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Exploration

Explore Mars Releases First Annual Mars Report

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
May 5, 2015
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Explore Mars Releases First Annual Mars Report

Report Released: The Humans to Mars Report 2015
The non-profit Explore Mars Inc. group today released its first annual Humans to Mars Report. According to Explore Mars the report “provides updates on challenges, plus progress in areas such as mission architecture design and development, scientific discoveries, policy, public perception, international cooperation and competition, and new private capabilities”.
Marc’s note: The report is not comprehensive but it does promise a website for ongoing updates and an annual report. We’ll see what the website provides once it’s launched and how it evolves before passing judgement. This isn’t the first try for something like this, the Mars Society and other have tried.

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

4 responses to “Explore Mars Releases First Annual Mars Report”

  1. numbers_guy101 says:
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    Extremely provincial, even SLSish. A poor opening shot about what the org is to be about. Does not match the nicely worded broad description of purpose.

  2. Neil.Verea says:
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    No new revelation in this report. The same two long pole obstacles to sending Humans to Mars were conveniently hand waved away at best or not addressed at all. Cost and Technology. They state that its should be a fraction of $1.5 Trillion…. OK … how much? ball park is OK. Where is their data substantiating that statement? (Hand waving). On the Technology front it comes across as if the mission is just basic Engineering with EDL being the only technical obstacle. When one justifies their position based on Polls (conducted on uniformed people) it begins to smell like what we all know it is.

    • Barry W Finger says:
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      Technology is not a long pole – except for EDL and the MAV, everything else is applied engineering. And even EDL and the MAV are nothing more than more intricate applied engineering. There is no new science to discover. There are no new materials that need to be developed. The only long-pole is establishing a viable funding mechanism. And if you want the cost to drop, follow the same model that has been implemented for commercial cargo and now commercial crew – make it a competitive, but government funded procurement of capabilities and mission elements, with always at least two providers supplying goods at every step along the way.

  3. wwheaton says:
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    Just in case somebody other than me has not discovered it, I just found the following, over 100 MB of NASA Mars homework:

    Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 July 2009 — 3.9 MB
    http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373

    Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 Addendum — 2009 34.1 MB
    http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373

    Human Spaceflight Architecture Team (HAT) Mars Destination Operations Team (DOT) FY 2013 Final Report January 2014 — 18.3 MB
    http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d

    Charting the Course for Sustainable Human Space Exploration 6/4/2012 3.2 MB
    http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d

    Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 Addendum #2 March 2014 — 62.3 MB
    http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d

    About 1000 pages of stuff. Addendum #2 has 50 pages on human missions to visit Deimos and Phobos, my favorite topic of late. Gives estimates of tons needed to LEO for chemical, nuclear thermal, solar electric, and nuclear thermal mission designs, for dates in the 2018 – 2042 time periods, both short and long missions.