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I urge China to do a manned Mars flyby
"David Spain" wrote in message
... This also ignores the problem of a safe re-entry when getting back to Earth (velocity is much higher requiring a better heat shield and/or parachutes than a LEO mission). It seems counterintuitive to me that if one has gone to all the trouble to build up an infrastructure to support a manned Mars mission that you'd require an Earth re-entry vehicle as part of it. You certainly could build a one-shot direct-to-Mars-and-back vehicle, but for the $$$ spent wouldn't you be better off building infrastructure that could support LEO construction of the vehicle using a viable Earth/LEO transport system? In that cause you would not need to rely on a high speed re-entry vehicle. Just have the orbiter return to LEO and ferry down from there. Solving problems #1 and #2 goes a long way to solving this problem. You really think this is a SIMPLER problem? "Just have the orbiter return to LEO" means you have to slow it down and do a burn to insert into orbit. That means more fuel, etc. If you want to get to the planets in any sustainable fashion, think long duration habitation and what it takes to make that viable in LEO with litte to evenutally no Earth re-supply. Why? This was never really viable even on Earth during the age of exploration where they could live off the land. The early colonies in the New World expected resupply of some materials (in addition to the fact that they were built as profit making ventures anyway, so needed the ships to send things back anyway.) Dave |
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