We have a glimpse now of NASA's latest vision for its first crewed Mars mission:
The agency released its top objectives for a 30-day, two-person Mars surface mission on Tuesday (May 17) and asked the public to provide feedback on how the planning is going. Submissions were initially due on May 31, but that deadline was recently extended to June 3.
NASA aims to launch astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s. Making that vision a reality will be challenging. Assuming the funding and technology come into play at the right time, for example, the round-trip travel time would still be about 500 days given the distance between Earth and Mars.
[...] "We want to maximize the science so we allow them to drive around before they become conditioned enough to get in the spacesuits, and walk and maximize that science in 30 days," Kurt Vogel, NASA director of space architectures, said in a 30-minute YouTube video accompanying the data release.
The mission plan is in the early stages and could change considerably. But so far, NASA envisions using for a habitat-like spacecraft to ferry crewmembers to the Red Planet, using a hybrid rocket stage (powered by both chemical and electrical propulsion). Four people would make the long journey, with two alighting on the surface, somewhat similar to the model seen in the Apollo program with three astronauts.
Roughly 25 tons of supplies and hardware would be ready and waiting for the crew, delivered by a previous robotic mission. These supplies would include a crew ascent vehicle, already fueled and ready to go for the astronauts to make it off Mars and back into orbit around the planet.
[...] You can view more details about NASA's objectives (there are 50 in all) before submitting your comments on this website, through June 3.
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Wednesday May 25 2022, @07:32PM
I just hope they pack enough Soylent for the whole trip!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @07:48PM (1 child)
Any space program has to fit into the at most 8 year window of a single presidential administration, because the next guy is usually from the other party, and he will cancel whatever the previous guy did. Nixon would have canceled Apollo if it hadn't been literally ready to launch on inauguration day.
If politicians had wanted to go to Mars, they could have launched by 1980. It only would have needed an evolutionary upgrade of the Saturn rocket, plus an interplanetary engine for the upper stage that had already been tested [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Funny) by bloodnok on Wednesday May 25 2022, @11:16PM
Sadly, that is the only demographic that did not want politicians to go to Mars.
__
The major
(Score: 5, Interesting) by EJ on Wednesday May 25 2022, @08:02PM (10 children)
Going to Mars is a stupid waste of resources with our current technology. There is nothing to be gained other than a, "we did it first" claim. Anything a human can do on a mission to Mars could be done better and with lower risk by a robot.
The Moon is much more interesting. If we put all of our effort into the Moon, we can potentially accomplish something that's actually useful. Build up a real lunar presence, and we can then create a staging ground for meaningful missions to Mars and beyond. The gravity well of the Moon is much easier to overcome than that of Earth. If we can harvest fuel from the Moon, then that will not only leave the equivalent amount of fuel on Earth for us to use here, but it will take less energy to get that fuel off the surface.
The communications delay between Earth and the Moon makes it much more useful to send robots there. We could develop reusable transit vehicles to make the trip between the ISS and the Moon. There are so many better ways we can utilize our space resources than a trip to Mars.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 25 2022, @08:26PM (6 children)
Mars human presence is achievable... with Starship. Using the Moon as a fuel depot to get to Mars is not necessary if you can do in-orbit refilling, even if it takes several launches to support one ship to Mars. That might be relevant later, but not for the first manned missions to Mars. Other than that, agreed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by EJ on Wednesday May 25 2022, @08:59PM (5 children)
I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying it's not smart to waste Earth's fuel reserves. There should, theoretically, be a way to harvest fuel from the Moon. We need to try to protect the resources on Earth as much as possible.
Nobody cares if we strip-mine the Moon. It's not going to hurt us down here. We need to focus as much efforts on Earth toward protecting and improving the climate here. Find a way to exploit the untapped reserves of the Moon before trying to push beyond it.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Wednesday May 25 2022, @09:40PM (3 children)
It's impossible to run out of rocket fuel, we synthesize that out of water and ammonia.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by EJ on Thursday May 26 2022, @12:16AM (2 children)
There isn't an infinite amount of water and ammonia on Earth. I get what you're saying, but the resources on Earth are still finite, barring the arrival of a comet or meteorite to the surface.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday May 26 2022, @12:01PM
Ammonia and water = Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen
These are some of the most common elements on earth. They can be easily synthesised from air, given energy source like solar. If you are worrying about running out of elements like this, maybe you should be more worried about the amount of rare earth metals on the space ships as well?
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Thursday May 26 2022, @12:26PM
If we ever run out of water, the rocket fuel shortage would be the least of our worries.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @12:57AM
Your concern trolling is touching, but a single* Mars mission doesn't use anywhere near enough** fuel to justify a lunar oxygen (LUNOX) mining facility. Musk's colonization project probably*** will, but that's at least a decade off and has other more pressing issues to deal with first.
*If I'm reading it right then NASA's entire proposed Mars mission, including return vehicle, could be delivered to Mars by a single Starship. The emphasized portion is important because the Starship itself wouldn't be coming back in this scenario.
**Raptor uses a 51:14 oxygen:methane mass flow ratio, so ~940t of Lunar oxygen delivered to LEO would be enough for one Starship headed to Mars. You still need ~260t of methane, which won't quite fit on one tanker, so you save four of the six tanker flights, or 18kt of propellant. That's less than it takes for a single moon landing [wikipedia.org] let alone what it would take to build a lunar oxygen mining plant.
***A flotilla of 1000 Starships every two years for forty years would use around 470kt per year of LUNOX production capacity. That's getting big enough and has a long enough operating life to justify the expense of building and supplying the moon base required to run it and the magnetic catapult [wikipedia.org] needed to get the oxygen back to LEO without burning more than you save.
****It's full of stars. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @08:51AM (2 children)
This is so wrong.
A human could accomplish more in one day than every robot that has ever landed on Mars put together, except for the obvious restriction of only being in one location (but could still move an order of magnitude faster than the rovers).
While there are a few uses for the Moon (the far side would be a great place for a radio telescope), mining fuel is not one. You need two elements for fuel : hydrogen and carbon. There is little carbon and essentially no hydrogen on the Moon (what hydrogen is there is in the ice in the few permanently shadowed craters, which is too valuable to use as fuel). Preferring this to the resources on Earth is like sitting on the shore of the ocean, and trying to get water by extracting it from the sand.
The only potential fuel that is abundant on the moon is aluminum. It is not completely awful (they use it in the shuttle/SLS boosters), but it's a solid fuel with poor specific impulse that will never be anything other than booster fuel, and you can't use simple oxygen as an oxidizer, instead you need something more reactive (right now they use ammonium perchlorate) and you have to get that somehow. There's an alternative way to burn aluminum in an engine called ALICE, but it needs water. Aluminum is a mediocre fuel.
Oxygen is available, but oxygen is available everywhere, often more easily.
Mars, on the other hand, has plenty of water and is literally covered in carbon dioxide, which can be made into methane very easily. That is why SpaceX is interested in methane fuel. Also, the process gives you oxygen as a byproduct. Aside from Earth, Mars is the best place in the inner Solar System to make fuel. (Ice moons are better than Mars, but not as good as Earth, and too far for now).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @07:19PM (1 child)
Musk is interested in Martian methalox to fuel Starships for the return trip. The problem is getting there. Earth has the deepest gravity well and the second thickest atmosphere of any rocky body in the solar system. It takes around twice as much fuel to reach LEO from Earth's surface than to reach Mars from LEO. That's what Heinlein meant when he said "If you can get your ship into orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." By contrast the moon has a shallow gravity well and negligible atmosphere so it is practical to reach anywhere in near-Earth space using a magnetic catapult. Carbon isn't available on the moon, but oxygen and most metals are. The catch, of course, is economy of scale: You need to be supplying enough material to justify not only a lunar mining, smelting and manufacturing facility, and the power plant to run it all, but also a magnetic catapult system capable of reaching LEO. The only serious project in the works that will need that much material delivered to LEO is oxidizer for Musk's Mars colony fleets. Bezos' O'Neil Cylinder dream is an even bigger project, but sadly he's all hat and no cattle. Nobody else is even thinking that big.
I do agree that GP's post is nonsense, but that doesn't mean that lunar mining and manufacturing isn't interesting or practical. We just aren't there yet.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 02 2022, @11:14AM
What makes you think Jupiter's core isn't rocky? Did you forget about that because of the thickness of its atmosphere?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @10:17PM (1 child)
mars ship mcmarsface
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 26 2022, @03:47AM
Only if the pilot is named Marvin.
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Thursday May 26 2022, @07:57PM
They can just stay at the MuskBnB in ElonVille. They could hire a Cyber Truck to pick them up from their landing spot.