Space Program Challenge: a man on Mars by 2000

But if the NERVA fail= very bad. Chernobyl in space!

Oh dear, it would be disasterous to have all that radioactive waste released in outer space... wait a moment...

Both USA and Russia have a rather nice record when it comes to "blowing up on launch" (yes there were several bad incidents, out of thousands of launches). And to have something bad happen you need a nuclear payload to be destroyed on or during its rocket carrier launch.
Taking it up on separate launch, on a rocket which has a escape tower, to quickly fly the payload to safety if need comes, reduces risk of release of radioactive to atmosphere significantly.


Kruschev stays in power, Korolev lives, USSR has a moon landing by 1970. announce plans for a moonbase, USA decides to up the ante by anouncing a Mars shot in mid to late '80es.
 
I think that if the Soviet Union did beat the US to the moon by the late 60s or early 70s (which would require that the Soviet rocket scientists would be wiser, have more money and the American project having to suffer major setbacks) then the US would probably get to the moon by the early 80s.
I don't think they would need to wait until 2000.
 
As I said way back where, if you have on-Mars propellant production - not hard, 19th century tech there, minus the cost of sending it and the small reactor to provide power - if you have on-Mars propellant production, the US *already has* a sufficiently strong heavy-lift vehicle to support Mars operations: the Saturn V.

Interesting thing about the Saturn V: It only needed four engines to reach the moon, the fifth F-1 was added 'for insurance' in case Apollo mission mass increased greatly as the program went on. And, as mentioned, Mars is counterintuitively 'closer' from the perspective of delta-V (burn time) because it has an atmosphere to brake in.

NASA doesn't need to do much more than have a single, simple insight into the mission two decades earlier than OTL, which relied on absolutely no technology or data gained in the interim. The other parts of the mission required (methane burning engines and a space rated nuclear reactor) are not going to be that much of a problem compared to what NASA had done to date.

IIRC there were three 'spare' Saturn V's built, one of which was reworked into Skylab. NASA could propose to use the other two Saturn V's "since we already paid for them anyways" for a Mars mission, launching the return vehicle one launch window ahead of the crew. Whether the President and Congress could be persuaded to do more is iffy.
 
NASA doesn't need to do much more than have a single, simple insight into the mission two decades earlier than OTL, which relied on absolutely no technology or data gained in the interim. The other parts of the mission required (methane burning engines and a space rated nuclear reactor) are not going to be that much of a problem compared to what NASA had done to date.

Didn't Zubrin's design require data from martian landers? How soon could someone know the in-situ propellant scenario was an option?

His own timeline estimated ten years' leadtime from policy change to the first mission. You've got habitats to develop without experience with Skylab or Mir, new launch systems to design and test (in-situ propellant earth return vehicle), an aerobrake system for ships landing on Mars, and radiation risks to mitigate.

Getting operational heavy launch capability would be easier for a (very) early version of the concept, migrating to a Saturn V follow-on than building something from shuttle spare parts like Zubrin's Ares concept, but the design's got problems for this scenario. Some stuff's going to be slower to develop than it would be today, and I suspect there's not going to have been enough data earlier than Viking to support the initial idea to the point of it getting backing.

I'd say you couldn't do it a "couple" of decades early, but you could do it one decade early.

Post-1975, you've got a chance. Reagan in 76, John Glen in 1980? Glen backs a late 70's Zubrin plan?
 
Didn't Zubrin's design require data from martian landers? How soon could someone know the in-situ propellant scenario was an option?

We already knew the composition of the Martian atmosphere. His plans for Mars base-building required knowledge of Martian soil chemistry and other factors that were not known at that time, but that's not needed for the propellant plant, and would be gotten in a manned mission anyways.

His own timeline estimated ten years' leadtime from policy change to the first mission. You've got habitats to develop without experience with Skylab or Mir, new launch systems to design and test (in-situ propellant earth return vehicle), an aerobrake system for ships landing on Mars, and radiation risks to mitigate.

Yeah, and I'm figuring that they'd launch Skylab and spend most of the '70's working towards the Mars mission. The "we've got these Saturns laying around anyways" isn't a serious proposal from NASA, so much as an excuse to present to Congress so that the Saturn lines don't get shut down (ie, by claiming you might need to build new parts for one of them, etc).

Getting operational heavy launch capability would be easier for a (very) early version of the concept, migrating to a Saturn V follow-on than building something from shuttle spare parts like Zubrin's Ares concept, but the design's got problems for this scenario. Some stuff's going to be slower to develop than it would be today, and I suspect there's not going to have been enough data earlier than Viking to support the initial idea to the point of it getting backing.

Saturn V's got the oomph already and they'd use it in the initial missions, and it's already optimized for operations beyond Earth orbit. As for stuff slower to develop, that's going to be Mars ground operations stuff, ie, rovers, science equipment, etc. We're simply not going to get as much stuff back in an early Mars mission as we would now. But the perfect is the enemy of the good - if the political will was there, it was a doable mission, given the correct framework.

I figure they could land a crew in 1982, given the appropriate plan and not slowing down after getting to the Moon. They could do it with chemical propulsion, although they might/probably develop NERVA for the upper stage for added mission mass.
 
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