Earliest Manned Mars Mission

Given that tin cans flew around the Earth and wire-and-hope powered the Moon landings, when is the earliest that a Mars missions could have been launched ?

It doesn't necessarily have to be a SUCCESSFUL one !

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
With a POD after 1945?

Right around now.

A manned Mars mission is bitchin' hard. We do not, repeat, do not currently have the recycling technology to keep a man alive in a plausibly sized spacecraft for two years. We're not even close. We might have the technology in a decade if we pursued it full-blast; 20 years seems more likely.

Then there's the economics -- you have to get enough fuel into orbit to fly you there, land down the gravity well, climb back out again, and fly home. If all that fuel has to be lifted from Earth in the first place, you are hugely hosed; you're talking hundreds of billions of current dollars.

If you can generate some of your fuel and ship materials in orbit, or from the Lunar surface, things get much better... but that presupposes a whole space infrastructure, which will itself require years of construction and investment.

If you push the POD back further, things get easier. Still, it's harder than it looks.


Doug M.
 
I'm inclined to agree. In order for a Mars shot to happen, there's a whole hell of alot of hardware that needs to be developed first. That's a whole program in itself.
 
And would it have had a chance of being a successful one ?

I suppose that's what I'm getting at - its thought to be viable, and is given a go...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Kruschev finds another expensive and ill-conceived project to be enthusiastic about.

1970, the Soviet Union's first Orion-type ship blasts _past_ the moon on it's way to Mars. Unfortunately, the landing capsule smears itself all over the landscape (it turns out Mars's atmosphere is not good for landing with rockets _or_ gliders http://www.universetoday.com/2007/0...ge-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/ ) but the rest of the crew gets back to earth in jig time.

Bruce
 

Alcuin

Banned
1982. That was the date NASA planned to launch the Mars Mission. If everything went right and congress approved the funding, then that has to be the earliest.
 

Alcuin

Banned
Yeah, but the question is, was it with in the limits of the technology of the day. My answer is no it wasn't.

The method suggested in 1968 would have worked (or been expected to work) provided the launch was on the right day in 1982 (I can't remember the date, but it was needed to allow acceleration due to the slingshot effect of passing close to Venus (allowing a trip to Mars in 14 months, and then returning in another 16 months). If that window was missed, the round trip would have taken around 4 years instead of 30 months.

The problem is a simple one of working out loads and tolerances and the delta-vees needed. NASA had set up a whole series of steps toward producing the Mars Mission. It would have been launched from orbit with the spacecraft being built in space and crew taken up by space shuttles (which were due to be launched in 1975).

We tend to underestimate the technical abilities of the past. What has been developed since then is not technology to make it possible (there have been refinements but the crude possibility of getting there was already available).

If it fails on arrival at Mars, then it still fulfils the terms of the challenge.
 
Fastes to Mars An Alive back

there only 2 Programs

Werner von Braun 1952 Mars Project.
the First Technical working proposal
mars46am.jpg


and
Orion Nuklear blast Rocket engine
take a bucket put burnig Firecracker under and Bang the buckets fly true the air
take a Thick Steel Plate put Atombomb under and KA-BOOM it fly in to Space

orion_blastoff2.jpg

Foto Show a 4000 Ton Heavy Orion Ship Take of from Nevada Fields USA
YES first Idea was Ground Take off :eek:

both would made first Mission 1970-1972
 
I'd be curious to know exactly how Orion was supposed to work. I would expect an attempt launching a spacecraft in this manner to simply destroy vehicle and the launch facilities.
 
With a POD after 1945?

Right around now.

A manned Mars mission is bitchin' hard. We do not, repeat, do not currently have the recycling technology to keep a man alive in a plausibly sized spacecraft for two years. We're not even close. We might have the technology in a decade if we pursued it full-blast; 20 years seems more likely.

Then there's the economics -- you have to get enough fuel into orbit to fly you there, land down the gravity well, climb back out again, and fly home. If all that fuel has to be lifted from Earth in the first place, you are hugely hosed; you're talking hundreds of billions of current dollars.

If you can generate some of your fuel and ship materials in orbit, or from the Lunar surface, things get much better... but that presupposes a whole space infrastructure, which will itself require years of construction and investment.

If you push the POD back further, things get easier. Still, it's harder than it looks.


Doug M.

According to some recent and current proposals - I'm thinking of Mars Direct here - it should be possible to launch an essentially empty lander to Mars, then generate fuel by 'mining' the Martian atmosphere. The relevant part:
"The plan involves launching an unmanned Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) directly from Earth's surface to Mars using a heavy-lift booster (no bigger than the Saturn V used for the Apollo missions), containing a supply of hydrogen, a chemical plant and a small nuclear reactor.

The ERV would take some eight months to reach Mars. Once there, a relatively simple set of chemical reactions (the Sabatier reaction coupled with electrolysis) would combine a small amount of hydrogen carried by the ERV with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen propellants, 96 tonnes of which would be needed to return the ERV to Earth at the end of the mission. This process would take approximately ten months to complete."


I'm unaware if similar ideas were floating around NASA in the 60s or 70s, but if so, this ought to reduce the launch costs considerably - you could probably use some sort of upgraded Saturn V, by making use of the Venus slingshot flyby suggested by Alcuin ^. There are plenty of possible Saturn V developments here.
 
The Tranquility Alternative with an undated but one assumes late 1930s POD (suborbital flight by 1945) had a manned Mars mission in 1976 (joint U.S-Soviet detente piece). The plausibility in the book was strained heavily, but the tech, as I understand it, was heavily jacked from contemporary early 50s proposals (the moon landing was the same time, but there was a large space station by the early 60s with reusable shuttles, and a moon base after '69).
 
Mars Direct is not completely insane, but it does have some soft spots.

I mentioned recycling. MD throws food away (and so must carry 11 tons of consumables -- about a quarter of total mass) but recycles air and water. Problem: nobody has yet run a closed system on this scale for anywhere near that long. Yes, it's totally possible, but it still hasn't been done.

Another: notice how the reactor and hydrogen arrive at Mars, and then a couple of years later there's methane waiting for the crew? Umm. There's a lot of work to be done on the surface before the crew arrive. A Spirit-type rover equipped with appropriate tools might be able to do it -- but that's a separate mission!


Doug M.
 
It depends how you define a 'Mars Mission'.

A landing is really, really, really difficult, and requires a whole quantum leap beyond the technology possessed by either superpower until, well, now.

But going by the strictly literal interpretation of the question, a flyby is much easier. A flyby would probably be achievable by 1975--if, of course, there were any compelling reason to go...

In the EMPIRE studies of the early 1960s, flybys were proposed as a means of repairing and maintaining robotic probes. Unfortunately, as robots became more advanced, such a purpose became superfluous. Maybe less advanced robotics could lead to a Mars flyby program? Which, incidently, would be much easier than any other kind of mission.
 
Ther are a number of hurdles, but with the right development and political commitment there isn't much which couldn't be surmounted by the 80s. Imagine if the Saturn/Apollo had a similar development path as other areospace projects from the '60s and early '70s, like the 737, 747, F15.
 
A Communist (or in an ATL, fascist) government might have even more chance for success, since they would care less whether their astronauts are radiated and get cancer.
 
LOL, thanks, its a great thread and left me none-the-wiser in the context of there being a division of views between it not being possible yet, and it being possible (if horrendously expensive) from the 1980s onwards...

Is the assumption of the nay-sayers that air-recycling and water-recycling degrades over time ? So, that after some months the ability to recycle is reduced in both the percentage that is handled, and in the quality of the output ? If so, then is it a fatal degredation ? For example, if the percentage recycled falls over time, can't the presumably toxic excess of non-recycled produce simply be filtered out and vented ? And, if the quality of the output falls over time, could not reserves be carried to intermittently be introduced into the recycler to put the purity level back up ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Pre-positioning on Mars could be a way to address some of the supply problems. Gasses, fuels even the equipment needed to live and operate on the surface could be sent before te people. That way the human voyage itself could be made as safe and efficient as possible.
 
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