1.5 Years to Mars? Russia Could Do It in 1.5 Months Russia's space program

originally posted by: Xeven
Russia can't seem to get beyond low earth orbit these days.

Yet the US has to hitchhike to the ISS. Time to be exceptional again.

But, but, but, what about all that deadly solar radiation in space, which NASA assures us is the reason that the US has never been on another trip to the Moon, which takes less than a week?

a reply to: audubon

They have never, ever said that. Did you forget a "wink" emoji?

a reply to: Saint Exupery

Of course, talk is cheap and flying men to Mars is expensive. The trick (as Sergey Kirienko and Mark Cuban allude to in the article) is getting people to understand that this is an investment in the technology that will pay-off down the road. No matter how many times these investments in space tech have paid off before, the ignorant masses (and short-sighted politicians) still think that space is some sort of "hole" that money is thrown-down and wasted with no practical benefit on Earth. 

Unless your Branson, Cuban Or some other billionaire, besides your own govt, there's no way that would happen at all. Man still hasn't been back to the moon since 1969.

Yeah, you're right. Two different things had got confused in my memory. The trip there and back (just less than a week), and the time spent outside the LEM and on the lunar surface itself. Radiation exposure of nine days on the moon being equivalent to ~120 years of natural radiation exposure on Earth. NASA source (PDF).

My bad.

a reply to: audubon

So they received less then a person who takes a couple of plane flights a year.

All good.

a reply to: MuonToGluon

I can't find a precise figure to back that up, so I'll take your word for it. But this doesn't alter the fact that a round trip to the Moon takes six days and (unless the Russian onboard reactor plan works) a manned trip to Mars will take a lot, lot more radiation 'hits' than you'd get from a couple of plane flights.

And since the whole point of sending people to Mars would be to effect a landing and explore the surface, which probably isn't a weekend job, you can add an unknown amount of Martian exposure to the total absorbed in the travelling. No, it probably wouldn't be immediately fatal. But on the other hand, having your first Martian astronauts get sick from radiation poisoning and/or suing for the consequences wouldn't be very good PR for NASA.

a reply to: audubon

Oh yeah, I wasn't meaning that comment towards Mars, just the moon.

You're very correct, we still need effective and light weight shielding before we contemplate a full blown mission to mars - the cellular/dna damage would be enormous without it.

While we can have just basic shielding for one type of radiation, we also need shielding types for the other several types also, and hope to all who is out there that the Sun doesn't decide to burp half way through the mission - the shielding would be all but useless.

originally posted by: audubon
Yeah, you're right. Two different things had got confused in my memory. The trip there and back (just less than a week), and the time spent outside the LEM and on the lunar surface itself. Radiation exposure of nine days on the moon being equivalent to ~120 years of natural radiation exposure on Earth. NASA source (PDF).

My bad.

120 years, seriously? This is new to me. So how's it even possible they went then? Better yet if they make it to Mars what's the radiation like there? I mean it's possible now with technology but who knows.

originally posted by: ADSE255

originally posted by: audubon
Yeah, you're right. Two different things had got confused in my memory. The trip there and back (just less than a week), and the time spent outside the LEM and on the lunar surface itself. Radiation exposure of nine days on the moon being equivalent to ~120 years of natural radiation exposure on Earth. NASA source (PDF).

My bad.

120 years, seriously? This is new to me. So how's it even possible they went then? Better yet if they make it to Mars what's the radiation like there? I mean it's possible now with technology but who knows.

The 120 years figure is wrong.

On earth you get abot 2 mSv per year.

9 days on the moon exposed the astronauts to about 12 mSv. That is 6 years on earth.

6 months on the ISS will expose you to 160 mSv. Equivalent to 80 years on earth.

A trip to mars would expose you to 300-400 mSv. Then it depends on how long you would stay there. Mars has a very thin atmosphere so the surface radiation is relatively high.

If the Earth is flat or slave shielded none of it's real anyway, they might have said the round trip is 1 second. //sarcasm

But seriously we need reasons to go there. With a compelling reason, we'd be there already. This is the biggest "problem".

Columbus had reasons. To find better trade routes. To find places to colonize. To find peoples to trade with. Etc. A better comparison would be if Mars was almost exactly like Earth. We'd be there.

Hence, it's taking time to find reasons. Things have to build up. Eventually the cost of going there will be compensated by the rewards. And far in the future, it might be nearly worthless to "us".

I apologize. Too much "rainbows and butterflies" for me.

o for the love of God Humans dont need nuclear powered ships or any other fancy yet to be done teck .

Take one rocket powered ship one planet and one moon and you can get to mars in a month .
The first week and a half your just going from earth to the moon and every time you go around the moon use the sling shoot effect to gain more speed in a weeks time you will be doing 200 k per hour in a week and 3 day 500 k per hour .
now mars being 33.5 million miles do the math yes that is correct you will be there in 67 hours or two and a half days .
now using the atmosphere to brake get into orbit .
For the return trip mars moon Phobos will do o it will take more sling shots to get up to speed as the moon is just a rock .
But even if it takes ten sling shots to get the return speed it can be done .
And finly you dont need tons of extra fuel as done correctly it doesn't take much more then small corrections .
Just how do you think we got teh voyagers up to enough speed to brake solar gravity anyway ? we used Jupiter for the sling shot and as of now it is the fastest man made thing ever at over 50 k per hour .
Heck just keep doing it over and over once you got 500 k use the sun its self as your sling shot and get as clost to light speed as possible .

a reply to: midnightstar

Do you know how much longer it would take to do the sling shot routine? It would extend the trip time from 6months to several years, you have to do many many trips to the moon to do it, it does not have enough affect to do it only a couple of times (sending it to sling shot around Venus, yes), aerobraking in the mars atmosphere is quite hard, it is so thin that it would only cause a tiny bit of slow down, remember a human ship would be over 20tonnes compared to a probe of a tonne or less, and the heat shield weight....

You would also have to do it at a specific trajectory to avoid the VAB every time, which may not be feasible depending where you intend to enter Mars orbit.

Good for a probe, not good for humans without stasis.

Ps: Nuclear powered ship could be used many times for many different missions, get upgraded and overhauled after a decade and more with new tech, and get more interesting missions (think of an aircraft carrier, designed so it can incorporate future tech 20 years in the future).

originally posted by: midnightstar
Take one rocket powered ship one planet and one moon and you can get to mars in a month .

Nope.

The first week and a half your just going from earth to the moon and every time you go around the moon use the sling shoot effect to gain more speed in a weeks time you will be doing 200 k per hour in a week and 3 day 500 k per hour .

I’m afraid not. You are forgetting that each pass raises your orbit. Remember Kepler's Third Law: The higher the orbit (or, to use the correct terminology, the greater the semi-major axis of the orbit), the longer it takes to complete one orbit (the ratio is p^2=r^3, or the square of the period of any planet or satellite is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit).

At a distance of 384,400km, the Moon has enough lateral speed (~1.022km/sec) to keep it in a roughly circular orbit around the Earth that takes ~27.3 days to complete one circuit. If the lateral speed was lower, then 384,400km would be the apogee of an elliptical orbit with a smaller semi-major axis and a shorter orbital period. If the lateral speed was greater, then 384,400km would be the perigee of an elliptical orbit with a larger semi-major axis and a longer orbital period.

If a ship leaves the Earth and flies by the Moon in a prograde direction so that it picks up momentum and comes away moving faster than the Moon, then it will now be in an orbit around the Earth with a perigee at about the Moon's orbital radius and an apogee larger than that radius. With a semi-major axis larger than the Moon’s orbit, it will take longer to go around the Earth than the Moon (i.e. >27.3 days). So already we can forget about using this method to get to Mars in a few days. If the plan is to make several passes to build-up speed, each more-than-a-month loop will take progressively longer still.

now mars being 33.5 million miles do the math yes that is correct you will be there in 67 hours or two and a half days .

You’ve got to do the correct math.

Just how do you think we got teh voyagers up to enough speed to brake solar gravity anyway ? we used Jupiter for the sling shot and as of now it is the fastest man made thing ever at over 50 k per hour .

Jupiter has 12 times the orbital velocity of the Moon and almost 26,000 times its mass. These things matter. Link

Heck just keep doing it over and over once you got 500 k use the sun its self as your sling shot and get as clost to light speed as possible .

At 384,400km, only a 430 meter/second increase in velocity (to ~1.44km/sec laterally relative to Earth) gets it to escape velocity from Earth, so it goes into a solar orbit and no more passes are possible for a year or so. If it somehow accelerated to around 43km/sec relative to the Sun, the probe would achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. It might get one pass by Jupiter, but couldn’t pick up more than ~12km/sec extra speed from that.

a reply to: Kettu

A few, accidents with their N-1 rocket exploding.

NASA did work on nuclear propulsion, the NERVA rocket engine. I think it is the only nuclear engine so far that has actually been build and tested.

a reply to: Apollo16UVCS201

The NERVA project is often mistakenly used in the context that it was America's nuclear rocket program. In fact, the. NERVA project was an advanced phase of the AEC-NASA ROVER..

An Historical Perspective of the NERVA Nuclear Rocket Engine Technology - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) from NASA.gov site.

a reply to: MuonToGluon

I would volunteer to be on the sub to Mars with the nuclear powered engine

a reply to: SammyB0476

The guy in your avatar definitely would.

a reply to: Saint Exupery

Well then this is going to really shock you. NASA is looking into a way to make the trip in 3 days.

phys.org...