Orion!

[52ndStreet]

The Mars mission facts are not going to change. And Mars should not be compared to Columbus and
his journey to America, at least he was able to go on the deck of the ship and breathe the sea air!.
The distance and trajectory problems have caused many Mars missions to miss the planet entirely,
The astronauts would be exposed to deadly levels of deep space radiation and gamma ray type particles
that can kill humans. They would not be able to carry enough fuel or supplies for the duration of the mission
to get them there or to get them all back.
As it stands now there are just to many issues that would not make a Mars mission possible.
To many things that could make the mission a disaster.These are the facts.

 

[Mindlight]

Here's one assessment of why the proposed one-way trips to settle Mars wouldn't work.

Assessment of the technical feasibility of the proposed Mars One mission

Politico is right, if a bit strident. Our rocket tech can't get anything close to the required payloads to Mars to set up a settlement. Our current tech couldn't even get people to the Martian surface and back. Platitudes about the spirit of humanity won't change that.

But we could get to Phobos and back.

We can go back to our moon. And start building a moonbase.

When we get the moonbase right, we could use that knowledge to build Phobos base.

We need more orbital stations around earth and at the Lagrange points.

If you start from earth orbit, supply runs to Phobos can be done with lightsail ships. It would take several years, so those wouldn't carry people, but it's way cheaper than rockets. Rockets would be reserved for carrying people.

Earth needs some railgun mass launchers to get bulk goods into orbit much more cheaply. Again, no people. Because it would squish them.

And from Phobos base, we could get to Mars.

It will happen. Just probably not in our lifetimes. Baby steps, and each baby step takes time.

Yes it should be a step by step approach. The Bush plan made more sense to me with going back to the moon and a moon base as one of the steps to Mars. This would give good experience towards a trip to Mars. My understanding is that the Chinese plan to do this 2024. But Obama has always been a sceptic when it comes to space and Congress has consistently been more positive about space than this administration. There needs to be more funding for alternate ways to get to space also. These challenges are not really that much more daunting than the Apollo missions and those were overcome. What has been missing the last 6 years has been presidential drive and vision for the manned space programme.

 

[Mindlight]

Oh yes i have a technical question on Orion. Does anybody know what they did with the Service Module. Is it still up there ? Is it being used for something? Will it fall back to earth and burn up?

 

[Steven_R]

The Mars mission facts are not going to change. And Mars should not be compared to Columbus and
his journey to America, at least he was able to go on the deck of the ship and breathe the sea air!.
The distance and trajectory problems have caused many Mars missions to miss the planet entirely,
The astronauts would be exposed to deadly levels of deep space radiation and gamma ray type particles
that can kill humans. They would not be able to carry enough fuel or supplies for the duration of the mission
to get them there or to get them all back.
As it stands now there are just to many issues that would not make a Mars mission possible.
To many things that could make the mission a disaster.These are the facts.

They're just engineering problems. We're a smart species and can figure out how to overcome problems.

 

[52ndStreet]

The astronauts will die on this Mars boodogle mission to deep space.!
The logistics of the mission make impossible.!