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Hi guys,
Maybe what I'm gonna say is tough but I think that what we are looking for, safe trip to Mars, doesn't apply to mars direct or any first mission to Mars, since the astronauts will be choosed according to their perfect physical state, like in the first moon mission. Tough guys for tough missions, specially trained under military discipline.
For the first Mars colons it's another story, the differences are that the trip might be shorter than Mars Direct and that the people don't expect necesseraly to go back to earth, so they don't need to readapt to 1g. Once on Mars, the 0.38g could slowly impact the calcium and strenght of their bones, even if calcium supplements are provided and if the calcium release trough the kidney is slowed down . My opinion is that this demineralisation problem will be chronic in the emigrant population only, the first and subsequent Martian generation could be freed of that problem.
When you are a migrant, in a way, you sacrifice yourself to your children because you are always form both side of the road, never completely adapted to any world, that's the price migrants always pay.
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If we are still sticking to a Mars Direct scenario, the use of a 45000 lbf SCNR as a "third stage" to an Ares class vehicle could be used to reduce flight times to 80-120 days (From Zubrin's origonal 1990 Mars Direct report). The stage would not start up until it reached a 700km orbit.
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