New Mars Forums

ANTIcarrot.

Member

From: Herts, UK

Registered: 2004-04-27

Posts: 170

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

Anyone remember this?

Yes, it's a 1985 vision of the journey to Mars; complete with three venus swing-by landers, two comm sats, two aeroplane probes and an unspecified number of hard-landers and penetrators. All put together at NASA's power-tower space station.

Launched on five Soviet G1s, six ESA Ariane VIIs, and twenty-eight uprated space shuttles; because as we all know, the shuttle turned out to be much cheaper than all the others.

It's computers incidentally use 64-bit parallel processing with 10MB of ROM, 30Mb of RAM, and, apparently, an early DVD drive. Mission administration provided by the UN Mars Exploration Authority

Why post this here? Why not? It's all very silly! :laugh:

It's all from a book called the Mars One Crew Manual, which though dated does contain a little useful inforation, as well as a few very nice pullout maps. Also useful as a diplomacy tool. If you ever think another person is proposing a really stupid way to go to mars just remember this post. Whatever method they propose, it can't be worse than this one!

ANTIcarrot.

ISBN: 0-345-31881-1

Grypd

Member

From: Scotland, Europe

Registered: 2004-06-07

Posts: 1,879

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

I like it lets build one

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Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

PurduesUSAFguy

Banned

From: Purdue University

Registered: 2004-04-04

Posts: 237

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

/shudder/
Although H2M in 96 would have been nice, it's way way too 'cumbaya' for me.

lol, you'd think the readers of the KSR series would be lear of anything with the the phrases UN and Mars in them.

Grypd

Member

From: Scotland, Europe

Registered: 2004-06-07

Posts: 1,879

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

It does sound like the plot of a real bad Un takes over the world type novel.

Funny thing is we might make bigger ships than that Battlestar after the initial exploration. If we want to have colonisation we will need something bigger to carry colonists. It would be a bit ironic if in the future our children look at that moronic thing and say "God thats tiny they wanted to go to mars in THAT"

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Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

Martian Republic

Member

From: Haltom City- Dallas/Fort Worth

Registered: 2004-06-13

Posts: 855

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

Anyone remember this?

It look like a junk heep to me, but what ever will works, it is better than what we have right now.

Larry,

Aetius

Member

From: New England USA

Registered: 2002-01-20

Posts: 173

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

I'm sure it will never send humans to Mars, but on aesthetics alone I'm partial to the Soviet-era 'Mars 1989' design:

http://astronautix.com/craft/mars1989.h … rs1989.htm

The huge solar panel farms make it resemble a beautiful spacefaring butterfly.

I completely understand that the colossal task of on-orbit assembly, solar panel degradation after spiralling through the Van Allen Belt, and Earth's scarcity of xenon fuel make this an unlikely candidate for the first piloted mission to Mars. The mission profile also only allows for a one-week stay. That's not acceptable, in my opinion.

However, maybe a vehicle something like this could fly someday. Krypton fuel would be cheaper and much more abundant than xenon, inflatable structures would greatly reduce the weight of the habitat and support structures, and truly rad-hard solar panels could eventually be developed. Robotics technology might also keep costly and dangerous EVA assembly work to a minimum.

But hey, I'll take any ride to Mars I can get. I'm not THAT picky.

Mad Grad Student

Member

From: Phoenix, Arizona, North Americ

Registered: 2003-11-09

Posts: 498

Website

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

It looks like a junk heep to me, but whatever will work, it is better than what we have right now.

Larry,

Quite true. I don't understand why, even after everyone has seen the embarrassing failure of "battlestar galactica"-type missions in Bush's '89 proposal (Because of which if you ever mention the phrase "mission to Mars" people always evoke a mystical $600 billion price tag), they still want to use jalopies like this. The Russians should be trying to get to the red planet using Mars Direct, not that crummy space station plan some guy thought up in (apparently) five minutes.

But hey, anything right now is better than nothing.

Actually, maybe not. Let me rephrase that, anything is better than nothing as long as it doesn't repluse the public any further from Mars missions than they already are. That means no more Bush 41 proposals.

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A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,433

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

Fixed shifting and artifacts in this old topic.
Was searching for H2M topics but this was not the one....

Tom Kalbfus

Banned

Registered: 2006-08-16

Posts: 4,401

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

This one from The Martian looks a lot more impressive!

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,433

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

Nice ferris wheel ride in space. I was sort of thinking of this image instead.

Tom Kalbfus

Banned

Registered: 2006-08-16

Posts: 4,401

Re: Mars One - 1996 - AKA: Battlestar Galactica 1980

Remember the Antares from Defying Gravity? This ship was designed to visit all 8 planets in the Solar System.