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Millionaire Plans Mission To Mars In 2018
littlesparkvt writes in with news about the possibility of a privately funded Mars mission. "Millionaire Dennis Tito became the first paying customer to make a trip to the International Space Station and now he wants to launch a privately funded mission to Mars in 2018. Dennis paid a reported 20 Million to ride aboard a Russian rocket to the International Space Station and has since stayed out of the spotlight, until now. There’s no word whether the trip will include humans, there will be more information on that fact next week. Considering there is little time to train a crew for the mission the flight in 2018 will most likely be an unmanned probe. There’s also a possibility that the first mission to Mars from this private investor will harbor supplies for future astronauts. Plants and food are a possibility as they would take much less space than a full human crew."
From http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/02/21/new-insights-on-that-private-crewed-mars-mission/:
The IEEE Aerospace Conference is in March -- next month. That's pretty interesting timing.
Carousel is a lie!
with a 'b' if he intends to go to and return from Mars.
If Dennis is got the $$$ to float this kind of a plan, why the hell doesn't he get onboard with the Mars-One group? They actually have a pretty fleshed-out plan to put human colonists on Mars starting in 2023. They could really use a large influx of $$$ to get their plan going.. From what I've read, they have it pretty well planned out to send the first 4 colonists to Mars in 2023, but still need a lot more sponsors/funding...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
The Mars One people have no intention to bring anyone home. Presumably Tito wants his ass back on the Earth someday.
This is a farce anyway. Tito's net worth is more than a full order of magnitude too small for even the cheapest conceviable Mars mission.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Please change this planets name to Urectum to avoid all the stupid jokes like this one.
What's his net worth? I found something quoting $200 million, which would be well short of the cost of even an unmanned Mars mission. He'll have to get other investors.
Lots of other investors.
And why would you invest billions for an unmanned mission, which has already been done several times? This sounds an awful lot like someone with a big ego and some money to waste.
He really needs to read this before spending any money.
With this millionaire and the Mars One group planning a trip in 2023, has anybody thought of the contamination this might cause.
NASA and space agencies around the world have been trying to find life, or evidence life once existed, on Mars for years. If we have several independent groups landing their own spacecraft, is there a chance they might careless contaminate Mars with Earth microbes, thus throwing any future findings into question?
You are right to point out the quibble of "no time to train the crew" is straining at a gnat.
But you are having some trouble in trying to swallow the camel. Project Apollo cost $200 billion in current dollars to solve a much easier problem (an 8 day trip) compared to a year-and-a-half trip with an enormously larger delta-vee requirement (if you come back). Perhaps, in a similar national level high priority crash project, like the U.S. undertook in the "space race" it could be done in not much longer than 8 years. But you are looking at something exceeding the cost of Apollo.
Yes, I know Mars One claims they have a plan for a one-way trip that will only cost 6 billion: "The six billion figure is the cost of all the hardware combined, plus the operational expenditures, plus margins." (Emphasis added.)
But they also claim "This plan is built upon existing technologies available from proven suppliers." apparently blissfully unaware of the fact that (as rudy_wayne posted above) that no one knows how to build a workable re-entry system http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/ . I guess if you wave away all of the really hard problems its all quite easy.
They also don't address the costs of maintaining the colony in perpetuity - it saves on the really hard problem of return but creates a permanent multi-billion dollar annual obligation to the Earth to keep their colony of four people alive.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Just tell people you put the "sexy" in "dyslexia".
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
What's his net worth? I found something quoting $200 million, which would be well short of the cost of even an unmanned Mars mission. He'll have to get other investors.
I'm pretty sure that really depends on who he's going to have build the equipment, and whether he's willing to do it in a country which will happily ignore patent licensing.
The DC-X was completed in 21 months by a team of 100 people, at a cost of around 60 million in 1991 dollars. That'd be ~$100M today, assuming we learned exactly zilch from the first one. If he's willing to build SSTO vehicles, and he's willing to cut some corners based on what was already learned in previous research, and he's willing to go to a non-US friendly country who won't cooperate on preventing it, the costs go down.
Venezuela could be a candidate, and so could a couple of the former Soviet Republics. A DC-X with a patent-ignoring linear aerospike engine would likely be a pretty sweet vehicle. If he's willing to sell launch services on the things for a while, he could probably raise any additional funding rather quickly. If he's willing to sell completed spacecraft to anyone who wanted to buy one at a hefty markup, he could probably do it even faster.
It's not that far outside the realm of possibility for someone with 1/5th of a billion dollars to consider. Especially if you consider that launch costs have been pretty intentionally inflated up to this point.
That "much easier problem" in the terms of the 1960s was just as big, if not bigger than a mars mission with today's understanding of space travel. We have already sent men into space for considerably longer than 8 days - in fact we'd already done that before we went to the moon. Granted, this is everything on a bigger scale, but the unknowns facing us are nothing compared to what we faced when we first put a man in a rocket.
From http://www.newspacejournal.com/2013/02/21/new-insights-on-that-private-crewed-mars-mission/:
Right. Tell your kids: "let's go to McDonalds!" Load them up in the car. Drive to McD's, just drive past it, return home. Let's see how well that goes does for "going to McDonalds".
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
They are planning a Mars fly-by so apart from the problem of providing life support for 500 days there is actually less deltaV required than for the Apollo moon missions because they don't need an extra 4.5km/s to land and takeoff from the moon's surface.
Almost all the fuel will be used at earth escape, and only minimal maneuvering thrust from there on so a modified dragon capsule is probably capable of doing the job. Launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket that might cost less than $200 million in total (costs $140 million for a Falcon 9 Dragon launch to LEO).
The dragon capsule can carry 6.6 tonnes of payload and is designed to survive in space for up to 2 years, so has more than enough capacity to support 2 people. And while some may claim that 2 people cannot survive in a capsule that big for a year and a half for psychological reasons, that is just bollocks - but it will be easier if they pick people with the right sort of temperament.