Good time to fly to Mars 30.11.2013

Businessman and first space tourist Dennis Anthony Tito proposes to NASA a manned mission to Mars. The mission can be implemented in 4 years, and it will not require the development of expensive unique new technologies.

Dennis Tito is famous for being the first space tourist, flying to the ISS in 2001 for a fee of $20 million. He is a very wealthy man who heads the investment company Wilshire Associates. In addition, in early 2013, Dennis Tito founded the Inspiration Mars Foundation, which aims to fly a manned spacecraft around Mars. Note that the landing of astronauts on the moon also began with a flyby of the satellite of our planet. Dennis Tito wants to use the Earth-Mars opposition that happens every 15-17 years. At this time, the journey to Mars is less difficult, since the interaction of the gravity of Mars, the Sun and the Earth saves fuel.

Inspiration Mars offers a 1,3 billion km, 501 day journey to Mars and back to Earth. At the same time, the spacecraft should go to the red planet no later than at the beginning of 2018. It seems impossible: to prepare such a complex mission in the remaining time. However, in fact, there is an opportunity to make this project real, for this it is proposed to use a new model of cooperation between business and government in preparation for a space flight.

This model is the know-how of Dennis Tito. These are not traditional contracts or subsidies for the development of a space vehicle, as is now practiced by NASA. However, advances in this area will also be used. The idea is that investment by private companies will flow seamlessly into government space technology testing programs, complement them and make them more ambitious.

So, for a flight to Mars, it is proposed to use test launches of a new heavy launch vehicle SLS, which is being developed by NASA. Since NASA is going to launch an SLS rocket anyway, roughly speaking with a "blank" as a payload, then this launch could be used for a larger goal - launching a ship to Mars. Of course, during the first launch of the crew on the prototype, there will be no SLS: they will only put into orbit a ship designed to accommodate the future crew - something like a small ISS module with docked fuel tanks and an engine. A heavy SLS rocket can launch a structure weighing more than 100 tons into space, so this is quite enough for a full-fledged apparatus capable of providing a flight around Mars with a crew of 2-3 people. This vehicle consists of pressurized inhabited and service modules, to which the descent vehicle (for descent to Earth), fuel tanks and engine are docked.

After the experimental SLS rocket delivers a Martian ship into orbit, people will go to it on a certified for manned flights and potentially safer rocket. As a transport to the Martian ship, "parked" in near-Earth orbit, you can use the private spacecraft Cygnus, Dragon, or the "distant" Orion spacecraft. Once docked, the ship will become part of the Martian transport, and on future missions, the Earth-Earth Orbit transport could be used to land on the Red Planet. Landing on Earth will be carried out with the help of the second ship, which is initially part of the Martian ship and is located between the habitable compartment and the tank.

The advantages of such a scheme are obvious: a modular Martian ship can be assembled in orbit, supplementing it with 1-2 Orion-type ships designed for flights to other planets. For longer missions, an additional habitable/service module can be placed into orbit and then docked with a Martian ship. The docking technology in orbit is well developed, so no problems are foreseen with it. In addition, an unmanned launch is safe, and in the event of any problems in near-Earth orbit, astronauts can always return in the ship that delivered them to the Martian transport.