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On 2018-03-17 10:48, Fred J. McCall wrote:

NASA's current long range plan puts the first Mars mission (with no
landing) out in like 2033. I think it's pretty obvious that even with
the expected schedule slides Musk will beat them there.


When must NASA start to get funding to develop whatever will travel
between Earth and Mars and back?

For a non-landing mission, you don't need much more than whatever
they're planing for "deep space gateway" plus the propulsion modules
which could be derivatives of ULA's ACES upper stage. These sorts of
missions were proposed using Apollo hardware as well. It's the landing
(and later takeoff) that are the tricky bits.

Eventually, NASA will have to stop pretending that Orion is big enough
to carry people to and from Mars on a 1 year mission, and perhaps have
to fess up that it needs to develop a Mars lander and take-off vehicle
if it intends to put humans on Mars surace and bring them back.

They know that. Orion is little more than a "taxi" to get people into
space and back. For long missions you need something like "deep space
gateway" to live and work in.

Jeff
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