With NASA's budget, is it even possible to go to Mars? Bush's plan calls for more money given to NASA, but is it enough for the President's plans? We've had the technology to go to the moon and mars for a while (since 1969!), but the only reason we havent gone is because lack of money. What are your opinions? Do you think we're going to Mars by 2020?

Also, how are we going to get there? I mean will it be nuclear powered or have chemical engines like the shuttle? Anyone know any specifics about this plan?

Right now, it looks like there are basicly three and a half options for getting there:

1: Space Exploration Initiative-style "Battlestar Galactica" aproach, where a very large vehicle is built in low earth orbit (LEO) that has it all, living quarters on the ship, landers for the crew and for cargo, the surface habitat, and a fully fueled vehicle to get from the surface back to the ship. Large crew, probably in the 8-15 range. Solid-core nuclear rocket engines standard, and carrying enough fuel to make the entire trip both ways... a monster of a ship, extensive orbital contruction, and a >$100-200Bn pricetag. The high end

2: Dr. Zubrin's MarsDirect, a pair of vehicles launched directly to Mars one at a time on the back of the Shuttle main fuel tank - just without the Shuttle ("Shuttle-C or Shuttle-Z"). Launch one carries a rocket/hab/capsule to return to Earth directly, a nuclear powerd fuel factory, and various science gear. The fuel factory makes chemical fuel to send the rocket back to Earth, then the second launch from Earth brings the crew in a lander/hab combo and they "do Mars" for two years, then transfer into the Earth Return rocket and come home.

The two beautiful parts of it are most of fuel to get home by weight is made on Mars and to use the Martian atomosphere to slow down instead of a rocket burn, saving lots of weight. A supposed pricetag in the $30Bn range, but probably quite a bit higher, makes some optimistic assumptions about who makes the thing for how much. The downside though is that the weight is cut pretty close to the bone to begin with since it all has to ride on one rocket launch with chemical engines, the aerobraking has never been tried before (heavy heat shield too), and that if it got too heavy for Shuttle-Z to carry which is easy... no go. The two habs themselves and the crew are also very small, probably too small. The low end

3: NASA's Mars Semi-Direct and variations, the "primary" varient consists of three payloads and three small nuclear rocket stages each launched by a Shuttle-C style vehicle. The first is an Earth Return Vehicle, placed in Mars orbit with storable chemical fuels for the return trip. The second, the Mars acent vehicle, is like Zubrin's ERV and makes its own fuel but smaller and designed only to get into Mars orbit, along with other science/hab hardware. The last is the manned ship, which carries a crew of 6 in a hab/lander combo much like MarsDirect.

There are loads of variations on Semi-Direct, like substituting a solar-powerd ion drive for the nuclear rocket stages, or using a nuclear rocket booster with a bigger fuel tank to avoid the need for aerobraking, and varients where no fuel is made on Mars at all... and several more. The middle road - what will probably happen

Wow, that was a pretty good synopsis. 'Preciate it.

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Here's an idea: we start building orbital space stations around earth like mad, each consecutive station a bit farther out from earth, until we're close enough to get to Mars with a few stops in between.

I don't think that'll work... Mars is alot further away from Earth than it sounds, its well over two hundred times further away than the Moon. It would take too many space stations to make travel time between time reasonably short. Plus they would have to be in Solar and not Earth orbit, since very very very high Earth orbit isn't practical. Solar orbit is somthing of a pain to get to, you might as well just go to Mars directly.

I like the battlestar galacticar model, but, I think the should leave the big ship at mars, an orbital habitat till they build some surface stations.

One on top of olympus mons would be a good spot. As soon as you take off, you'd pretty much be in orbit.

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I am fully for NASA's Mars Semi-Direct variant mainly because it is middle of the road. But I would go nuclear for all main types of propulsion and would reject making fuel on Mars - two complex and probably expensive. Several preparatory missions to Mars make great sense. Before humans arrive everything should be ready for them: a mother ship in martian orbit, an initial habitat on the surface, a return rocket to get back to the mother ship to which an earth return rocket is attached. Multiple ships for men to reach Mars is a great idea.

Since the mass size of the "Galactica aproach" vehicle would be truely gargantuan, you'd have to do alot of assembly in orbit with many many launches, and that would get expensive and dangerous reaaally quick. Its a better idea to keep construction to a minimum, zero even if it can be managed. Just launch each piece of hardware either directly with its booster in a single throw of a big rocket, or the payload and the booster separatly in only 2-3 launches and have them dock on orbit... docking can be done remotely too, no spacewalk required.

As for Mars SemiDirect (aka Design Reference Mission "DRM" on some sites), it is pretty much like that by default, Galaxy. Three launches of a big rocket, one with the ERV, one with the Mars surface-to-orbit rocket and some surface hardware, and the manned Hab module in the third throw. Each with its own smallish nuclear booster stage to keep the mass down, and perhaps to make power during the trip.

The only difference is that the Earth-to-Mars ship does double-duty as the Mars surface habitat, which makes some sense as you save needing a spacecraft and some safety issues, and I bet the Mars surface-to-orbit rocket could be pulled off without making fuel on Mars... Doc Zubrin likes to point out though, that the fuel would already have been produced before the planets would allign so you could send a manned flight.

Non of these options seem to set up a permanent settlement.


I think there should at least be the option to return, even if no permanent base were to be manned.

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That would be really nice, and the "slight off kilter" Doc Zubrin insists that multiple Hab modules somehow constitute a colony for perminant habitation, but I think it will require a next-generation propulsion system and probably next generation Earth-to-orbit rockets to move enough stuff cheaply enough to give a Mars colony the chance to grow.

At the moment, there seems to be two or three somewhat realistic engines for the trip:

-Nasa's VASIMR engine, an offshoot of nuclear fusion research, that heats hydrogen in a chaimber with microwaves until it gets hot. Really hot. [/i]A million degrees hot[/i]. Just like experimental fusion reactors today, the gas would be held away from the engines' walls by powerful magnets. The engine would have two settings, high-thrust/low-effecency to escape Earth/Mars orbit quickly, and a low-burn setting to save on fuel. Specific impulse could be as high as 3,000sec and >10,000sec respectivly.

Downsides: Requires a major leap in nuclear reactor technology to provide the huge quantities of electricity required without getting too heavy. The "high burn" setting for leaving orbit still isn't very fast and would take a month, baking the crew in Earth's highly radioactive Van Allen belts. Nasa is piddling around with the concept, but has essentially no funding and no chance ATM.

-Los Alamos/et al. Gas Core Nuclear Rocket, my personal favorite which makes me giddy at the thought of it being built, which is the next-next generation thermal rocket. The concepts are pretty simple, the hotter you can run your reactor, the more efficent the engine is, and that denser materials always settle to the middle of a whirlpool of less dense material. Now, since nuclear fuel melts at around 3000K-4000K, that limits you to around 1,000-1,200sec Isp, not too good. The GCNR engine runs the "reactor" so hot that it melts and evaporates intentionally which permits extreme temperatures, and keeps the uranium in the engine and away from the walls by putting it in the middle of a whirlpool of Liquid Hydrogen. Magnets might also be used to further contain and constrict the uranium.

Such an engine could hit efficencies in the 3,000sec-5,000sec at temperatures of 25,000K-50,000K, but right now its still just a paper concept for the most part, and too much of the heat from the reactor would pass through the swirling hydrogen for current engine materials to handle, but not by too much... The high thrust that it would produce would also make 2-3 month trips to Mars possible with reasonable payload and fuel.

A final new and slightly wierd method is a type of magnetic sail, the "M2P2" system generates a very large disk-shaped magnetic field with a superconductor and a little helium. The idea is to catch the solar wind, and use it to push payloads, and to do it efficently by making a truely monsterous magnetic field (100's to 1000's of miles accross)... still a little shakey of an idea, but worth looking into for slow payload flights.

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Earth-to-Orbit likly improvements needed:

-A new big rocket, somthing nearly as big as Saturn-4 or Saturn-5, built with modern day rocket parts and manufacturing methods to keep the costs down and flight rate high. Perhaps built with Russian RD-171 engines in the first stage with American RS-68/RL-60 in the upper stages with recoverable (fly back?) boosters run by RS-86 engines.

-A reuseable launch vehicle of some kind, to move people and cargo into orbit easier. If such a vehicle could be run automatically and flown often reliably, it would make a dandy fuel tanker. Right now there looks to be two options in the near-ish future:

~TSTO spaceplane, a large airplane able to reach high altitudes and low/mid mach numbers with airbreathing engines and an upper stage that would fly to orbit with Hydrogen/Oxygen rockets, perhaps run on slushed hydrogen, and haul 20-25MT. The whole thing would fly back to the launch site and land on the runway for re-mating/refueling. The lower stage engines have already been tested, and the upper stage would probably use a metal heat shield, none of that glass tile nonsense. This is the kind of vehicle the original 1960's Shuttle was supposed to be, before Nixon/et al. gutted Nasa after Apollo and made them cater to the USAF needs.

~DC-I SSTO rocket, son of the DC-X, if it could be pulled off, (which I think is optimistic) is a verticle launch rocket powerd by a single large hydrogen/oxygen engine and place about 10MT or half a dozen passengers into orbit, and do it quickly and often. Axed today since there isn't any use for it (and to maintain our reliance on Shuttle probably), but its mass margins and rube-goldberg reentry method is untested.

Ive had a new thought. What if we build a spaceship in orbit like the ISS. We could either get other countries involved or we can start now and spread the construction over a decade or so. That way we could spread the amount of money we need over a long period. I mean lets go all out and make it big and set up a base with supplies to last them that way when we go bback. Why just visit mars when we could build a base there right now (well not right now but when we actually go). We saw what happened after apollo, we just stopped going and it took three decades before we decided to go back and i dont know about you but i dont feel like waiting that long. well these are my opinions. Am i way off?

I think that the ISS experience has shown that this strategy, albeit possible, is pretty impractical. Building such a large vehicle, which with fuel will probably exceed 1,000 metric tons (5x of the ISS) would be horrificly expensive even if you did amoratize the cost.

I don't think its possible to build a base that can thrive or grow on its own yet, our rockets aren't efficent enough and we aren't good at building things on other worlds yet. A conjunction-class smaller vehicle can get small science teams to and from Mars without breaking the bank, but they just can't haul alot of weight for all the stuff needed.

In any case, the small missions taking the conjunction route to Mars will have 500-600 day stays since they must wait for the planets to allign for minimum trip time back to Earth. Two years is a long time compared to an ISS tour and infinetly better than Apollo's hours and days.

As for if we stop like we did after Apollo, and if we have the technology to make an colony possible, then its really a question of political will just like in the 1970's.

JUST OUT! Today's New York Times has an editorial that evaluates the report the Space Exploration Commission released on President Bush's Moon Mars plan.
It is interesting reading in that the editorial notes that the Commission is only lukewarm in its recommendations and strategies.

Considering both the expertise and enthusiasm I read in this forum on this topic, I think the President appointed the wrong group to evaluate his plan.

In any case, some of you young squirts will be around to see it develop, but my guess is it'll be Century 22 before we see this come to pass. I do think we will soon increase our robotic explorations, and I consider that a good first step.

Cheers

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Your mistake is reading the NY Times' Editorial. If you read the actual report you'd find that they support the President's plan, and they're recommending several serious cuts and restructuring at NASA. The commision was not appointed by some bipartisan Congressional group, it was appointed by Bush to determine the best way to implement his plan. The NY Times has been fighting against Bush for four years and isn't going to stop because its NASA. They'd rather see NASA cut completely and all that money going to some socialist welfare program.

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I'd have more fear if it was Los Angeles Times with that editorial.

I don't know, NASA has done some fantastic stuff in the past with the Voyager missons and men on the Moon but now I'm not so sure about this recent idea, there are many who have spoken out against the plan, Bush has the idea for putting men on Mars but there are issues like economics and the safety problems some have said it is nothing but an election stunt

Nasas always has financial problems. I think the best thing to do is spread the spending over the next couple of decades.

B) Well, regardless of your choice of newspaper, the bottom line is that the start-up costs for both research and development are essentially unknown. Yes, we have the Apollo experiences, but everything is different from launch vehicle to the entire suport mission on the Moon and eventually Mars.

Apollo was a crash program because of our race with the Soviets, we should not jump into this program the same way. Given time and the right challenge we have engineers out there that will surprise us completely with really great solutions, but it is hard to get to those if we are in a do it yesterday mode. Do it yesterday planning also triples (at least) the cost of the whole magilla.

It is also very important to load the operation with five times more engineers and scientists than politicians and program analysts. If not, only our great, great grand children will see this thing come into existence.

I understand the Jamaican Bob-Sled team is looking seriously at developing their own program. SO this thing could turn into a race after all.

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<span style='font-family:Arial'><span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:blue'>setiman
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Well, it would require a lot of money to do it the incremental way, and it would take longer, but it would also probably be safer and give us a better foothold (from a logistical perspective of course. It may well be that the growth rate of parasitic bueracracy would necessitate a fast flag-planter "Mars Direct" type mission).

I would advocate the following:

1. Developing nuclear thermal orbital transfer vehicles to take cargo from low earth orbit to the lunar surface.

2. Launching packages for a lunar base into LEO and having the OTVs take them to the moon.

3. On the moon, the base would have the primary purpose of being a fuel and water factory for further expansion into space. Perhaps (if you go for a well developed base) it can even help in fabricating some of the tanks and habitats that interplanetary craft would use. The lunar base would refuel the OTV's, provide a place for the astronauts to live, and supply the interplanetary ships. It would probably need a power reactor, a fuel factory, a water factory, and an inflatable habitat.

4. Start assembly of the interplanetary spacecraft in some convenient orbit. The OTVs can take complex equipment from LEO rockets and the heavier water and fuel supplies from the moon base. The interplanetary spacecraft can probably do very high dV burns using nuclear thermal propulsion and fuel from the moon. Inflatable habitats from earth can help generate large comfortable transit environments, maybe even doughnut shaped so you can spin for artificial gravity. The interplanetary ship will also need a fuel factory of it's own to refuel at whatever planet it decides to go to (Mars first, but hey with this infastructure developed you can go nearly anywhere)

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ASEI, Sounds like a pretty comprehensive plan. At the current rate of funding, activities might move slowly enough that nuclear powered tugs might be a tad too fast for the payload schedule. Maybe the pokey Solar Thermal Propulsion concepts would be fast(slow) enough, and save enough money in the overall project to help fund the Lunar activities you suggest.

Also, -Is radiation shielding in the plan? Maybe in the form of external layers of water from the Lunar operations perhaps?

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