Mars Direct sans HLLV

http://www.redcolony.com/marsforless/index.html


--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

In article ,
says...
http://www.redcolony.com/marsforless/index.html

It's amazing how when you ignore most of the actual difficult details of
the mission you end up with a price tag of only a couple billion.
However, the research into producing reliable life support systems to
sustain astronauts for the voyage to or from mars alone could cost in
the billions. Plus, the approach still has many single points of
failure. If the return craft has any serious failures then the
astronauts will end up stranded. Of course, that would have been true
for early Apollo astronauts on the moon also, but their missions were
much shorter and the trip distance was well over three orders of
magnitude smaller.

--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

quibbler wrote in message et...
In article ,
says...
http://www.redcolony.com/marsforless/index.html

It's amazing how when you ignore most of the actual difficult details of
the mission you end up with a price tag of only a couple billion.
However, the research into producing reliable life support systems to
sustain astronauts for the voyage to or from mars alone could cost in
the billions.

While NASA certainly COULD spend billions doing that research, there
is not much reason for it. Unlike, say, HLLV testing, life support
isn't "mega engineering". Any university could put together a program
to work on long term life support for under a million dollars. It
might take a decade to work everything out to a high level of
confidence because of the potentially multi-year test cycle time, but
it isn't fundamentally expensive stuff.

Completely closed loop life support will take much longer to prove
out, but having some consumption rate even for a multi-year voyage is
reasonable.

John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com

In article ,
John Carmack wrote:
Completely closed loop life support will take much longer to prove
out, but having some consumption rate even for a multi-year voyage is
reasonable.

In fact, about the only thing you *have* to recycle is wash water (for
people, dishes, and laundry), because there's just so damn much of it --
it's circa 80% of all consumables!

Oxygen, dry food, drinking/cooking water, and odds and ends like packaging
are about 6kg/manday. For a two-year mission, that's 4.4t/man, which is
certainly annoying but is not a disaster.

What's more, over half of that mass is drinking/cooking water, and you can
*probably* recover enough water for that from dehumidification (that is,
by recycling evaporated sweat, exhaled water vapor, and evaporation from
washing), which may be easier than getting potable water out of wash-water
recycling.

Beyond that, you are rapidly approaching the point where you are likely to
spend more on development than you will save on launch costs.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Beyond that, you are rapidly approaching the point where you are likely to
spend more on development than you will save on launch costs.
--

How is this mission to mars different then then staying on the mir for a
long dururation? Ok the russians can ship extra's to the mir at almost
anytime but still they don't count on it.

But they also have a closed enverioment. Like earth to mars would have. You
could just buy Russian data on this info not?

(John Carmack) wrote:
While NASA certainly COULD spend billions doing that research, there
is not much reason for it. Unlike, say, HLLV testing, life support
isn't "mega engineering". Any university could put together a program
to work on long term life support for under a million dollars. It
might take a decade to work everything out to a high level of
confidence because of the potentially multi-year test cycle time, but
it isn't fundamentally expensive stuff.

Completely closed loop life support will take much longer to prove
out, but having some consumption rate even for a multi-year voyage is
reasonable.

It's not particularly glamorous, but this area is defnitely one that
could use some work. It may be applicable to human settlements in
harsh / water challenged environments. One thing about Mars is that
one doesn't need to be completely closed cycle when you get there,
although you will still want to be very efficient in some areas.

The nuclear submarine community has some interesting wisdom in some
of these technologies, as does the CELSS and ECLS research communities.

It would be another interesting area for a prize-based challenge.
How long can a manned / non-trivial closed-cycle environment go
before it breaks down?

- Cris Fitch
San Diego, CA
"The bionauts got really sick of eating bananas."

"ff" fdfd wrote:
[Spencer:]
Beyond that, you are rapidly approaching the point where you are likely to
spend more on development than you will save on launch costs.
--

How is this mission to mars different then then staying on the mir for a
long dururation? Ok the russians can ship extra's to the mir at almost
anytime but still they don't count on it.

But they also have a closed enverioment. Like earth to mars would have. You
could just buy Russian data on this info not?

Well, here's where the research comes in -- making oxygen equipment
that runs indefinitely with a limited stock of spare parts.

Probably the wash recycling and the humidity reclamation equipment
need to develop some robustness, too.

If you can also do this without greatly increasing routine maintenance
efforts, that's all the better. But maybe we have to live with doing
an oil change every 3000 hours -- lube it or lose it! (Sorry, bad
humor -- I couldn't resist poking at the automobile world).

/dps

In article , ff fdfd wrote:
Beyond that, you are rapidly approaching the point where you are likely to
spend more on development than you will save on launch costs.

How is this mission to mars different then then staying on the mir for a
long dururation?

The inability to do regular resupply runs to a Mars expedition in flight.

Ok the russians can ship extra's to the mir at almost
anytime but still they don't count on it.

On the contrary, they did count on regular resupply for certain things.
There was some flexibility, but if all supply shipments had stopped, Mir
would have had to be abandoned.

Moreover, the way they did certain things reflected this. Notably, there
were no laundry facilities on Mir (and if memory serves, there are none on
ISS), so they relied on regular resupply of fresh clothing rather than on
recycling of wash water. (Laundry is the biggest wash-water consumer.)

One reason why ISS is currently running on a two-man crew is that without
the shuttle, they don't have enough water supply to support three for any
length of time.

But they also have a closed enverioment. Like earth to mars would have.

No, they didn't (and ISS doesn't either).
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |