Quick: Read The Planetary Society Mars Plan While It Is Free
Keith’s note: In April 2015 the Planetary Society held an invitation-only “Humans Orbiting Mars” workshop wherein they unveiled their idea for a mission to Mars. At a quick press conference after the event (no media were allowed to attend the workshop) the Planetary Society promised more detail would be made public – later. Since then nothing but crickets. Well, it now looks like the Planetary Society Mars plan is now online – but only for a few weeks – then you will have to pay to read it. An article on the grand plan by Scott Hubbard will only be online here until 29 July 2015. I do not see any mention of this report’s availability on the Planetary Society website. I am not sure how far a mission concept like this is going to get if no one can read the details. Given that most of these new space policy ideas have been semi-secret lately it would seem that the authors are not really interested in any meaningful public engagement.
– Stealthy Humans Orbiting Mars Workshop Update, earlier post
– Making Space Policy In Secret (Again), earlier post
– Good News Everyone: Another Closed Door Humans to Mars Thing, earlier post
That Phobos mission sounds really complicated and drawn out. Multiple Earth and Mars orbit rendezvous (a failure of which in the latter’s case will leave the crew stranded), stages sitting at Phobos for years before the crew’s arrival hopefully running autonomously, and so forth.
It’d probably be easier just to skip making landing on Phobos a mandatory part of the mission, keeping the crew in high orbit around Mars after rendezvous with a return vehicle (or several) sent ahead to wait for them. Less hardware, and you can always sent controllable probes and maybe a separate vehicle for flying down to Phobos’ orbit and back up (but if it failed to work properly upon revival, you’re not screwed).
That’s a long time in micro-gravity (longer than any mission so far done by astronauts/cosmonauts). If it’s possible to rotate the spacecraft for at least some simulated gravity for part of the mission, that would be advisable.
nothing is at the link provided, at least not at the moment…
Works for me – try this link on that page http://online.liebertpub.co…
Flags and footsteps. No sustainable or long term presence or goals. Every time hardware is used less then a dozen times, if at all possible, its a huge waste. For any Govt to be involved and to be done in our lifetime, the whole first launch to landing must be done in less then 10 years. And lastly, WHY? First answer and then prove the Why of any future design, activity and goal.
One of many reasons I reluctantly gave up membership in the Planetary Society. Thank heavens Keith still has both a vision and knowledge.
Nice charts. Where’s the money?
The PDF is almost the same as the the one Price upload to the FISO website on May 20th 2015 titled “A scenario for a Human mission to Mars orbit in the 2030s” plus a MP3 audio presentation file.
http://srs.gs/qEe
I consider both PDFs fantasies since there is no way to have a multi-president program surviving budgetary & political woes.
Aliens! We need aliens to pull us together! At least that’s what President Reagan posited at the UN. He may have been right. In fact, aliens might be the ONLY thing that would vivify a longterm, multi-administration program.
But hasn’t it always been so? Exploration of the New World waxed and waned according to the vagaries and larcenous spirit of whoever occupied several European thrones.
Mankind is an odd collection of beings for sure.
Reason I posted that request by that south African for us to learn to see the world from some else’s point of view. Inability to do that seems, to literally keep us grounded.
If your a fan of SF: you need to read “The Stars are too High” (1959) Bahnson, Agnew H, Jr. A fun idea 😉