly 10m diameter and 30m in length. Reentry mass is 110,200kg. Landed payload mass is 40,400kg. My design would be lengthened to provide greater delivered payload, somewhere near 50,000kg. The major difference is that my lander facsimile will not use a split aeroshell design that splits apart during reentry, as depicted above, and it will be larger / heavier to accommodate a 50,000kg+ payload vs 40,400kg payload. It's a 125% landed payload scale-up of NASA's DRA 5.0 lander concept for the 500 colonists and residual supplies removed from the ITV. My variant of NASA's Mars Lander Vehicle (MLV) would remain intact through all phases of entry / descent / landing, a composite pressure vessel design wrapped in appropriate heat shielding materials to survive the reentry at Mars.
NASA's design specifies LOX/LCH4 engines, but to my knowledge small man-rated retro-rocket engines using that propellant combo don't exist, so perhaps LOX/RP1, which provides very similar Isp and better thrust, as well as having the benefit of being a fully developed propulsion system in active use, will be substituted instead. Some other design modifications may also be incorporated to produce a greater aerobraking effect, since this vehicle will be heavier and reenter at a higher interplanetary velocity, so braking aids such as the body fins used on Starship will likely be part of the MLV design.
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Here's a YouTube segment that purports to reveal the joint plan between NASA and SpaceX for the colonization of the Red Planet.
I watched the entire thing before deciding to post this link here. Not terrible, but thin on details. I found the description of the first manned mission to Mars involved a crew "between 10 and 20 astronauts." That sorta supported my 17 man crew concept from a couple years ago.
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I agree with the phased approach described in the video, but I disagree with the number of phases and what is done in each of them.
The unmanned phase started with Mariner 4 back in the 1965 flyby netting close-up photos, and still continues today 6 decades later! It is still incomplete, and has yet to put the proper prospecting rovers with real drill rigs onto the planet. The resources sought are most likely 10+ m under the surface. Scratching the surface will NOT evaluate them! Remote sensing is not the answer, because there are still disparities between it and the real ground truth that you need, to justify betting lives.
There are 3 manned phases, not two. The first is exploration, overlapping with the unmanned explorations. It would be best to visit multiple sites, prospect around, and use real ground truth to select the site (or sites) for the next phase, which is "experimental bases", NOT the start of any settlement!
It would be much more efficient to visit the multiple exploration sites in one mission from Earth, which inherently requires basing from low Mars orbit and using 1-stage reusable landers refilled on-orbit from supplies sent ahead previously. Redundant landers provides "the way out" (a rescue capability) that no other approach can supply. This from-orbit approach rules out the use of SpaceX's "Starship", which cannot carry large payloads into low Mars orbit, and would be stranded there if it attempted that mission.
The experimental base phase is where you experiment with your "live-off-the-land" technologies, while being supplied from Earth, until you get these technology things working "right". The base (or bases) are permanently manned, but with rotating crews who each go home after a bit of time. It is UNLIKELY IN THE EXTREME that such technologies, developed on Earth before this experimental base phase begins, will actually work "right" in the field! It is UNETHICAL IN THE EXTREME to send settlers there until all these technologies actually do work "right"! This phase is where you build the landing pads so that Starship landings can be reliably made, for direct cargo shipments to the surface. You need large, level, hard-surfaced pads to support a tall, narrow-stance ship, that would sink into soft sand and topple over. Rockets that topple over have always exploded violently here. Expecting different there is the height of ignorant idiocy!
The settlement phase should NOT begin until there is complete success with the experimental base phase! Only then can you reduce supply shipments from Earth, as the "live-off-the-land" technologies can shoulder the load and be expanded in capacity. Only in this settlement phase is it appropriate to send large numbers of people to go there permanently, instead of massive loads of supplies.
I really disagree with the video saying SpaceX's Starship is "designed for Mars". It is NOT! It is first and foremost a surface-to-LEO transport capability, of large payload masses and dimensions. That is its best use, especially in the exploration phase, and into the experimental base phase, until real landing pads can be built. It can only leave LEO if it is fully refilled on-orbit by tanker flights, and at a 1200 ton propellant load, it would take 6 tanker flights capable of delivering 200 tons each, to refill it. That would be 8 tankers if only 150 tons deliverable proves to be the case. More if they expand the propellant load to larger-than-1200-tons!
Numbers do not lie, but they can be misused and abused. Ethics doesn't lie to you either, but it is too often ignored.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-12-24 13:18:11)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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I wholeheartedly agree with GW in regards to sending "settlers" to Mars before there are at least two Hohmann transfer cycles to a pioneer base fully functioning and reporting back to Earth about what works and more importantly, what DOESN'T WORK! I'm of the opinion that the Starship as presently designed is too big and needs to have a scaled down version for the first crew landing. The larger ones are OK for cargo missions and we need a huge amount of prepositioned foodstuffs and adequate power. I Believe that attempting to rely on solar power 100% would result in loss of everyone. A 250 KW nuke would allow a margin for error and still make enough LOX and CH4 for a smaller return vessel to operate, but this would also allow for testing of some solar power for base uses.
We need a drill system to drill deep enough, as GW stated. Not the "self-driving nail" that was a failure.
I would encourage SpaceX to revisit the Red Dragon concept with two vessels per Hohmann transfer window; one devoted 100% to a REAL drilling rig, and a second being a small but dormant nuclear reactor. These could be robotically controlled at a given site and would be pretty reassuring to an initial manned mission. These are strictly experimental steps that need to be taken first.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2024-12-24 13:30:10)
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