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Lockheed Martin Wins Contract to Build Mars Lander

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the up-up-and-away dept.

Lord_Slepnir writes "Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon and then on to Mars. This vehicle will hopefully also replace the aging space shuttle fleet. According to NASA the vehicle will have manned missions by 2014 and moon missions by no later by 2020."

1 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. We do NOT need to send 300 tons to Mars! by unixj · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This is a myth. We only need to send 6 tons of liquid hydrogen and a small reactor. In a 2-step process you can use this to create 108 tons of fuel.

    1. CO2 (from atmosphere) + 4 H2 (from Earth) -> CH4 (rocket fuel) + 2 H20
    2. 2 H20 (from 1) -> 2 H2 (feed back into 1) + O2 (oxygen for rocket fuel)

    You fly to Mars with just enough fuel to get you there, create your own fuel from the Martian atmosphere, and fly back. To make things less risky, we send the first one unmanned, so there's a return vehicle on the surface of Mars all fueled up when humans arrive.

    The 300 tons is only if you insist on bringing the fuel for your return journey along with you.

    This is clearly described in The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. Surprised more people haven't read that.