Red Christmas: Billionaire eyes private Mars mission in 2017

"Billionaire Dennis Tito has revealed his scheme for dispatching
two astronauts to the red planet as early as December 2017, saying
that 'rare alignments' of planets should be exploited as the
context of the project.

'Inspiration Mars' would be a 501-day US mission to the planet
without landing on its surface and would take the opportunity of
a rare alignment of Mars and earth so that the mission would
require minimal rocket fuel, according to a report released on
Wednesday."

See:

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Red..._2017_999.html


Is it worth it to send astronauts all the way to Mars & back
without landing?

Is it worth it to send astronauts all the way to Mars & back

without landing?


no its a very risky stunt. between radiation, eye damage, mechanical breakdown and all the rest hurrying is just a way to make waste. unless the crew can land on mars, which it cant...

so what is the round trip time normally?

On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, bob haller wrote to All:

bh so what is the round trip time normally?

define "normally"... while doing that, remember that both bodies are orbiting the sun at different speeds and either may be in front of or behind the other at some point in time...

[ quote=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars ]

Launch windows

As with other interplanetary travel, the energy needed to transfer between planetary orbits hits a low point at intervals fixed by the synodic period. For Earth / Mars trips, this is every 26 Earth months (2 years and 2 months). So missions are typically
Several types of mission plans have been proposed, such as the opposition class and conjunction class,[19] or the Crocco flyby. However, typical Mars mission plans have round-trip flight times of 400 to 450 days. A fast Mars mission of 245 days round trip
[/quote]

if, however, you are speaking of radio communications, then things change a lot

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In writes:

See:

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Red..._2017_999.html

Is it worth it to send astronauts all the way to Mars & back
without landing?

Not really, but it's all right, since they're not going anyway.
(I suppose you could pitch it as an endurance mission with a couple
days of interesting alternate scenery, but, again, it won't launch.)

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