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1) Those probes don't come back. I assume we'd have to try to get the human back to earth. That requires sending enough fuel with the ship for two launches, u
by imp 17y ago
1) Those probes don't come back. I assume we'd have to try to get the human back to earth. That requires sending enough fuel with the ship for two launches, unless they can process fuel on Mars.
2) Manned space missions require a safety factor of 2, where unmanned missions have lower restrictions. So it might technically be more difficult to accomplish the same thing just with a human.
- jsolson 17y agoI think if you time it right getting from Mars to Earth actually isn't so bad since Earth is in a lower solar orbit than Mars. Think of it as a big de-orbit burn. Of course you'd want it to deposit you into Earth-orbit (perhaps after some aerobraking), hence the need for proper timing, but on the whole much easier than trying to enter the higher orbit of Mars. Two rocket scientists I asked confirm this, but asked me not to quote them on it, so I'm paraphrasing :). Also, Mars' lower gravity makes achieving escape velocity substantially easier than on Earth. Of course, it's still a not insubstantial amount of fuel, but it's not quite as bad as duplicating the trip up to get back. Personally, though, if we shipped up enough stuff to survive, I'd be cool with a one-way trip.
- bigiain 17y agoI remember afew years back talking with a friend who was working at NASA at the time (Peter the Rocket Scientist!), who told me about a internal NASA conference/talk he'd attended - the speaker outlined the order-of-magnitude increase in difficulty of making a manned Mars mission come back home, and asked the audience how many of them would volunteer to fly on a one way mission to Mars - apparently about half the room raised their hands...
- eru 17y agoThe PR effect of manned one way missions would be interesting.