By Last week, long-time Mars advocate Robert Zubrin published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal saying mankind could get to Mars on the cheap within 5 years using SpaceX (News - Alert) hardware -- but was he serious, or just fishing for a debate? Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to drop a trail of bread crumb hints that it's build up infrastructure capable of supporting a long-term commitment to Mars.
Published on May 14, "How We Can Fly to Mars in This Decade -- And on the Cheap," outlines a high-risk mission to Mars built around the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and the Dragon space capsule. Zubrin says you only need three Falcon Heavy launches to setup a two man Mars mission. One launch would put an unmanned Dragon capsule with a kerosene/oxygen stage into orbit around Mars for a return trip. The second launch would put 11 tons of gear on the surface of Mars, including a Mars Ascent Vehicle transport to move people and Mars samples to the in-orbit return Dragon, a chemical reactor designed to suck in Mars air and turn it into liquid oxygen to fuel the transport, three tons of exploration gear, and a 10 kilowatt nuclear or solar power supply.
A third launch would put a crew of two on a direct trajectory to Mars in a Dragon capsule, along with 2500 kilograms of consumables -- mostly food, since water and oxygen are expected to be recycled for up to three years, a light ground vehicle (i.e., a rover), and a couple of hundred kilograms of scientific instruments.
The trip out in the Dragon -- designed to hold up to 7 people for short low-earth orbit missions to the International Space Station (ISS) -- would be a bit cramped. The Dragon would then enter Mars atmosphere and directly land near the Mars Ascent Vehicle and the two crew members would spend the next 18 months exploring Mars. At the end of the mission, the crew would get into the Mars Ascent Vehicle, go into Mars orbit, rendezvous with the Earth Return Vehicle Dragon, and take the six month ride back to Earth capped by a re-entry and landing.
Zubrin asserts that this low-cost, higher risk approach could send expeditions to Mars at about half the cost it takes/took to launch a Space Shuttle flight with a first mission by 2016. However, NASA and politicians would have to wrap their heads around the increased risk -- probably about at the level of unknowns we accepted back in the days of the Apollo program.
It's an interesting concept, but it seems to smack of the sort of "flags and footprints" sprint that the Apollo moon missions were accused of and doesn't really put down a framework for a sustainable exploration infrastructure that Zubrin himself called for in his book "The Case For Mars: The plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must."
On the other hand, his piece presents two different paths to think about. First, with Space Explorations selling a pair of tickets for a private mission around the Moon at around $150 million per seat (2 seats x $150 million/seat = $300 million) and at least one person already signed up, it is not unreasonable to imagine that a rich pair of adventurers might spring for the $350-$500 million estimated cost to be the first men on Mars.
Secondly, Zubrin may be simply trying to reset the bar on how governmental policy makers think about space exploration as he did when he wrote "The Case for Mars." Maybe NASA and Congress won't bite on the risks involved in a 2 man 2016 Mars mission, but they may consider a 2 or 4 man mission at the price of a single space shuttle launch.
Regardless of what discussions Zubrin generates, SpaceX has been talking about Mars being the ultimate destination from the time it was founded. The Dragon spacecraft's heat shield is reportedly designed to withstand the stresses from a Earth-to-Mars or a Mars-to-Earth direct reentry and a YouTube (News - Alert) video of the Dragon capsule's escape/precision landing system shows a 4 crew Dragon approaching the surface of Mars under power before landing at an expedition site with a Mars Ascent Vehicle, a rover, and a habitation module.
Doug Mohney is a contributing editor for TMCnet and a 20-year veteran of the ICT space. To read more of his articles, please visit columnist page.
Edited by Rich Steeves
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