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I wasn't thinking about the whole journey back home, just the first part of it which looks damn hard to me: how do you get a space craft away from Mars? You nee
by ifdefdebug 12y ago
I wasn't thinking about the whole journey back home, just the first part of it which looks damn hard to me: how do you get a space craft away from Mars? You need to reach escape velocity, and that's 5 km/s (> 11000 mph).
You'll have to build a complete launch site for that.
- sfeng 12y agoIf you have fuel in orbit you just have to reach it, you don't have to get to escape velocity.
- ifdefdebug 12y agoOK, got that. Did some further reading (again) on the topic and it's still about 4 km/s to reach the orbit. People are working on it, but for what I read it looks hard to overcome for 2030...
- rspeer 12y agoYou still have to match velocity with the fuel. Crashing into your fueling station at 10000 km/h doesn't help anything.
- LyndsySimon 12y agoActually... it completely solves the problem of the return trip.
- spb 12y agoSomebody needs to teach NASA to embrace Crash-Only Design.
- danielweber 12y agoThe Design Reference Mission calls for generating the fuel on the Martian surface, so you only need to drop a small amount of hydrogen feedstock to make the rest. You need a huge launchpad to launch a 100 ton vehicle. You don't need it for something weighing only a few tons.