|
|
Post by cos on Oct 11, 2009 21:56:57 GMT -4
|
|
Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
|
Post by Bob B. on Oct 11, 2009 23:26:23 GMT -4
NASA also studied manned flybys of Mars. I've got a copy of a 1967 report that studies several Mars and dual Mars/Venus flyby possibilities for the mid to late 1970s.
|
|
|
|
Post by supermeerkat on Oct 14, 2009 14:57:35 GMT -4
Imagine what could have been! If Apollo hadn't been cancelled there's a good chance we'd be exploring the Solar System by now.
I believe there were plans for a Mars flyby in 1975 and a manned landing for 1985.....
|
|
|
|
Post by PhantomWolf on Oct 14, 2009 17:16:55 GMT -4
Imagine what could have been! If Apollo hadn't been cancelled there's a good chance we'd be exploring the Solar System by now. I believe there were plans for a Mars flyby in 1975 and a manned landing for 1985..... I blame Nixon and his stupid Space Plane. |
|
|
|
Post by Apollo Gnomon on Oct 14, 2009 23:46:01 GMT -4
Planes fly. The shuttle falls like a brick shi... uh, latrine, which it is. Interesting notion, the manned fly-by. Of course, the job was later outsourced to robots. AND the ruskies beat us to it  |
|
vq
Earth
What time is it again?
Posts: 129
|
Post by vq on Oct 15, 2009 1:34:03 GMT -4
Yes, I think one could raise a valid question about whether there is any benefit to risking astronaut's lives for a planetary flyby.
|
|
|
|
Post by echnaton on Oct 15, 2009 13:24:40 GMT -4
Even with years of research, NASA hasn't solved the problem of how to keep astronauts healthy during prolonged space missions. Health issues would have been a big deterrent to a mission in the 70's.
|
|
|
|
Post by brobertsumc on Oct 20, 2009 16:10:09 GMT -4
As good as the Apollo hardware was (eventually), I can't see it being used for a Mars mission.
|
|
|
|
Post by Apollo Gnomon on Oct 21, 2009 0:46:35 GMT -4
Rockets are designed with pretty narrow parameters. If I design a rocket for "max altitude" I'm not gonna enter it into the "beer launch" category. As soon as you change one variable, the other variables need adjustment, or at least looking at.
EVERYTHING is a variable in rocketry. Mass of payload, mass of fuel, efficiency of fuel-weight-to-thrust, mach transitions... People who cast their own fuel grains out of KNO3 and sugar (rocket-candy or "r-candy") geek out on nozzle convergent and divergent angles. The Shuttle fuel tank is orange because they decided not to paint it to save weight.
The Saturn 5 was a great platform to put 3 men and a jeep on the moon with enough consumables for a 3-day weekend. Going to Mars will require a different final-stage rocket to propel more food, air, fuel and hardware for a longer trip, so the base platform will be different.
I expect the Mars missions will be totally different profile - launch parts and assemble the mission in orbit, launch the crew to join the hardware in orbit, and then launch to Mars from orbit. Multiple smaller launches rather than one big launch. We could do that with existing hardware pretty easily. The Mars equipment itself will be specialized, but the rest of it could be done with derivatives of the American space Shuttle and Russian Soyuz equipment currently used to service the ISS. LEO is the most expensive leg of the journey, in many ways, and despite the HB's scoffing, we've become pretty good at putting humans and machines 300 miles up.
|
|
